Don't Stop Belizing: I and 10 of the coolest people I know are taking a trip to Belize to work in the Stan Creek region. We will be doing some hard labor. Pouring a foundation for a building and laying concrete block. There is a time when I would have blown through that work like a trooper. I now wonder if this work isn't going to kill me. We leave June 11 and won't be back until June 18. Please pray that we show love for one another and I don't get a bad case of the grumps.
I grew a beard as a visible sign of the fundraising progress we have made. It was epic. It stood outside of most conversation judging them and finding them lacking. It was that righteous. It looked like this at the very end.
This is the look I wish I could have kept for a while. I could have driven around in a van and scared young children. I think people who look like this should on a watch list of some type.
I think the next one would have been perfect if I could have been a state trooper. And wear super short shorts. You know the kind that are short enough for people to see you pockets sticking out of the bottoms of them. Or I could have played bass for Blue Oyster Cult.
Sadly this is the first real look I had gotten of my face in many years and I know exactly why I had hair growing on it in the first place.
I eventually cleaned up enough to look sort of like the guy Kara married 12 years ago. She thinks this guy is hot. And who am I to disagree. Travel the world and the seven seas. Everybody is looking for something.
I still have beautiful children. They stink like boys most of the time and they love like brothers and they fight like brothers. But they are how I will reach out into eternity.
My cat died back in January. That coupled with the fact that Auburn won a national championship made January a month that sucked pretty hard. Kara actually had to take Cat to the vet and have her put down. I had to leave work early because there is no crying at Bagby Elevator only gnashing teeth and the joy of driving your enemies before you and hearing the lamentations of their women. Joseph the Barbarian could not be seen crying about a cat. Even though he had that cat for 15 years.
This is kind of what it felt like for that cat to die for me. I will never own another animal that I will outlive.
I have been working through a series in the book if 1 John. A truth I gleamed from this is you can't walk in sin (deliberate, willful, acts of sin) and walk in and with God. There is not peace to be found in this straddling of paths. Only more apathy. Too often we try and do just enough to please God and see how close we can get to the other line to satisfy the cravings person that lives within you.
You can find peace in the love God has for those He calls His children. I am struggling now to find that peace. I am struggling to walk a path that is not about getting as close to the edge as possible. When I live like this I miss the point by a country mile. God is there for me when I am there in a relationship with him. The same can be said for you.
I am also reading a book. Quitter by Jon Acuff. Essentially he is inviting people in a very practical way to bridge the gap between their day job and their dream job. I usually loathe self help books. I also detest books on leadership that attempt to quantify leadership in 21 irrefutable laws. Acuff does not come across as smug or arrogant. He doesn't think he has most of the answers but he does ask some really good questions that ring in my heart as good questions I am allowed to answer. I will tell you have the journey with book goes.
I am also finely honing a statement that will my Calvinists heads explode in righteous rage because the ones I am hearing really need to take themselves more seriously. Here is the rough draft of said statement.
"The best systematic theologies are at best good guesses at something that rebuffs our guesses." Joseph Kinnaird.
Until the next time we meet may the bluebirds fly and do what bluebirds do.
Joseph Kinnaird
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