This one’s funny…and a little disturbing, but mostly funny.

The Winner is…

There is always lots to be thankful for; my amazing family, my health, the privilege to follow my dream and start and pastor a church.  My life is full of wonderful blessings, and I acknowledge them as being of God-so this week the HIGH for me is the relationship I have with my God.

The Loser is…

It’s thanksgiving week…doesn’t seem right to have a low.

Now that Thanksgiving is just about here I am starting to really think about Christmas…also we start our Christmas series at Affinity this coming Sunday.  The focus is on how we can put “Christ” back in”Christmas”…here is the logo we came up with.

The other day I was hit with the thought that maybe the way we live does more to take Christ out of Christmas than Target or any other company has been able to do.  The Christian community is outraged when a department store bans it’s employees from saying “Merry Christmas”.  So we take our “Jesus is the Reason for the Season” pins, and go down the street to spend our glutenous amounts of money somewhere else…somehow convinced that as long as we SAY “Merry Christmas” we are exempt from having to LIVE “Merry Christmas”.

How would the local shelter look today if we put as much effort into LIVING the message as we did proclaiming it??  I am going to spend the next several Wednesday’s challenging us with how I think we “put Christ back into Christmas”…and it’s got very little to do with words, and a lot to do with our actions.

This one cracked me up…I am heading out today to buy an air horn.

7 years ago today God blessed us with our first child…Kendall Faith.  When she was born her eyes were open, and they have barely shut since then. Kendall, I love you, and am so proud to be your daddy.  I hope this was your best birthday ever…

This Monday needs an extra laugh…

Enjoy…I am gonna go bake some brownies.

The Winner is…

Jenn and I started doing the prep work for the arrival of “Baby Hannah” this week.  Got a few things painted for JJ and Kendall’s room, which needed to be done before we could move in Hannah’s room.  It’s hard to believe in less than 2 months we will have a new baby…it’s gonna be crazy…in a good way.

The Loser is…

I love to wrestle with the kids, and the other night we were battling pretty hard.  Kendall and I were fighting to knock each off the couch…it was an epic duel.   JJ-Kendall’s side-kick, decided fighting fair was NO longer an option.  I looked up right as he had his Thomas the Tank engine conductor’s whistle raised high above his head.  Before I could stop him he cracked me right across the ankle bone.  I had to ice that sucker for 30 minutes it hurt so bad.

Oh well, I am off to get a few more things done, and then prepare for Kendall’s birthday party tomorrow.

Makeover your communication

A lot of our communication comes from how we were raised.  Basically what was modeled for us is what we do now, good or bad.  Some of the communication styles we were raised under include:

• Avoiding it. Anything painful, uncomfortable, or awkward gets avoided, and you simply did NOT talk about it.
• Explosion.  Any communication was yelling, screaming, throwing things, maybe worse.
• Silent obedience. When you parents said something you simply did what you were told, and did NOT dare ask any questions.  So it wasn’t communication but more compliance…

And a lot of how you communicate today is drawn in large part from how you were raised. We carry dysfunction into our marriages, and often use how we were raised as an excuse to continue that dysfunction in our families.  At some point you have to reach the point where you decide that you will be the generation to break the cycle.  That you will have the awkward and uncomfortable conversations in a way that brings about resolution and benefits all parties involved.

There’s a great verse in the Bible, in the book of Ephesians that says, “So stop telling lies. Let us tell our neighbors the truth…” The challenge is for our dealings with our fellow man, but shouldn’t the place that this challenge is perfected, be in our marriages??  He says stop lying…lying in what we say, but also lying in what we do NOT say, and to start being honest.

Where in your marriage are you “lying”?  What TRUTH (you can’t handle the truth…sorry, I couldn’t resist) do you need to communicate to your partner? You can’t expect or hope for change if they aren’t even aware of what you think or how you feel.  Communication in our marriages begins when we stop lying and omitting truth, and we sit down and speak the TRUTH with each other, in a spirit of love, seeking to build each other up.

This is a classic, I saw it on “Tosh.o” last week.  ”Out on you, out on you.”