Every Time You Run...

You’ve probably seen a picture or read the Poem “Footprints In the Sand”. It is one a poem of perspective and comfort for those in difficult times. A Poem that points out even in times we may feel alone and abandoned, we are not.

You may know that Courtney and I volunteer at our church to work with the High School Youth group. I have come to realize that perspective is sometimes a difficult thing for students to understand. They are at a point of feeling like they should be treated as an adult without the majority of the real life adult experiences. They feel like they have their whole life in front of them, there is rarely a sense of urgency. I have watched on numerous occasions from the back of the room as Chad, the youth pastor speaks passionately to these kids about HIS life experiences, and why there is no time like the present. He tells them stories that shock my world, stories of missed opportunities to say “I love you” because of an unexpected death, stories of suicides because someone thought life was hopeless and the destruction of emotions that the suicide leaves in its wake, stories of bullying because it makes someone feel good to demean someone else. None of these things were something people saw coming. I can’t say that I can relate or “understand” what some of these students go through, I wish I could. What I do know, is that reaching out to people and living your life with a sense of urgency can be contagious.

I am struck by 2 stories when I thought about this. The first is on the night we went out to celebrate our friend Megan’s birthday. Life was fun. For a few hours we laughed, told stories, enjoyed being together, and forgot about life’s difficulties and struggles. As we all drove home late that night, we came across a car accident. It was a single car that lost control and had ended up on its side an ejected the driver. It must have just happened only minutes before we came across the accident scene. We could see emergency vehicles arriving, and as we passed, we saw something that I might never forget. We saw the car on its side, and we saw the legs of a woman lying on the ground as a small group of people surrounded her. We could see blood on her legs, and one gentleman desperately trying to keep her alive actively doing CPR. I remember Courtney being absolutely traumatized, and I really didn’t know what to say to comfort her. The next day we found a news clipping about the accident saying alcohol was not involved and it was unclear why the driver had lost control. The woman was only 23 years old. I wonder if she was living life with a sense of urgency or if she was living as if she had another 80 years to “figure life out”?

The other story is the opposite side of that continuum. You know we just got married. Just the other day Courtney was going through the wedding photos to start the process of identifying which ones we want for our formal wedding album. As is the habit with her, this exercise quickly devolved into just going down memory lane with squeals and giggles. I rolled my eyes while sitting on the other couch. I was way more interested in writing an immature Blog post about “carpooling”. What Courtney did next is why I love her, and is something I am not as good at as she is. She decided to share the joy that she gets with from those photos with our photographer. She didn’t need to, after all, she was paid to do just this wasn’t she? Courtney just wrote a simple note expressing how thankful she was. I am pretty sure our photographer was a bit taken back by it. I know she gets “thank yous” all the time as almost a course of business. This was different. This wasn’t in reply to an email, or as we picked up our pictures. It was just genuine expression of gratitude and a compliment for the work she had put in to make Courtney’s life just that much better. Our photographer decided to repost what Courtney wrote as her facebook status saying essentially, this made my day, don’t forget the power of a compliment.

It can be difficult to live with a sense of urgency. It can be more difficult to reach out to someone. A compliment might be all you do. I am constantly saying to Courtney that we need to be looking for ways to “plant seeds”. I am not talking about growing a garden. I am talking about planting seeds of Hope. For some it is just that simple, a small seemingly insignificant compliment that makes them think about their life and putting it into perspective. For others it is deeper. For Courtney and I, it is planting seeds in the youth we work with about the genuine love of Jesus. We don’t beat them over the head with it, we just want them to think about it. Plant the seed. Let the seed grow. Whether you believe in Jesus or not, planting seeds of Hope is something we can all appreciate. Living with a sense of urgency is difficult, but in my view necessary. If you feel that Hope is lost. I assure you it is not! If you know someone who is going down that path, reach out, let them know they are appreciated. Let them know they are loved. You have no idea what seed you might plant that might one day grown to plant seeds of Hope in others you don’t even know. Hope, can be contagious.

The modern version of “Footprints in the Sand” might be the lyrics from one of my favorite songs right now:

Every time you run, every time you hide
Every time it hurts, every time you cry
Every time you run away, every time you hide your face
And it feels so far away, I’m right here, with you



Jon

Warning: For the Immature Only (you know that means you...)

So far this Blog has essentially been a recap of how Courtney and I met, how I met the parents, The Proposal, and little tidbits about the house and the wedding. I think the “honeymoon” period for this Blog is over. We need to discuss important issues, debate the facts, and be respectful of each other’s opinions. Like mature adults would do. Yeah…that isn’t this post. This would be a linguistic adventure into the immature side of life.

The first thing you need to understand is that I have a lot of friends and family who are teachers. One of my friends, Dan, is a Middle school teacher. We share a mutual respect for laughing at the less mature side of life. This is about Dan and his amazing linguistic abilities. To illustrate, I’ll tell you this story. Because he teaches middle school there is already an element of immaturity in his students. So on occasion, Dan takes advantage of this and when he feels the need to, shall we say, flatulate, yet maintains the façade of being the mature adult in full control of his classroom. He will wander up and down the aisles of hard working students diligently expanding their minds in the science lab (apparently burning Captain Crunch is science these days, but that is for another day…). While they are hard at work, he will slowly over the distance of a few students let the fumigation begin. He refers to this as “crop dusting”. I find this ingenious. The brilliance of it is when 30 seconds later while back at his desk, one student will smell the poisonous emissions and start blaming another kid, who then gets defensive and says amazing retaliatory remarks like “whoever smelt it dealt it!” Dan will usually sit back at his desk and admire his handy work, before admonishing the immaturity and telling them to be grown up and get back to work. Like the Guinness commercial’s say…”Brilliant!”

Which is a nice run up to my next story. I work on a 9 story building and use the elevator to get up and down, most all employees do. On one occasion I was on the 4th floor heading up to the 9th. When the elevator dinged to tell me which one of the elevator cars was there to pick me up, someone was getting off while I was getting on. Little did I know, that someone left me a little surprise. As I got on, I pushed the 9th floor button and the doors closed. Before the car even moved I smelled the stink of another human beings fecal dust. Nowhere to go. Nothing I can do. And then it got really fun…the elevator car stopped on floor 7 to let someone else in to the car of weaponized biological gas that George W thought that Sadam had. He was wrong. It was here in his home state! So to my horror I could just picture this person getting on and thinking “you disgusting human being!” So what do I do? Do I acknowledge the stink? Say, sorry about the smell, someone just got off who obviously wasn’t feeling well. Who would believe that!? That is like starting off an embarrassing story with “This happened to a friend of mine…” everyone knows this is code for, I have to tell you what happened to me but I am going to hide it in a story about my mythical friend. Do I ignore the smell and pretend like nothing is wrong? Maybe they won’t notice the day old sweaty sock smell. It took them about 3 seconds to assess the situation and regret the decision to get in the elevator. Great. So as I am processing all of this, I am quietly thinking in the back of my head how the person who got off on the 4th floor is at their desk now just loving their masterpiece. Had I not been the victim, I would be applauding this little bit of genius. The ride up to the 9th floor lasted forever as I just accepted my innocent shame and let the person off first hoping never to see them again.

On the ride back down, I recalled my predicament and thought of all the amazingly awkward situations that must arise daily from this kind of thing. Multiple people at once and someone lets a SBD out (silent but deadly) and no one knows who it was or who to blame and just lets Kenny G play on in this gleeful moment of forced maturity. ...or... The moment everyone gets off leaving you alone as you have one more floor to go up so you let loose and just before the door closes someone holds it open to get on…Oops.



The situations are endless! There had to be a term to describe this deliciously dastardly masterpiece of immaturity! So who do I turn to? Dan, my crop dusting linguistic genius of a friend. So after I explained the situation to him in all of its glory and possibility, he agreed that a term was definitely in order. We tossed a few ides back in forth and then settled on two. If you end up riding solo, or with one other person, and you gas someone and leave before they get locked in the death box, you just coffined someone. Yes. Like a burial chamber. You gassed them and left them for dead. You can also get coffined. It can be a versatile term. In the situation of multiple people…the SBD situation…then what you are doing is beyond coffining, it is a moment of sharing. It is now forever in my vocabulary to refer to this as carpooling. This actually arose from the situation of someone gassing others out in a moving vehicle. We figure it can be applied to both the elevator and the car. No need to limit ourselves in such matters.



So the next time you are waiting for an elevator, be aware of others coffining you. But I would always applaud a well timed toot coffining someone. For they too may have the pleasure of experiencing an innocent horror 2 floors up that they have no way to explain to their new friends. They just have to get in the carpool and like it. Go forth and create masterpieces of awkwardness!

Jon

How is it that our finer moments are always caught on camera?

So how is it that our finer moments are always caught on camera?  There are so many times in life that I would love to have a camera at my finger tips and there are some that I wish weren't so easy to catch on film.  So it appears that there is about a 5 second time in the wedding ceremony that everybody caught on film.  Almost every person who has pictures has posted a version of this picture so I figure I will share the inside scoop.

So a the time of your wedding comes near, all of your family and friends decide they are going to share their stories and advice with you to help you out.  One of the things that I remember hearing a number of times has to do with which hand to put out and people putting out the wrong hand for the ring.  So as I stood at the alter, very nervous, I kept thinking I had to get the correct hand out there. So it came time for me to put my left hand out and I did, success, it wasn't hard because that is the hand I write with.  Then it was Jon's turn and I kept thinking come on you can do this....So he puts his hand out and I look at him terrified, no he put the wrong hand!  And I am standing there starring at him thinking, "Don't you remember all of the stories?"  And I think he realized that I was rather distraught so he kindly mentions to me that it is his left hand.  As I processed the thought I got embarrassed and what else are you to do but laugh at yourself.  I am pretty sure that 5 second laugh was caught by every camera in the house.

And Chad's face says it all..."Oh Courtney!  Poor Jon!"  And for those of you thinking, yes to do teach and I do know my left from my right on every day other than my wedding.

Courtney

The Proposal pt 3.- Popping the Question

So the day arrived. I was proposing tonight.



We were going to the East coast for 2 weeks. Courtney. Me. My family.
I had already decided to propose on day 1. My reason was so I could get this freaking ring out of hiding so I wouldn’t lose it on Day 3, waiting for “the right moment”. I knew I was going to propose at the reflecting pool with the Lincoln Memorial and the Washington Monument looking on. I set this scenario up under the guise of taking night photos of the monuments and getting there at sunset to see if there would be any cool photos at sunset. She had been to DC before, but never really seen it at night, so this was a plausible cover story.

The only people who knew about this was my family and “the Dad’s”. So the plan was pretty simple. We would wander around sort of getting a lay of the land during the day, go get dinner and then Courtney and I would scamper off to go “catch that perfect photo” while the family would go back to the hotel room under the guise of being travel weary etc. We even planned for a contingency of us having to leave dinner early in order to catch the sunset so she didn’t think it was odd that just we were going. I had the sunset charts out, I knew when the sun was officially going to set, I knew about how long it would take us to walk over there. Done.

And then dinner came and a few drinks later, we were laughing and chatting, when suddenly I realized the time. Sunset was in 15 minutes and we had about a 15 minute walk. CRAP! So literally I practically jumped up in mid sentence and grabbed Courtney and was like “we’re off!”

My family didn’t flinch cause they knew what was going on. Courtney on the other hand was probably in mid bite and was a little confused as to the urgency. We than began speed walking. Past the white house…starting to get dusky…we are hauling through the streets of DC. And then that inevitable statement comes from Courtney. “I have to pee”. I ignored it and just kept going hoping that it would go away. Not so much. “Jon! I have to pee…like now!” well crap.

Ok…no problem. How do I solve this…there are no bathrooms on the National Mall…Lincoln wouldn’t really appreciate it…Port-A-Can! It will have to do. My fiancé wasn’t real thrilled with this first proposal of mine, but accepted it and decided it would work. So as I was waiting outside watching the sun burry itself into the horizon WAY faster than it normally does, she was in a plastic toilet on the National mall, oblivious to what was going to happen in a few minutes.

She finally came out, and we bolted off again. We finally reached the area I had in mind. We had our little cardio work for the day, and she was only sort of annoyed at the rushing now because we basically arrived to a cloudy overcast grayness that was slowly getting darker and was not exactly picture worthy.

So I begin to look for a good place to do this thing. I wasn’t going to plop myself down in the middle of a bunch of tourists so I was looking for something semi secluded but not like 100 yds away. This process involved more of me dragging Courtney all over the WWII / Lincoln Memorial / reflecting Pool area at what I am sure seemed like random deliberate “goingness”.

Jackpot.
I found a vacant bench off to the side of the reflecting pool where we could see the Washington Memorial and the Reflecting pool. Very few people. Perfect. So we sit down to “wait for the sun to set” so we can get night photos. We sat there people watching, while I was trying to figure out a natural way to get the ring out of my camera bag and into my pocket. In a very similar way you would yawn to put your arm around a girl, I slowly put down my bag and was “checking the zippers” to make sure that everything was secure. At least that’s what I think I told her. She probably thought it strange but figured, whatever makes you happy, I’m finally sitting and not speed walking around DC with a full bladder.

So I pulled out the ring from its pouch. I didn’t bring the box because it was too bulky and got the ring in my pocket. I then realized I needed to get the ring out of the pouch, but it was already in my pocket…doh! So now I am wiggling and jiggling in my pocket…yes…I’m sure it was awkward. Finally got the ring free. The thought process now turned to what exactly was I going to say. It had to be kind of unique, but what? Then a video came into mind…



Oh crap. What if she says she can’t? She is stuck with me and my family for 2 weeks? She wouldn’t have come though…naw, I’m good. Ok. What to say…what to say…maybe we can make this an engagement trip…possible…what else...hmmm. Ok, screw it, I’m just gonna get off this bench, grab her hand and just say whatever comes out. That is fail proof! How could that go wrong! I’ll just wait for these little old ladies to pass in front of us..and its’ game time…wait…no, no…the old ladies are sitting down…oh for the love of…right next to us?! Of all the places to sit? Here? Now?! Argh!. I nodded my head in a polite hello and smiled. Now what?

So I started to search out Plan B. There. Right on the Reflecting pool there are some steps that we could sit on. Just as good, and free of people. So I made some wacky excuse about scouting out photo sites and grabbed her hand and off we went again. At this point I am pretty sure she was in her own world just resigned to the fact that I was nuts, and that’s just how it was.

So we got to our steps, it was even better than the bench. Literally like 10 feet from the reflecting pool. You could see Lincoln starting to glow from the lights turning on, WWII was lighting up, it was perfect. So I started the motivational process over again. Where was I gonna put my knee? I started to scan the ground. Oh crap. Literally. Duck poop everywhere. How am I gonna pull this off! I can’t exactly do a catchers squat and propose…that’s not protocol!

“Look! Fireflies!”

“huh.”

Courtney had noticed that all around us, fireflies were starting to buzz all around. She was elated. She started telling me stories about when she was a kid and I am sure I nodded, but all was looking at and thinking was. “duck poop”. This was not in my plan.

I finally figured out how to place my knee in such a way to avoid the duck poop…so here we go.

A lull in the conversation, and I started off into whatever it was I was about to say.

Me: “So I was thinking…”

C: “uh huh”

Me: “We are on this trip for 2 weeks with my family”

C: “yeah, I think it will be fine”

I later realized she was anticipating that I was concerned that we were going to drive her crazy over the next 2 weeks…at the time…I had no clue.

Me: “So I was thinking we could make this an engagement trip”

I then got down on one knee and showed her the ring…

C: -while looking around at fireflies, and not at me kneeling in duck poop – “Ok, that sounds good” –still no notice of me…in the duck poop-

So this wasn’t going quite as planned, but I was going now…I was committed…so just plow through this…

Me: “So, will you marry me?”

C: “wait, what?” –she finally notices that I am kneeling in duck poop holding out a shiny little rock looking at her as if I was expecting an answer-

Me: -in my head- I am thinking this is where you say “yes”…do I have to repeat this? How is this complicated…HELLO!!! Shiny rock! Yours! Take it!!! For the love of God I am kneeling in duck poop for your love! I am right here and…

C: “YES!”

Thank god. Life can move on.

What happened next was lots of squealing, smiling, and then the phone came out. This was my cue that I had played my part and now it was time to tell the moms and the rest of the world…

She text a picture of her ring to her mom, who at that very moment had decided to take a bathroom break at Pappacitos. Rick was about to tell her what I was doing, but the “I have to pee” moment happened to him to. Like Mother, like Daughter.

So Courtney went into mini panic mode because apparently there is a pre-determined priority protocol in announcing these things. Her mom had to know before she could text other people and a few “special” people had to know before it went on Facebook. Because when it is on Facebook, it is officially official.

Panic. Panic. Panic…phone rings…it’s her mom. The world can now continue.

Now at this point I had figured out that I was not needed and that I could go take pictures. After all, that is why we were here in the first place. As I was getting my camera ready I hear this conversation.

C: “Hi Mommy! I’m engaged!....Mom?...Your crying because you are happy right?”

Awesome. Probably a good thing to clear up…

So that was that.
We were engaged.

I would write a whole post on the wedding planning process, but I think this video pretty much sums that up nicely…



June 5th, 2011. The day we got engaged.

The Site

Other photos from that night...

Jon