Some Days Are Hard to Rejoice

This morning I woke up with a sore knee. I’ve never had knee problems so I first thought I had just slept on it wrong. As the day wore on, the knee got worse. So much so, by about lunch time, I could barely walk. Of course, my wife and my mom made me go to some urgent care place near where we were. I’m not a fan of doctor’s offices and usually only go when I have to. This was one of those times.

The doctor told me I had something called Prepatellar Bursitis and it can come and go with little to no pain but may become extremely painful if it gets infected of inflamed. I told him about my weird fluid bubble that appears on my knee sometimes when I don’t run for a while and he assured me it was no big deal and would just stick a needle in my knee and drain some fluid. Uh…no big deal? How big the needle is will determine how big the deal is.

There were a couple more possibilities the doctor wanted to check out before he stuck my knee and asked if there was any inflammation of lymph nodes around my groin area. I told him there wasn’t but he said he wanted check anyway and started messaging my foot. Now, I’m not a doctor, but I’m pretty sure the groin area is not near the foot. But I wasn’t about to correct him.

Anyway, the nurse came in with the needle and it didn’t look to bad. It stung a bit at first and wasn’t pleasant when he twisted it around, but it wasn’t bearable. Unfortunately, the doc couldn’t get in fluid out and asked the nurse to bring him an 18 gauge needle. Again, I’m not an expert, but if doctors use the same measuring parameters as everyone else…well, let’s just say my mood completely changed. The nurse brought the next needle in and my wife said almost immediately, “don’t look at the needle honey, just lay down.” Are you kidding me? This time around, it definitely hurt. I could tell the doctor was not going to give up until he found some fluid when he started twisting and pushing and squeezing my knee to try and get some out.

That was probably some of the most pain I’ve ever felt in my life. And when I think of Psalm 118:24, this day was a difficult day to rejoice.

A Mighty Big Blessing

Every Saturday night is date night for Jamie and me. Her parents have created a routine for our boys where they take them around 6:00 PM and they spend the night so Jamie can get ready for church with a little less stress that early in the morning. It is a really nice deal for us and especially her.

This Saturday night, I took Jamie to Henry’s in Acworth. She had never been and I knew she would like it (by the way, if you live anywhere close to the Atlanta area and have not made it over to one of Acworth’s three 5 star restaurants, this should be the first you try…then go to Fusco’s). As we were getting out of the car, we ran into another couple from Oak Leaf who happened to be on their own version of the Saturday date night. We chatted a bit about how nice it is to get away from the kids for a night on the town every once in a while and tossed around a bit of small talk about Oak Leaf before going our separate ways to complete our dates.

It wasn’t ten minutes later we saw the couple again. This time they handed me an envelope with a gift-card to Henry’s and told us to enjoy our date. We were blown away. The gesture was completely unexpected, unnecessary, and we could not have been more grateful for their generosity. Jamie and I enjoy so much to bless others, but it is sometimes quite difficult to accept it when someone is wanting to bless you.

Why is that? Why is it easy to give a blessing but harder to accept when someone wants to bless you? Regardless, Jamie and I enjoyed our dinner at Henry’s and the rest of our date tonight. The gift card was mighty big blessing and I thank you from the bottom of my heart.

Cheap Gas

My wife is the one in the family who keeps all those rewards card things places hand out like candy these days. She packs her wallet full of them just in case she happens to remember to use it the next time she is in the place. Of course, most of the time she’d forget to ever use them again. However, at Kroger, they’ve got a system that works better than most. You don’t actually need the card to get the perks, you can just enter your phone number. That works for me since I don’t like to carry a wallet full of pointless rewards cards. In addition to that, I actually enjoy the perks at Kroger because they give me $.10 off every gallon of gas for every $100 I spend buying groceries.

Now, my wife has sort of stopped going to Kroger since she has found groceries at Wal-mart are much cheaper. But I still get gas there for one simple reason – my phone number, which is tied to my Kroger Plus card, still gives me $.10 off even when we haven’t shopped there in months. Here is the catch, when my wife uses the actual card at the pump, it only gives her the typical $.03 discount. We only get the $.10 discount when we punch in our phone number.

Here’s my question: If I continue to use my phone number at the pump because it gives me $.10 off every gallon but I’m not buying my groceries at Kroger, am I stealing or doing something wrong? I’m curious what you think.

I’ve Given Up On Web Guys

Well, after years of trying to figure out how to get a cool looking website from all my friends who want to “help me out,” I’ve decided I would rather just be plain old me and do it myself. Besides, I’ve enjoyed journaling on Myspace for some time now and have been challenged to keep it up more frequently, so what better way to do that than just make my site my blog. So here it is. A work in progress, but will do for now. Check back often as I plan to post something fun everyday and I promise keep the longer posts from my study on “worship” to a minimum.

By the way, in case you’re wondering why there is such a gap bewteen this post and the last, I’ve got a few more posts from Myspace to port over plus many posts I’ve written in paper journals that I plan to put on here if nothing else as just a back-up (though I’m sure it will not be on may people’s to-do list to go back and read my previous posts).

Guitar Hero Sadness

Just finished another Xtreme Summer and boy are my fingers sore. Not from Xtreme, but from Guitar Hero. Man, eight hours of this a day and I’m really going to be able to wail on the guitar. Actually, I’m not telling the truth because out of the kindness of my heart I let the other band guys take the Playstation from the van to their room while I thought my brother would let me play a little more of the version he brought to our room. But, no…he hogged it. So, I mostly watched and played air guitar hero.

When I finally get home, I will not be able to play either because my wife takes over and hogs the plastic guitar miniature until her fingers get sore. Maybe what I need to do is get all these people into something new like The Office and then I can slip away and play Guitar Hero on my own. Or maybe, I should try to do something more productive with my time.

Praise God!

My nephew prayed to receive Christ about a week ago. For those who are clueless to his story just need to know it is magnificent answer to prayer and a little bit surprising to tell the truth. He has always been one of those who related church with hypocrites in his family and blamed God for some tragic events in his past. Even in the youth group at First Baptist Church Woodstock, he would often argue and challenge the legitimacy of some of the students who claimed to be Christians yet acted different when they weren’t singing songs and talking to other Christians about spiritual matters. Ultimately, that meant the pressure was on us to try and be “perfect” around him to set a proper Christ-like example. And of course we failed…often. Ultimately, my goal became to not be such a bad witness that I too became another example he used against God and the church.

The biggest challenge we faced was something I thought would come much easier. How do you explain to someone who does not believe in God or the authority of the Bible why you choose not to cuss or drink alcohol or waited to marriage to have sex? I learned some very valuable lessons about my personal convictions and on what grounds logically and reasonably I hold them completely outside of scripture. The best part is, I was still able to clearly defend them in scripture so when he finally became a believer, it was extremely easy to make the connection within the confines of his newly discovered relationship with Jesus Christ.

To aid in this transition comes the God-ordained ministry of Oak Leaf Church. Michael, our pastor, speaks in such a clear and understandable way our nephew understood and related to most of what he spoke about long before he ever decided to believe God existed. This is just one of the many strengths Oak Leaf shoulders as it passionately pursues the lost and confused in the Cartersville community. Every Sunday there are new faces, many of whom do not go to church or have a personal relationship with Jesus Christ. And there are many more out there who just need to hear about God’s love in an understandable way and witness authentic people living their life to please God and show Him love. That is Oak Leaf. That is my church.

I love my nephew like a son and am so proud of him. My wife and I are so pleased to know we are a part of a church that cares enough about people who don’t know God to do whatever it takes to introduce them to the savior of the world. My prayer is that many more like my nephew will be exposed to the goodness and relevance of Jesus Christ and the entire community of Cartersville will be forever changed by the ministry of Oak Leaf Church.

There’s Something Happening In Cartersville

Sitting down drinking some coffee with a buddy of mine the other day (which is not completely true because he was the only one drinking coffee) and he interrupts my story about trying to give up peanut M&Ms and says, “So tell me about this church you’re working with Cartersville.” I get interrupted all the time so it wasn’t his blatant disregard for the end of my story that threw me off; it was the fact that I had heard that same statement half a dozen times in a variety of ways over the past several days.

I only live close to Cartersville so sometimes I feel disconnected. But apparently, what God is doing at Oak Leaf is turning a lot of heads. Those pastors and ministers who have been asking me about Oak Leaf are from all over Georgia. At first, I’ve got admit, I was a bit surprised. Then it hit me. God is doing something in Cartersville through a little newborn church that meets in the local movie theatre and word is spreading fast. Maybe not as fast and loud as someone finding the image of the virgin Mary on a tree stump, but loud and fast enough for well respected ministers in town and all around the Southeast to perk up and start asking, “What’s up with this Oak Leaf Church in Cartersville, GA?”

It is an honor to be a part of something that is so obviously touched by the hand of God. The weeks, and months, and years to come are going to be an exciting ride. God is doing amazing things and if we keep our attention and priority on His will and not our own, we are sure to see more than we ever expected. One day soon, I believe God is going to do something so amazing in this town that even word document programs the world over will recognize the name Cartersville in their spell check dictionaries. Mmmm…that would be awesome!