YONDER BREAKS

Life is kind of funny sometimes, you know? I grew up never wanting to leave the South, thinking I would end somewhere in the Blue Ridge Mountains. But California called for  school , and I was elated to check it out. I didn't like LA though, and so I came back after the semester was over, only to miss it so much that I moved back a year later. Seven years after that, we missed our family and needed help with our second child, and so we came back east, only to again long for California. That brings us to this year, where we decided to move back...again. That's five cross-country drives and three moves under our belt. Each one was in a different life circumstance, and various lessons were learned, but this most recent was a real challenge. Now, as we are settling in to our new place, I thought it would be fun to share that story here. As you can tell, California must really want us, despite our best efforts to stay away. And since we arrived in South Carolina two years ago, we ...

Christmas is over. Obviously. This year we had a bit of an extended season though, as we had a few Christmas celebrations with my family, before going up north to visit my wife's family, and then came home to an awesome and unexpected  snow storm that gave my wife an extra week off of work. The whole thing was really amazing and a great way to end one year and start another. However, as we took down Christmas decorations, Ellie had a little trouble saying goodbye to the holidays. I totally understand, as I have vivid memories of the day after Christmas ( Boxing Day to our northern neighbors) being solemn and feeling a bit empty. Sure, I probably just came off of an awesome Christmas and had tons of new toys and video games to play with, but the whole expectation of the big day is really what makes the season magical. The older I get, the easier it becomes to let go and move on , looking forward to new adventures in the new year; but I can certainly sympathize with my three ye...

It takes a humble man to admit it, but in most cases, your wife is probably right. The longer I'm married, the more I realize this. I had one of the more significant revelations about this topic lately, one I think is worth sharing and proves the point well. Recently we decided to make the move from California to the east coast, where we're both from. As we examined our moving options, my wife did a little research and decided it would be best to rent one of those  portable storage  units, sell everything we could and fill it with what was left in our Prius. Unfortunately, selling everything included my beloved  Subaru Baja , which I did not want to do. Well, I decided to do some of my own research, and found that it would actually be cheaper to hook up a 5x8 Uhaul trailer to the Baja and sell everything we couldn't fit in there and the Prius. It would be a stretch, but we're kind of into downsizing, and so we decided on that option. It worked -- we s...

Here is " Trusting Why God Moves " by Joseph Barkley. It's been a while since I've done one of these Ecclesia sermons, so this one is a bit old. You'll find it a few rows down here: http://churchinhollywood.com/media.php?pageID=15 This sermon is based off of Exodus 14:31 - 15:18 . It is a song that the nation sings after God has drowned their enemies in the Red Sea. Go ahead and read that or the notes won't make much sense. I love what Joseph says here about the glory of God, and what that means. He says that everyone is hard-wired to have a main-thing in life, and I agree. It seems that we are predisposed towards following or worshiping something in life, no matter what. For me growing up (and maybe now  too) it was bands and skateboarding. My sister obsessed over N' Sync and Harry Potter (teenage girls are really good at obsessing over things). My dad loves cars and motorsports. It's just a tendency in our lives to associate ourselves with some...

Ecclesia is doing a series titled God is Moving. This is the first one in the series and a really good one. The big takeaway with this one is that, if we start trusting God before knowing why things happen, it's better than if God gave us all the answers before we trusted Him -- if He did that, we'd still be left without the peace of trusting Him. That's really what we long for anyway, right -- peace? Something else that hit me is that we tend to make a god out of things we want, or at least attribute them to God being pleased with us. If I'm not healthy or getting richer, than I must be doing something to make God mad. Or flip it -- if I am super healthy or have been very blessed financially, God is pleased with me. But if those things are suddenly taken from me, I must have made God mad. Both of those are folly of course, but at the bottom of it, that's probably how most of us view God -- the great Gift-giver. God does give good gifts of course ( "Eve...