Well it has been awhile since I have actually had time to sit down and do any of this kind of stuff but summer is here. I am hoping to start updating this more for our friends and family near and far. I do not have pictures this time, just words but I will give a quick update of what is going on in our crazy house.
Today was our last day of school and I have never been so excited to have the year come to an end. This year was challenging for so many reasons. One of the largest reasons was that there were many days where my sweet boy was at day care for 10+ hours and it broke my heart. As the year began to wrap up, Jon and I started talking about next year and the future. I knew I wanted to move closer to home so I applied in Cy-Fair, the district we live in, and didn't have much luck. As that appeared to be a dry river, we started looking at "what next". After much discussion we decided that I needed to resign from my current school and we would put things in God's hands. I would not say that the plan is totally for me to stay home with Aaron in the fall, but the hope is that I can have a closer and less demanding something. We have several things that sound like a great way to have a little bit of extra money but still allow me to spend time around the house and taking care of our family needs. Of course these sound great to us, but none of them are anything that can be done without God opening doors. As the summer goes on we are anxious to see where this path takes us. I am going to enjoy my time catching up from a busy year and loving on my baby.
I hope to update this regularly so stay tuned, we have missed a lot.
Thursday, June 6, 2013
Saturday, March 16, 2013
It's been awhile
It has been awhile since I have updated here, time has gotten away from me. Work has been super busy and the moving little man has made life even more eventful. I will try to do a quick catch up on what we have been up to. These were some of his first school pictures, mommy fell in love (daddy thought they were overpriced).
This is the sweet face I see many mornings when I go to wake him up, what a great way to start the day.
Including playing with Luna's toys and chasing her around.
Sunday, January 6, 2013
Aaron's 1st Christmas
I can't believe the season has come and gone so quickly. Last year I was so tired all the time that it seemed to last forever, along with all the to dos. This year was a hustle and bustle to get everything done in time. I felt like I had less time to prepare because all of my time off of work was on the back side of the holidays. Now, I do not complain as I am getting my life back in order and house cleaned.
My dad, Barbie and Spencer came in again this year to celebrate Christmas with us. They flew in on Sunday and stayed until Thursday. It was a nice visit and we enjoyed having them around. We all went to church on Christmas Eve and spent a lot of time playing with the little man. On Christmas morning we all got up and showered in order to head to my mom's new house to start the Christmas Day festivities. Jon's family joined us around noon; Mark, Nora, Shawna, Mary and the two doggies. Needless to say we had a house full. At one time we had 13 adults, a baby and 3 dogs. We enjoyed a day full of family, friends and fun. I love when we can spend this day together as a family because these are the memories that will last a life time.
What happens when you combine 3 families; 13 adults and 1 baby?
...a crazy amount of gifts. We did stockings in the morning...
And later in the day we opened presents. It took us a long time to get through all of the gifts this little boy had. It actually worked out well because the adults opened gifts while he napped and then when he woke up we all watched him enjoy his new stuff. Here are only a few of the pictures we took.
Grammy made him a super soft blankie
He wanted to help open
His cousin gave him the best Christmas book ever, The Polar Express
Playing the piano with Paul
Enjoying some of his treasures
Saturday, December 15, 2012
Where is God in this?!
A shooting in a movie theater.
A shooting in a mall.
A shooting at…an Elementary school?!
If God is so good and so loving, why does he not intervene? Why does he just stand by and allow this to happen?! Over the next few days I imagine you’ll see multiple blogs and facebook posts that will ask this question as if it is definitive proof that God must not exist, and the counter to those questions put into clever Meme’s or pictures. This, to me, is almost as tragic as these incidents. We reduce the question of God to clever stories and witty questions. All of these are likely without any philosophical or theological merit, and that is the ongoing tragedy. The question of why does God allow evil and suffering starts with the fact that he allows us to have free will. Humans chose to sin. You do it. I do it. God has provided a redemptive work based on love and forgiveness to solve this problem of sin, but it isn’t an instant fix the eliminates all future sin. It also isn’t an all sweeping solution that applies to the entirety of humanity. You have to choose to accept that, and in today’s world, more people reject that truth behind “logic and reason” than accept it. Evil is the result of unchecked sin that is made by human free will. Take this video for example. Richard Dawkins, a well-known proponent of Darwinian Evolution, and outspoken “hater of religion”. Let’s not get into a discussion about that term “religion” here, you can find my thoughts on that elsewhere in this Blog, but in the video below (start at 1:45 if you don’t want to watch the whole thing) he argues that religion is about brainwashing our children based on the culture you are born into, and that brainwashing is what the source of evil acts such as the “blowing up buildings” are.
I'll assume then on some level Richard Dawkins would believe that these shootings of late are the result, albeit indirectly, of Religions. As Dawkins states: “I don’t think that any kind of reasoned argument would do that to people” Dawkins goes on to admit that Religion doesn’t ALWAYS cause this kind of evil but because it can, he wants to “cut it off at its roots”. This argument is so logically flawed it’s not even worth addressing in detail. Dawkins drives home his point by showing the extremes of religious activists around the world; Extremist Muslims, Westboro Baptist Church, The Crusades. This world isn’t intended to be easy. It is a struggle. God promises this. He doesn’t promise that if you believe in him life will become easier and he will take all your worries away. That is what false teachers like Joel Osteen, who are almost more dangerous than Richard Dawkins, want you to believe. Why? Because when tragedy happens to you, or you see tragedy in the world, you don’t have any ability to process it in terms of your faith, or belief. "Joel Osteen told me if I do good, then I will be rewarded, so then why are bad things happening? Have I angered God?" This makes me more upset than anything Richard Dawkins says because Joel Osteen is just setting up countless people up for disappointment and potentially turning their back on “religion” cause what good can it do. THAT is a problem. It isn’t about when you do this then something good will happen. God is good, but he also gave us the freedom to choose him, or chose sin, and thus evil. Sometimes those choices by others to choose evil, impact us. That is the world we live in, as humanity, this is the path we have chosen, and because God loves us, he is offered an escape route, but he isn’t requiring it, and is going to let us choose.
I would say to Richard Dawkins, you can create your videos that give the impression that the source of evil is religion, you can show extremists in cleverly edited videos with moving music, but I just need to turn the news on to see what evil is. These shootings weren’t the work of some believers who were brainwashed. The evil we see today with shootings at elementary schools pierces our sense of order. The unwritten rule of “not the children”, because that is exceptionally evil. Disasters happen. Evil happens, and it will happen again. I promise. Understanding why it is happening, and if there is a solution to evil is up to you. You can buy Richard Dawkins antiquated argument that Religion is the source of evil, because broken human beings have done evil in the name of religion. Or you can choose to understand that all of humanity is broken, and lost, and there is only one solution. The video below, is a video showing a tragedy of a bridge collapse with John Piper talking bluntly about Evil and Suffering. It seems like you could take his words, and place it over any collection of video showing any number of tragedies…including the most recent one in Connecticut, Oregon, and Colorado.
This isn’t a political issue, this isn’t a science issue. At its core, this is a problem of Evil. There is a solution. It is love. Specifically it is whether or not we accept the free love Jesus has offered us. The good news? He gave you the free will to accept it, or reject it…
In the beautiful phrasing of Tenth Ave North’s song “The Struggle”:
“Hallelujah, I am free to struggle, but I’m not struggling to be free.”
Jon
A shooting in a mall.
A shooting at…an Elementary school?!
If God is so good and so loving, why does he not intervene? Why does he just stand by and allow this to happen?! Over the next few days I imagine you’ll see multiple blogs and facebook posts that will ask this question as if it is definitive proof that God must not exist, and the counter to those questions put into clever Meme’s or pictures. This, to me, is almost as tragic as these incidents. We reduce the question of God to clever stories and witty questions. All of these are likely without any philosophical or theological merit, and that is the ongoing tragedy. The question of why does God allow evil and suffering starts with the fact that he allows us to have free will. Humans chose to sin. You do it. I do it. God has provided a redemptive work based on love and forgiveness to solve this problem of sin, but it isn’t an instant fix the eliminates all future sin. It also isn’t an all sweeping solution that applies to the entirety of humanity. You have to choose to accept that, and in today’s world, more people reject that truth behind “logic and reason” than accept it. Evil is the result of unchecked sin that is made by human free will. Take this video for example. Richard Dawkins, a well-known proponent of Darwinian Evolution, and outspoken “hater of religion”. Let’s not get into a discussion about that term “religion” here, you can find my thoughts on that elsewhere in this Blog, but in the video below (start at 1:45 if you don’t want to watch the whole thing) he argues that religion is about brainwashing our children based on the culture you are born into, and that brainwashing is what the source of evil acts such as the “blowing up buildings” are.
I'll assume then on some level Richard Dawkins would believe that these shootings of late are the result, albeit indirectly, of Religions. As Dawkins states: “I don’t think that any kind of reasoned argument would do that to people” Dawkins goes on to admit that Religion doesn’t ALWAYS cause this kind of evil but because it can, he wants to “cut it off at its roots”. This argument is so logically flawed it’s not even worth addressing in detail. Dawkins drives home his point by showing the extremes of religious activists around the world; Extremist Muslims, Westboro Baptist Church, The Crusades. This world isn’t intended to be easy. It is a struggle. God promises this. He doesn’t promise that if you believe in him life will become easier and he will take all your worries away. That is what false teachers like Joel Osteen, who are almost more dangerous than Richard Dawkins, want you to believe. Why? Because when tragedy happens to you, or you see tragedy in the world, you don’t have any ability to process it in terms of your faith, or belief. "Joel Osteen told me if I do good, then I will be rewarded, so then why are bad things happening? Have I angered God?" This makes me more upset than anything Richard Dawkins says because Joel Osteen is just setting up countless people up for disappointment and potentially turning their back on “religion” cause what good can it do. THAT is a problem. It isn’t about when you do this then something good will happen. God is good, but he also gave us the freedom to choose him, or chose sin, and thus evil. Sometimes those choices by others to choose evil, impact us. That is the world we live in, as humanity, this is the path we have chosen, and because God loves us, he is offered an escape route, but he isn’t requiring it, and is going to let us choose.
I would say to Richard Dawkins, you can create your videos that give the impression that the source of evil is religion, you can show extremists in cleverly edited videos with moving music, but I just need to turn the news on to see what evil is. These shootings weren’t the work of some believers who were brainwashed. The evil we see today with shootings at elementary schools pierces our sense of order. The unwritten rule of “not the children”, because that is exceptionally evil. Disasters happen. Evil happens, and it will happen again. I promise. Understanding why it is happening, and if there is a solution to evil is up to you. You can buy Richard Dawkins antiquated argument that Religion is the source of evil, because broken human beings have done evil in the name of religion. Or you can choose to understand that all of humanity is broken, and lost, and there is only one solution. The video below, is a video showing a tragedy of a bridge collapse with John Piper talking bluntly about Evil and Suffering. It seems like you could take his words, and place it over any collection of video showing any number of tragedies…including the most recent one in Connecticut, Oregon, and Colorado.
This isn’t a political issue, this isn’t a science issue. At its core, this is a problem of Evil. There is a solution. It is love. Specifically it is whether or not we accept the free love Jesus has offered us. The good news? He gave you the free will to accept it, or reject it…
In the beautiful phrasing of Tenth Ave North’s song “The Struggle”:
“Hallelujah, I am free to struggle, but I’m not struggling to be free.”
Jon
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