Blog Family Drawing

by Anya

Tuesday, January 26, 2010

Down to Up...Street

Warning: this post will be more serious than most. Abort now if you're looking for something more "It Happened One Night" and less "It's A Wonderful Life".

UpStreet is the name of our elementary-age kids program at church. And as of yesterday, I am now the Children's Pastor in charge of this awesome environment...as well as several other things, but this is my primary gig.

This has been a long time coming, and I'm ever so excited and relieved to be in this new position. It's been one month shy of 7 years since I came to CenterPoint Church as the Worship Pastor. In those 7 years, my job has grown far beyond the confines of worship pastoring, and the worship pastoring job has grown far beyond the initial responsibilities it entailed when I arrived.

Like being a portable ministry for 3 1/2 years.

It's a small thing: moving a trailer load of equipment in and out of a facility every Sunday, then getting it all set up, hooked up, powered up and making it look like our Sunday service is nearly effortless to those who come.

News flash: it's not effortless. It's effort-ful. And for a great variety of reasons, I've lost the joy and passion I once had for leading worship. And if a person is going to put forth all that effort, he'd better be pretty passionate about what he's doing or it's going to lose it's allure.

It did.

I still love Jesus. Actually, through this whole "dark night of the soul" as I've pondered, contemplated, fretted and even whined about possibly quitting, I've found myself leaning on Him, longing for His voice and resting in Him more than I have for quite a while.

Too long a while, actually.

And it's because I still passionately love Jesus that I want to keep working in this church. And why I'm so content, revived even, to be working with our kids and leading them in worshiping and learning to follow Him. Because I still know that there is nothing I'll do in this life, and nothing those kids will do, that will ever satisfy me if it doesn't find its center in Him.

So I gratefully say goodbye to something I've done in various capacities and degrees over the past 20 years...leading worship. Yes, I'm still leading worship, in a different way, a different paradigm. But no longer in the context that I've known it for these 2 decades. And I'm grateful for that.

Grateful that I've been given the freedom to move my focus without moving my location. Grateful that I'm still allowed the privilege of working full-time in ministry, in this church, in this community. Grateful that God has provided a passionate, talented and Christ-focused man to take over the worship ministry. Grateful for the assurance God has given me over and over that I'm great with Him, that Jesus really does love me, that I'm utterly freakin' joyfully accepted no matter what. Grateful that my friendship with Him is not predicated by my performance, my lack of performance, my attitude, my ability or my inadequacy. Grateful that my imperfections are not a wall that blocks my connection with Him.

So I'm happily skipping on down to UpStreet, eyes wide open for great experiences with Jesus.

And hopefully, some kids will be skipping right along with me.

Monday, January 11, 2010

Cross Country 2010

Karen and Em had a lovely first Saturday of 2010 out in the snow on their Cross Country skis.Beautiful day, lovely surroundings, great exercise, and good times with Mom and daughter.

Sunday, January 10, 2010

Sleepover snow

During Christmas break, we had two of the girl's friends, Marissa and Laney, and their little brother Damon, over to our house for a night of sleepover fun.

And it was a glorious night of funnessocity. And although my spell check says that is not a word, I firmly declare that it is, because we lived it.

As part of said funnessocity, all the kids headed to our local park (just two doors down) during a lovely snowfall for some stuff-that-can-only-be-done-in-a-park-during-a-snowfall fun.

Swings are more fun during the snow.Just staring at the camera is fun in the snow.Faces, definitely better during snow.And going down the twisty slide is infinitely more fun during a snowfall. (It's slicker due to the snow at the end, and I think the cold makes it faster, too...I guess).

Now, I tried to document each of them flying out of the slide. But it's hard to see through the view finder in the dark, so you have to kind of aim by faith.

And then trying to time it so that you capture each child as they tumble from the slide is easier typed than done. The dang camera delays just an instant, or more than an instant with the flash.

So first I was too quick.A lovely shot of the slide exit.

Then I got a foot.Next a leg.Finally, full flung-from-the-slide glee!Yeah, that's Marissa. She came out so fast she actually turned over as she slid out.

Great way to spend an evening.

Saturday, January 9, 2010

New Years Eve Par-tay!

We had a festive evening on the last night of 2009. We had two other families come over; we had a total of 10 kids, aged 2 through 15, and 6 adults. Fortunately they're all well-mannered children, so no coup was staged.

Because we had so many kids (and because I am so old) we opted for celebrating New Years in Nova Scotia. That would be at 9pm Utah time. You know, it's always New Years someplace every hour!

Leading up to the raucous celebration at midnight Atlantic time, we ate delicious food and had lots of activities for the kids (and some for the parents, as you'll see.)

One of our first activities was a dog sled race. No, not that kind.
You see, we had the kids put a stuffed dog into the sled and they relay raced around me without letting the dog fall out of the sled.Yes, that's Pongo and Purdy of 101 Dalmatians making the trek through the snowy yard...on sleds.Next was the indoor snowball throw. And no, us old timers weren't stupid enough to actually have snowballs inside. We used indoor snowballs (more familiarly known as cotton balls) and the kids had to throw them into bowls about 6 feet away. The team with the most in the bowl won.

Big fun.

So much fun, the adults had to join in.Note the looks of determination on a few of the faces.
Taking it way to seriously. I think because we were split up guys against girls.

Next was Hot Bag (as opposed to Hot Potato). And no, there was nothing disgusting, warm and stinky in the bag.
We passed the bag around the circle until the music stopped, then whoever had the bag ripped off the outer bag and did whatever was written on the next bag.Like make your scariest face.Or your silliest face.Or do jumping jacks while you sing "Happy Birthday".Or hold your nose while you sing the ABC song.Or hold your tongue and say "I love olive juice" 5 times.Or lead the group in the pledge of allegiance.Or howl like a coyote for 10 seconds - which Emily could NOT do because she was too busy giggling - :)Or run around the circle flapping your arms and quacking like a duck.Or putting your fingers in your ears and turning around 10 times.Soon after this picture I about fell over on the rest of the group. Old guys should not do the spinning around thing. Bad idea. I bobbled like a sailor after a night of shore leave.

Mild amusement/fascination on the part of Abe.As we approached the magical 9pm hour, the kids counted us down, each one holding a number from 10 down to 1. As we counted down from 10, each one ran into the living room while we cheered them on, and when the final "1" came in, we celebrated a happy new year.
Balloons dropped from the ceiling...well, we poured them out of large black garbage bags anyway...and everyone had a grand time popping balloons and yelling "Happy New Year!"

And everyone was in bed well before midnight.

Lovely.

Monday, January 4, 2010

Moab Hero

I meant to revisit our trip to Moab from a different photographic perspective. In the midst of all the beauty we saw there, Jenna posed repeatedly in a superhero pose. Victorious over the red rock...or something.

It was highly entertaining.

So here is Arches National Park, chronicled via Moab Hero Jenna.
Super Hero glory surrounds her at Sand Dune Arch.
Sisters aspiring to hero greatness.

Saturday, January 2, 2010

Christmas lights, an update

I know that you all think I'm horribly paranoid, and that all this stuff about Christmas lights not working is some sort of wild imagination going on in my head.

So it is with victorious smugness that I inform you of the events that transpired yesterday as we took down our Christmas decorations, including the lights on that frustration-inducing tree.

Once again, I remind you that all lights were fully working, brightly lit as we took the ornaments off the tree. When it came time to remove our multi-colored festive orbs of holiday cheer, we of course unplugged them before beginning their serpentine removal. And before I carefully wound them up and rubber-banded them together for storage, I plugged in the first set we removed.

Guess what? They didn't work.

Shocking, I know.

Yes, they had worked just a few short minutes ago, but now that they were off the tree and ready to go into storage, bupkus.

I couldn't believe it, honestly. But, not one to give up easily, we began checking the tightness of each bulb while we had it plugged in. And, voila! We found one that was a little loose and it made the whole strand work again.

So, our thought was that during the removal from the tree, a bulb or two might get dislodged from its electrical homestead. If we plug it in and the strand does not work, we simply need to go through the strand checking each bulb.

Out of the other 5 strands, one of them worked without us doing any maintenance check. Three strands had no working lights, and one of them had half its lights lit up.

The one with half a strand working had another loose bulb that we found, so it went back to full working order. With the first one I messed with, the one that came off in functioning and the one that at first only half worked, we now had three working strands of lights. 300 lights ready for next year.

The other 300 lights would not come back on. We checked every stinkin' bulb, and nothing made those strands light up again. What pernicious thing occurred between their glorious brightness on the tree and their stubborn deadness off the tree?

I've no explanation, save the one I've given before: it's a plot by the Chinese conglomerate who makes these silly lights. They design them to fail so we'll have to buy more.

Fortunately I'm on to their wily, scheming ways and I checked those lights, so I knew the skinny. I promptly went out and bought 700 lights (marked down 75% at the post-Christmas sale) for a whopping price of $4.50 total (yes friends, you read that correctly. I put it to the man and did it for next to nothing!), and I'm now fully prepared for next year's debacle when we prepare to festoon our beloved fake fir over Thanksgiving weekend.

And best of all, my wild-eyed theories don't look quite so far-fetched.

Now, we'll see what happens to those 700 lights while they wait in storage for next year.

I'm pessimistic, to say the least.