Imperial Metrics

Be the change you want to see in our country.
In elementary school in the 80s, I was told I had to learn the metric system because the US would be switching over to it soon. Well nearly 40 years later, we still use the same random collection of measurement schemes and non-sensical conversions.
So I've finally gotten fed up. A couple weeks ago, I switched my phone, car, computer, and home thermostats over to metric. It's a bit of a learning curve for what a comfortable temperature is, but I'm adjusting and soon it will be second nature. And just today, Kathryne switched her phone temperature to Celsius. 1 down, 370 million more to go.


One person at a time. One measurement at a time. We can become the change we want to see... for the metric system. That's all I'm talking about. No other message here. 🧐😏😉

Sean Sightings

Once again Sean takes on the heavy hitting issues with his latest blog post on the Southern Hills church blog: "Divide and Conquer"
The sermon that he referenced can be downloaded (or listened to online) here: "Romans 14: The Weak and the Strong". I've listened to it 3 times now and highly recommend it.

Sean now wants to start his own blog which we will work to get going soon. There may also be some big news coming up soon so stay tuned.

Courageous

I've been a big fan of the Sherwood brothers movies ever since I stumbled across the movie "Facing the Giants" on DVD several years ago. I think I may have even blogged about it back then. And I recommend it to everyone  I have a chance to. Since then I have seen their other movies "Flywheel" and "Fireproof" and own the DVDs for FtG and FP (but not FW). I was very excited a couple years ago when I learned about their next movie framed in a police story and focusing on fatherhood. Well this weekend the day finally came and the movie "Courageous" was on my radar to see with the whole family. I ended up just taking the boys since Kathryne had other things to do today, but I plan on taking her to see it soon.

The movie centers around a group of men several of whom are police officers and face danger daily. Another who comes into their group struggles with the more mundane issue of just trying to feed his family. All of them face issues of how to be a good father. So many of the themes and situations hit home. As a father I struggle with all kinds of thoughts about what I'm doing right and wrong. How badly am I going to screw up my kids through my actions or inaction? Am I disconnected from my kids? What I am passing on to them?

The movie itself has some big changes from their previous films. It has the same gospel messages and may still feel a bit "preachy" to non-Christians. But the production values, acting, and story are all greatly improved. There was nothing in the production of this movie that you could look at an think it's not a standard Hollywood production (at least to my untrained, consumerish eye). But the drastic departure comes in the general tone of the movie. There is some serious tragedy going on here. It's an emotional roller coaster. I cried just about every other scene. There was the standard humorous banter between characters that we've seen in their previous films. But from the very start, there are no punches pulled. And there is no miraculous happy ending here. Just a lot of real life that is messy for all involved. I hate to say it, but I was really ready for this movie to be over. Not because it was bad or too long, but because I was emotionally exhausted. It is over 2 hours long and was emotionally draining.

It was also very challenging. Challenging to not be mediocre or "good enough". As a father. As a man. As a Christian. If you are a father you need to see this movie. If you have a father, you need to see this movie. If your father let you down and negatively impacted your life you really need to see this movie. Take your family. Take your friends. Support this high-quality Christian entertainment by going to the theater in the first week (or two). That is the critical time for the industry to judge the popularity of a movie. Let's help this one stick around for a while.

A couple caveats. I took Sean and Joshua. Sean was fine, but Joshua was a bit scared/bored/overwhelmed in many scenes. You be the judge of your children's readiness for this film. Also, it is PG-13 for some of these reasons and there is some violence and drug related content that the police deal with. The worst part about the PG-13 rating is the trailers and other promotions before the movie. The are a bit harsher than a G or PG rating would have warranted. But there wasn't anything that was so out of line that I wanted to leave or hide from little eyes and ears.

The movie website has the opening scene available for you to watch, but please head out to the theater soon.

Movie Website: http://www.courageousthemovie.com/
IMDB: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1630036/
Plugged-in Review: http://www.pluggedin.com/movies/intheaters/courageous.aspx
Rotten Tomatoes: http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/courageous/

Parenting win

I had an interesting parenting experience yesterday.  The kind where you actually feel like you may get some pearl of wisdom imparted to your kids.
Sean and Joshua each wanted to play the computer.  We had told them "No" for a while but finally decided to let them have their 30 minutes of play time.  So I asked them "Who wants to play computer first?"  They were standing near each other and Sean rushed forward not quite pushing his brother saying "I do!"  I replied "Sean can play first for 30 minutes, then Joshua can play for 40 minutes."  Sean looked shocked.  Needless to say, he wasn't happy about it. He threw a fit so I then let Joshua go first with his 40 minutes.  Now Sean was really not happy.  He then tried to apply it to all future times where he could get more time by going last.  I told him it didn't work like that.

Then the lesson started.  I explained to him Jesus' words "The first shall be last and the last shall be first."  When we rush to be first we don't often end up with the best.  You could see the wheels turning in his head as he didn't want to believe it or accept the application. Only time will tell if it sinks in, but it was one of those times where I actually felt like a wise parent.

Cultural Transformers

I listen to a lot of podcasts covering a wide variety of subjects.  Some are pure fun and some are informational for personal or professional development.   One of my favorites that I’ve listened to for several years is Dave Ramsey’s radio show.  Recently while listening I started thinking “This guy is really crazy.  He wants these folks to go totally against the cultural financial norms.”  Dave is certainly more dogmatic in his teachings than someone like Clark Howard.  Clark (or Mr. Howard if you want to irritate him) tells people how to work the credit system to keep a good credit rating and credit score, useful advice for living in a culture that values and relies on credit for its daily sustenance. If you’ve listened to Dave for 10 seconds you know he couldn’t care less what your credit score is. Dave refers to Bank of America as BoA (as in constrictor) and often says “If you play with snakes, you’re going to get bit.” While Clark teaches you how to play with the snakes safely so as not to get bit, Dave teaches you to stay away from the snakes.  Clark teaches how to play the game.  Dave refuses to play the game and goes off to have his own fun playing a new game (based on old principles) and tries to get everyone to come and play with him.  I learn useful things from both of these men and am not trying to pit them against each other.  But the difference in philosophy is one to consider in many areas of our lives including religion, health, morals, and work.

This goes right along with my previous post on change.  When something in our lives is not going as it should how should we work to change it? The world is full of quick remedies and partial solutions. Get rich quick schemes, the lottery, fad diets, 30minuteworship.com, and protein power drinks are thrown at us from every form of media. The verse comes to mind:

“Do not conform any longer to the pattern of the world but be transformed by the renewing of your minds” Romans 12:2

How did Jesus live? Did he ask the Pharisees what they thought, study the culture and try to find the best way to live in it.  Did he go off and live atop a mountain, take a few people with him, and wait for his purpose to be fulfilled?  Or did he live his life counter to the culture, working with individuals to change their lives.  He didn’t try to change the government policies.  He wasn’t bullied by threats or name calling.  He stood up for his convictions, and everyone knew where he stood.  He worked to heal people’s hearts and spirits, not just their physical maladies.  And when they left him, they were changed and inspired to spread the change to all around.

We have options for living our lives:

1.  Embrace the culture and it’s values
2. Fit in to the culture and maintain your values
3. Separate from the culture to protect your values
4.  Work to change the culture and infect it with your values

You can thrive in various aspects by 1, 2, or 3.  But only through 4 can we be fulfilled and truly Christ-like.  The wisdom of the world won’t get us where we need to be.  Fortunately God gave us a healthy dose of common sense as well as a bunch of proverbial wisdom to go along with it.

Too many times (especially in the church) we focus on #3, separating ourselves from the culture for fear of letting it infect us.  We teach our kids “do not taste, do not touch” (Col 2). We stay within the confines of our church buildings without venturing out into the communities that we are supposed to minister to.  We must separate ourselves from the ACTIONS and WISDOM of the world, but not from the people.  We don’t live the way they live, but we must LOVE the way that HE loved.  Jesus never once shunned attending a gathering for fear of what he might hear or see.  But when he was there, he would infect those around him with his compassion and love.

In, not of. Transformative, not conforming. Loving and living in a culture that doesn’t like us or understand us and yet that is our mission. I have several mentors from afar that I thank God for their transformative message:

• Dr. James Dobson for his tireless work to protect and strengthen our families.
• Dave Ramsey for his encouragement to “Live like no one else, so that later you can live like no one else”.
• And most recently Dr. Josh Axe for his simple yet healing message of eating the foods our bodies were meant to eat and living all around healthy lives.

These men and their organizations refuse to conform to the conventional wisdom and values of the masses. They live according to a different set of rules and refuse to play the game the world wants them to play.  Instead they demonstrate great love, great compassion, and great wisdom open to anyone who will listen.  Sound familiar.

Personal Challenge:

I was just reading the book Re-Create by Ron Luce and he challenged me to challenge my children to become transformers of culture rather than conformers to it.  Now I need to figure out how to impart that mission to them. Shouldn’t be too hard; I bet they’ll like the idea of being transformers.

How to Have a Healthy Marriage

I started thinking as Kathryne commented that we’ve been really happy recently in our marriage as to why that was.  I’m sure there are lots of reasons but I think one of the causes of this is the fact that we’re working together towards a common goal.  Not a general goal like “raising children” or “having a good marriage” but a very specific goal of transforming the way our family eats.  It’s the same kind of feeling I remember having right after we started working on our plan to get out of debt.

Something about having a specific, near-term goal and working together to achieve it seems to bring us together.  There’s nothing really deep or surprising about this.  Mainly I just want to record this for posterity so that next time we seem to hit a bump in the road we won’t have to rediscover this highly effective tool.

Change

Kathryne and I were talking a bit today about the changes in our lives in the last few years.  We used to live as pretty normal American Christians.  Plodding along in live doing the things we do, going with the flow, following the wisdom of the masses.  The main problem with that is the wisdom of the masses is not very wise.  This is summed up quite well when the Apostle Paul writes:

 ¹⁸For the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God. ¹⁹For it is written:
   "I will destroy the wisdom of the wise;
      the intelligence of the intelligent I will frustrate." 1 Corinthians 1:18-19

Three (3) years ago we started attending a class at church entitled "Discovering God's Ways of Handling Money" put together by a ministry called Crown Financial Ministries. What we discovered was that the way we were living was, to put it bluntly, STOOPID!  Or in the terms of Proverbs: foolish.  And yet to all those around us we looked perfectly normal.  The problem is that normal in America is broke, overweight, deeply in debt, chronically diseased, and generally not happy with life. The class forced us to examine our financial situation, and gather more information on how to do things the right way.  The results were quite dramatic as I described in detail earlier.

We were greatly focused on our finances which added an intensity that accelerated the whole process. The problem with focus is often that other things suffer.  So while our relationship with regards to money was improving we also saw the need to work on other areas of our relationship with each other as well as our relationship with our kids.  So we've read many books over the past few years on these subjects and attended several seminars to help in these areas.  The signs are not as outwardly visible as with our finances but we see them in small things in our lives.  In a couple weeks we'll be attending the Focus on Marriage simulcast seminar put on by Focus on the Family.  In addition to books, we often listen to the Focus on the Family free podcast which brings us their daily radio program right to our computers to listen to at our leisure. The interviews and speakers they bring in are amazing.

There's one more major change we're currently undertaking that I'm not quite ready to write about in detail.  But I do want to consider what are the circumstances under which change occurs. Not just temporary change, but lasting change.

• First, you have to recognize the need for change.  When we recognized our mountain of debt and it's impact on our lives, it served as a great impetus for us to make look for more information on how to get better.
• Second, you have to gather information.  Often it is information that is the impetus in #1.  But you can't just gather any information, you have to gather the right kind of information from knowledgeable, non-biased sources.  Examining the motives of your sources of information is key in this. Gathering information on getting out of debt from your credit card company is going to be suspect.
• Third, and this is the hardest one, you have to make a COMMITMENT TO CHANGE your actions. James 1:22-25 says:

 ²²Do not merely listen to the word, and so deceive yourselves. Do what it says. ²³Anyone who listens to the word but does not do what it says is like a man who looks at his face in a mirror ²⁴and, after looking at himself, goes away and immediately forgets what he looks like. ²⁵But the man who looks intently into the perfect law that gives freedom, and continues to do this, not forgetting what he has heard, but doing it—he will be blessed in what he does.

Many people I've talked to recently know the information needed to effect positive change in their lives, but they're not willing to add or remove the necessary actions from their lives.  Whether it's how you spend, how you serve, how you parent, how you love, how you eat, or anything you do you will have to change your actions and make sacrifices in order to change your life for the better.  And when you make those sacrifices, you may just realize that the sacrifice is not that great and where you are is so much better than where you were that you kick yourself for not making the change earlier.  I know my legs are tired from doing just this.

One final verse, Romans 12:2 

²Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind.

Trinity Oaks Reunion

This weekend I had the joy of attending a reunion for members of the Trinity Oaks church of Christ in Dallas. I attended TO from 1983-1986. We moved away after my 5th grade year. That's a pretty short time and a long time ago so I don't have a lot of really clear memories from church. Mostly just flashes and a few names of people. But there are certain things that stick in my mind as "firsts" so I wanted to share them here.

• First service in the church: I remember Arthur Hensarling would organize some of us young guys to pick up the attendance cards each week. Arthur was like a local grandfather to us kids. I'd get so excited when for Christmas I'd get a $2 bill from him in appreciation for collecting the cards (or at least that's what I associate it with in my memory). He also had the first car phone I ever remember seeing.
• First learned to sing: Now I knew how to sing so when I say "learned" it's not a matter of ability. During worship I would not be singing and I guess my dad was sick of it. I remember one night when he took me out of worship to the "cry" room and had a little talk with me. I don't remember what he said or did (I don't think electrodes were involved), but after that I seemed to have a greater appreciation for singing in worship or at least was on the right road of faking it till it became real.
• First started thinking of baptism: It was at TO that several of my friends and classmates began to make the decision to be baptized. I held off for quite a while as I didn't want to just follow the crowd and do it because they were doing it. I think I ended up waiting too long but eventually came to the proper decision.
• First church politics: Now 5th grade is a bit young to be exposed to such things, but I remember one fund raiser for school selling M&Ms at church. I went to the youth minister and his reason for not buying any from me was that then he would have to buy from all the kids who asked. I guess they weren't paying him the big bucks that youth ministers are getting these days.
• First major wilderness experience: My dad led a group of 4th-8th grade boys on a week long canoe trip on the Minnesota/Canada border. I remember rowing to the chant of "Coke" across the final lake before the pickup point. My dad always recites this line about "We're talking mist, we're talking fog". It was a great experience which we later repeated with a group from the church in Phoenix.

Most of my clear memories from Dallas revolve around my bestest friend Brian Davis who I have recently had the joy of reconnecting with thru Facebook. We met for lunch for the first time in over 10 years this summer and it was like we never were apart. The memories just flowed back. It was great to see him and his family at the reunion. Unfortunately, I don't think we'll ever find that Papa Smurf car.

Several of the people at the reunion I had encountered at Harding. But some of them I hadn't seen in 23 years. It was great to reconnect with them. I didn't spend much time at TO, but I could tell that those who had through the years were touched in great ways through their love for God and each other.

Murphy Strikes

Murphy struck our cars yesterday. The rear hatch on the van had its hydraulics fail yesterday. So Kathryne had to take it to the Toyota dealership to get that fixed. We're letting David and Becky borrow our van for the month and we drove to DFW and back last night to meet up with them and give them the van, 4 hours each way. On the way home from DFW the tire on my car went flat...at 1am...1 hour from home. So we're on the side of the interstate with trucks wooshing past. I put on the spare and it was low on air too. Thankfully I had an air compressor in the emergency kit to air it up and get us home around 2:15am. I discovered that changing a tire on the side of the interstate at 1am is much better than any caffeine at waking me up.

The kids slept in the back seat through the whole thing.

So after driving 8 hours to and from DFW I was trying to go to sleep in my nice comfy bed. As I started to doze off, I was dreaming that I was driving. In my dream, I started to fall asleep while driving.

Now I'm sitting in Goodyear getting my tire fixed. Well, getting it replaced. They just told me it was really messed up on the inside.

Am I Weird?

I'm sure my siblings will immediately answer "Yes" to this but hear me out before making any final judgements.

For Father's Day we had budgeted $50 for gifts and $50 for eating out. Yesterday I told Kathryne that what I wanted was to take the $100 and put it on our debt snowball. We're so close to paying off the current credit card and I want it GONE. At first she wasn't happy about this, but Sean liked the idea and eventually she agreed to it. Still she called me this morning on the way to work to confirm that I REALLY wanted to do it.

We plan on being out of debt 1 year from now and we really enjoyed meeting Dave Ramsey last week during a break in his radio show.Our 3rd FPU class starts in September and we're really excited about how we've been able to help those in our 1st 2 classes (by helping them help themselves).

Kid Stuff

Last week we watched both National Treasure movies with the kids. They really liked all the historical folklore (mixed in w/ real history). They've been looking at the 1 dollar bill and examining it's features and we've looked up the Latin phrases for their meanings. We saw the first one earlier in the week and at the end of the second one this weekend Joshua came to a vivid realization. He heard one of the character mention Gates's name and he shouted excitedly "That's Gates, the same one from the National Treasure movie." This was at the end when they were in the sunken city. He'd gone the whole movie w/out realizing that it was the sequel with the same people.

And today he is on the floor w/ the block from the Jenga game making a hidden temple and playing National Treasure. He's already found the treasure which consisted of a lego droid, lego helmet, and a lightsaber.

Now i think the temple is collapsing.

A couple weeks ago, Sean and Joshua combined the board games Settlers of Catan, Cities and Knights, and Risk into one mega-game. I called home and Sean said they were playing this game and i thought it was some new computer game they had downloaded. But they had combined all the games and made up new rules (Sean did the rule making apparently) and had epic battles.

A couple weeks later now the game is finally getting put away as we prepare for our trip to Columbia, TN.

Sean's finishing up this week in third grade. It's pretty much just parties for the remaining days.

And i've been home sick this week (but i'm not a kid so i won't write about that).

Can't wait till 16

Sean had a bit of a driving lesson today. One of our friends from church invited us out to ride in what can best be described as a mini-jeep. He took us around the trails on his farm and then I got to try my hand at it too. But the highlight for me was when Sean got behind the wheel.


Now we just have to teach him to parallel park.

Why do Christians like Rules?

I just heard this quote from Josh McDowell while listening to Focus on the Family:

Rules without Relationship leads to Rebellion

That's great. I have to remember that both as a Christian and especially as a parent. It's not "Spare the rod, spoil the child". That's a trite saying we use to justify our discipline methods. The actual verse is

He who spares the rod hates his son, but he who loves him is careful to discipline him. (Proverbs 13:24)

Have to remember that too.

The Office

I'm really hoping my upcoming experiences don't end up like the TV show this post is named after (I'm sure they won't). Tomorrow starts a new era in my employment with my current company. On January 29th of last year I started working with PFI out of my house in Bremerton, Washington. In June, we moved down to Kyle, Texas (south of Austin) and I remained working out of the house. Tomorrow will be my first day in the new Austin branch office. I make this transition with mixed emotions. It has certainly been a blessing to be able to work from home and make the move down here while we waited to sell our house. It's also let me spend a lot more time with the family and have a very flexible schedule. Kathryne could run out on errands as needed without having to worry about whether to get someone to watch Sean or Joshua. Also the lack of commute has been very nice. On the other hand, the productivity of working from home without a dedicated office space has been a challenge to say the least. Also the teamworks aspects are harder to work out.

The thing I am looking forward to the least is the commute. Till now, I've never had a regular commute longer than 15 minutes. Now I'll be lucky if I can keep the drive to 30 minutes. Traffic shouldn't be a huge problem till the last few miles of the trip. Most of it is on the smaller county roads, but the last couple stretches have larger interchanges which can back up very easily. Here's a map of the route I plan on taking in the morning.

View Larger Map


I'll try to take some pictures of the office and post them later. It's a nice building in a nice part of town. There's a high school nearby (which should make for nice game night traffic).

The biggest downsides are

• I'll have to shower everyday
• I'll have to shave more than once every 2 weeks
• I won't be able to work in my pajamas (likely, haven't checked for sure)
  

Hopefully they'll stock the fridge with Diet Dr. Pepper and other sodas.
I'm still hoping to be able to work from home on occasion.

Fire and Rain

The line of a song comes to mind, "I've seen fire and I've seen rain." The fire comes in the form of tiny little insects known as fire ants. As we dance them around the yard (poisoning one mound only to have another pop up) the kids have been bitten a few times.

The rain comes in the form of torrential downpours for the past 2 weeks. Austin and surrounding areas have received lots and lots of rain especially this past week. One city called Marble Falls received about 18 inches of rain in the course of a day. It's kept the temperatures down and mostly bearable to us northwesterners. The kids have enjoyed playing in the gutters during the storms.

Sean and Joshua have made many friends and spent a lot of time outside playing. Sean is learning to ride his bike without training wheels. His first attempts went well, but he's still very cautious.

I've been spending the last week commuting to north Austin for work. It's about 1 hour each way with spurts of traffic problems along the way. Next week brings the same thing. After that it should be back to working at home for a while.

We're still getting to know the area. We've visited 2 churches and found one that we like quite a bit. We're going there again this week, but we'll probably visit down in San Marcos in a couple weeks. We are very eager to get settled in and start back to work.

Airport Blogging

Well, I’m officially an internet junkie. My flight to Chicago was delayed 1 ½ hours so what do you do while waiting at the Seattle airport for 2+ hours. Why you pay $8 to access the internet, check email, and maybe play a little World of Warcraft of course. Bad weather in Chicago caused the delay. My final destination is Washington Dulles and they’re supposed to have bad weather as well tonight. So if I do get there tonight it will be really late.

The trip is the first for my new job with Potomac Fusion. It’s mostly and orientation/meet-n-greet. I’m splitting time working from home and working at the office at ATS. That’s going pretty well so far.

They just announced that we should be able to make the connection in Chicago. Joshua was really upset with me because he didn’t get to say good bye to me this morning. Everyone’s starting to get back to health again after ¾ of us have been sick for the last week. One school near Seattle shut down for a few days after 300/1000 students called in sick with the flu last week.

[Updated 11:56AM PST] I transferred over to a direct flight to Dulles, but my bag may not make it. I should get there before I was originally scheduled to, though.

[Updated 11:39PM EST] I made it but my bag didn't.

As we know it

Well it's a big week. On the job front, tomorrow (Tuesday) I'm getting an offer from a company in Austin, and Wednesday I have a phone interview with a company that makes games for mobile devices.

Sunday I get to lead worship again at church (always love doing that) and we have another Open House that afternoon. Top that off with the start of the new 24 season and you have the makings of a great day. It will be even better if lots of people come to see the house. Oh, and that's also Joshua's 4th birthday. He's been waiting for that for a long time.

Funny thing, I rarely watch football but I caught the 4th quarter of the Seahawks crazy win over the Cowboys. That was the most exciting quarter of football I've watched in a long time, maybe ever. I used to be a huge Cowboy fan and may be again shortly after our move to Texas, but for now I'm with the Seahawks. In addition I watched some of the Eagle/Giants game on Sunday (after just watching the same teams in the movie "Invincible"). I also watched a lot of the Florida/Ohio State game tonight. I think Kathryne's getting scared that I'm going to start watching sports all the time.

The boys won the wrestling match tonight. They ganged up on me. Sean finished a version of "Gulliver's Travels" that he got for Christmas. He's really tearing through those books now. We're sending off an application for a Christian school in Austin for next year. There's already a waiting list so we're hoping he can get in.

Enough rambling for tonight.