One year ago today, my wife and I loaded up, said goodbye to our Texas family and drove off with Fort Worth, TX her rearview mirror (I was in a U-haul which didn’t have a rearview) and headed to sunny California!  We didn’t know what to expect.  We didn’t know many people or what we were going to do.  We didn’t have jobs or a place to stay, but we felt like it was where we were supposed to be.  It was hard to leave all our family and a church that we love so much, but it was time to go.  Fort Worth (or Texas for that matter) wasn’t difficult to say goodbye to, but the rest was harder.

We miss being close to our families.  We miss having Todd, Wendy, Cade and the new one right down the street.  We miss our LifeGroup.  Those things helped make up for the short comings of the most massive state.  It isn’t always easy being out here.  There are days that go by that we miss everyone so much, but we know that God has a plan for us and a reason we are here.  So we have accepted that and have spent the last year trying to convince everyone else to move out here, too!  (Unfortunately I don’t know that I am the sales person that I used to be considering we started trying to convince people and my parents up and moved to Alaska instead…hmmm…)

With year one almost under our belts, we are excited about what year two will bring, but I’ll get more into that in a couple days.

For as much as I like being lazing and not working or having a plan for the day or anything, I really suck at taking time off.  As crazy as that sounds, it is something I struggle with.  I have only taken one full day off in the past couple months.  It’s not that I am just a superstar workaholic.  I have my good days and bad days.  It isn’t that I don’t want to spend time with my family because I do!  I just for some reason find myself still working.  Sometimes it is because I don’t prioritize very well during the week, other times because things come up that have to be dealt with, and times when there just isn’t enough time in the week to do it all.  But whatever the reason, I don’t take time off very well.

Being in ministry it is VERY easy to fall into this trap.  So many times ministry can be a 24/7 job that it is not hard at all to think that it always is or as someone once put it “you are always on”.  (Of course that implies that I am different than I normally would be and other crazy things so we will leave that one for another blog post.)  It is easy to slice up your time that should be for your family to meet with some people that you can’t meet with during the days, or finish studying for Sunday because there were just too many things to do in the office, or learn that one song that has been put off for the whole week.  But all these excuses are not good.  When I don’t take time off, I neglect my wife.  When I neglect my wife, she isn’t thrilled and we all know the saying that rhymes and says something about a happy wife equals a happy life.  But no matter what the saying says, my wife and baby girl are my priority and should be treated as such.

Why is it that we allow “work” to steal time from our family?  What are good ways to combat this?  What do you have to do to turn it off?  What does your family do when you do put work away?

Well, some of you already know this, but my wife and I are joining in with a group of my larger family and friends and taking a trip to Israel!  We are so excited.  We will be leaving soon and the packing has begun.  Fortunately I am not in charge of the packing because it would not have started yet.  I might have thought about some stuff I would need to take, but that’s about it.  But, I married a planning genius and therefore the packing began last week!  Over seven days early!  Wow.  Way beyond my abilities.

As we have prepared, many people have asked us about going.  It generally sounds something like this.  Oh, Israel?!  That’s great!  Have you ever been before?”  So nothing wrong with that, right?  Well, my confusion comes from the way it is asked.  I swear most of the times I have been asked if we have been before it comes out as more of a “you haven’t gone yet?” as if everyone makes this trip.  Well, for us it isn’t just a normal vacation.  This doesn’t happen to us that often and we see this trip as an amazing once in a lifetime trip!  Plus we get to visit many major airports too (yeah fun I know)!  I never have figured out why we have to go to so many different places just to get to one place.  Seems like if we did more no-stop trips that we wouldn’t waste as much gas in planes, but then again, I don’t work for them.  Oh well.  We are going to be briefly (and some for extended periods of time) visiting the following cities’ airports:

• Santa Ana, CA
• Minneapolis, MN
• Oklahoma City, OK
• Atlanta, GA
• Tel Aviv, Israel
• Amman, Jordan
• New York, NY
• Oklahoma City, OK
• Salt Lake City, UT
• Santa Ana, CA

We are very excited to see all these places that we have read about for so many years!  We are so excited about the things that God will do in all of our lives through everything we will see, learn and feel!  We are planning on blogging as many days as possible while we are there so stay tuned to hear about it!  I’m sure we will have a slew of pictures when we get back too!  Please pray for our safety.  Pray for our hearts to be open and teachable.  Pray for our feet!  My feet aren’t as accustomed to sandals as Jesus’ were (plus he was Jesus and when His feet hurt a little bit He could go walk on the water…sounds a lot better than Dr. Scholls to me!).

We are headed out to Israel!  Have you not been there yet???

Ah the mob. This weekend KK and I flew back to Oklahoma for a friend/brother’s wedding. We haven’t been back to Oklahoma since my sister’s wedding in October! Been a while. So this week we get to see the craziness that is my family and those that we basically family. We get to see KK’s family including our new sister-in-law who is about to pop with a baby. We get to see some of our very best friends including two working on popping with child and one who just did. Seriously? Could more people be pregnant at the same time? Ridiculous.

We are excited to see them all! We are excited for Chris and Randi! Please don’t rob our house while we are gone. Jack we will come pick you up soon.

So as you know (I really, really hope) today is Christmas!  But this year it was different.  We moved 1400 miles away from our family this year.  Crazy.  So Christmas kinda has to be different.  Unfortunately the price of plane tickets was a little expensive for us so we didn’t get to grace Oklahoma with our presence.  But we did grace it with our presents!  (I know…really bad play on words.  I must be a pastor.)  This year KK’s parents drove out here to see us!…and lots of other things including more family, the Grand  Canyon and the Mohave Desert (yes only one s in desert because you don’t want seconds of desert like you do dessert)!  I think the Mohave has been their favorite so far, but we still haven’t shown them any beaches yet.  More to come!  

But my family didn’t get to come out here (and obviously we didn’t go there…hopefully you caught that just from reading this far).  So this year we did Christmas with them on webcam!  It was a little different.  Needs some tweaking but it was better than nothing!  We still got to see them all open presents that we mailed and we still heard all the madness (although we did have to get up at an un-Christmas like hour…for those of us that are older than 12 and younger than 40…even though just barely).  It was a little different since they couldn’t hear us very well, but  we will fix that next time and make them find some speakers so we will be heard!  But still!  It was great to see them!

We love our family!

Here’s what Christmas looked like on the webcam.

So, I apparently have an ear

As I am sitting here working and for the last several months, I realized and continue to realize how extremely blessed I am.  I have the job that I want for the church that I want.  I have an incredible wife.  We have a house, two cars, a dog, A/C, etc.  I have been blessed way beyond what I deserve.  If we took the time, we could all stop and count the ways that we are truly blessed everyday.  But occasionally something helps us gain that perspective all over again.

To steal a line from my mother, “and we’re off like a herd of turtles!”  (I’m really not sure what that means.  I guess we are leaving very slow?  Is that it?  Hmm…I’m not sure)  Well, maybe not quite, it is actually still in the middle of church right now, but as soon as we get through one more experience my wife and I are headed out for vacation with my family!  I’m not going to say the best part is that we are headed to the lake for a week because that would mean that my family isn’t the best part, but I really like the lake part!