Tuesday, March 22, 2011

Marriage vs. Affair

I'd like to make myself think my relationship with Christ is more comparable to a marriage, but if I'm honest with myself, I know it's really more of an affair.

The Affair
An affair that I take advantage of on Sunday mornings and Wednesday nights. We have our meeting time and place arranged each week. I put on the trendiest clothes I have, actually take time to look at what little hair I have left to fix. I put on a good smile, get in a good mood and use my best comic material to try to make everyone laugh. I try to make sure everything is in order so that my plans on those 2 days are generally uninterrupted.

Luckily, I don't have to do this everyday. I get a few days off between meeting times, keeps me fresh, you know, still trying to impress. I haven't gotten to the point where I don't care anymore about what the person thinks of me. I still have that nervous energy before, gives me an edge.

I even go so far to play some music. It makes me look good, more legit I guess. People generally assume everything is cool, and that I've got it altogether. That's what I want them to think. If not, I have to admit that I don't, that I'm weak, human. I go to great lengths to keep my affair disguised as best I can.

The Marriage
My marriage to my wonderful beautiful wife of over 13 years is amazing. We have tough times, but we both work everyday at trying to be better at being spouses. Granted, we have routines, tendencies and habits that we've had since day 1 that we still work at, it's never going to be easy. Although we both say and do things that we wished we had done better, or not done at all, it's a learning process. We work through those things. My wife sees the best and worst of me and the good thing is, is that she's okay with all my downsides, all my faults, all my negatives and all my fears.

This is what type of relationship I want with Christ. Something that happens everyday, every week. He already knows the best and worst of me, and still loves me unconditionally. I love Him for that!

Thursday, March 10, 2011

The Brightside

I'll be honest, there are many cool things I enjoy when visiting my in-laws in the Northwest Louisiana corner town of Cotton Valley, LA. It's a very small community, maybe one store, been around forever. I spend about 80% of my time there asleep or eating home-cooked meals. I begin to crave fast-food by the time we're headed back to West Monroe.

Life slows down about three Wynonna gears and it's a great change of pace. No internet, and not so great cell phone service. There are animals there too, horses, chickens, rabbits, things I generally have no interest in whatsoever. My kids love it, every daylight minute is spent outside playing in the free world of the country.

The trip we're making there this weekend will be a little different this time. The 3-year old Motorola Razr's won't be making the journey. They've been replaced by iPhone 4's, quite a few steps forward in technology. So there will be internet, there will be cell service, Twitter, Facebook, everything that I enjoy taking a small break from will be right there at my fingertips.

But that's not what I'm most excited about combining the CV trip with the iPhone's. It's going to be all the photography opportunities there that you can't easily find in a small city like West Monroe. Barns, gates, tractors, sheds, old cars, tire swings, endless shots will be there at my fingertips, and I'm going to try to take advantage of all of them using all 60 photo apps I've now acquired.

This time maybe it's 20% sleep/eat and they'll have to drag me in from outside. My wife and in-laws are going to think I went crazy in a whole new way!

Wednesday, March 9, 2011

International names of Jesus:

I found it interesting that different cultures around the world have different pronunciations, spellings and sounds of the name of Jesus. Guess I had never really thought about it. 99% of the cultures who spell 'Jesus' like the English versions, that aren't English, have some type of accent mark.

International Names of Jesus:

English - Jesus
Spanish - Jesus
French - Jesus
Italian - Gesu
Dutch - Jezus
Irish - Iosa
German - Jesus
Russian - Nncyc (the "N's" are reversed)
Albanian - Jezusi
Belarusian - Icyc
Croatian - Isus
Finnish - Jeesus (yeah, that's 2 e's.)
Indonesian - Yesus

Thursday, March 3, 2011

Top Ten: things I don't miss about 'How We Used To Do It'

1. The dead space & dead silence after a pastor/speaker announced a certain person was coming up (from the congregation) to sing a special using a track. "Let's all worship with ______ as he/she sings"

2. The dead space & dead silence while that special singer was waiting for the special soundman to start the special track.

3. The weird feeling for the person singing when they forgot their place or their words and had to wait for the song to get back to the chorus.

4. When losing their place, he/she was immediately lost in The Spirit until they found their place again.

5. The awkward obligatory hand-clap once the singer/track was finished.

6. Not the smooth lowering of the fader on the soundboard, but the square 'stop' button that killed that track.

7. The odd sound of silence between the 2 choir songs, the slow one, and then the fast one.

8. The unrest when someone was singing a solo and it was their first time.

9. The members of a trio or quartet that bashed each other between songs and thought it was hilarious.

10. The youth choir singing a new vanilla progressive choir song on a Sunday morning while everyone watched.