Blake Aaron Guthrie – Love in Different Lights

If John Mayer were a Christian singing about Jesus and playing bluesy electric guitar riffs, this would be him.

Website:www.blakeaaronguthrie.com/

Also available at www.noisetrade.com/

Phil Whickham – Singalong

This is a great acoustic worship set that will have you singing with him in no time.  It’s a combination of Phil’s original songs and great classic hymns with a modern sound.  You can download the album for free below!

Website: www.PhilWhickham.com/

The Raconteurs – Consolers of the Lonely

I love their very eclectic sound and their changes in tempo/rythm in the middle of their songs.  Jack White is an amazing musician, although a little quirky.

Website: www.theraconteurs.com/

Derek Webb – The Ringing Bell

I’ve liked Webb for a long time since his Caedmon’s Call days, and this album brings with it his honest lyrics while putting a new style on his sound.

Website: www.derekwebb.com/

Also available at www.noisetrade.com/

I really like…

• walking in the yard when it’s just been mowed.
• our new rug in the living room.  It looks good, and it’s functional.
• dark roast coffee with shots of espresso in it.  Yum.
• Stephen Cobert.  He’s amusing.
• Star Trek.  Not a Trekie, but the new movie was surprisingly good.
• Kahlua & creme.  Takes me back to our cruise.

I really dislike…

• mowing the yard over and over and over again.
• alarm clocks.  No need to explain.
• technology that doesn’t function the way it was designed to work.
• those annoying Time Warner commercials.  Call today, install tomorrow, blah blah blah…
• to do lists that grow more than they shrink.

I’ve been wondering about…

• how well external hard drives really work as NAS systems.  I guess we’ll see.
• what a call to ministry looks like in today’s world and Church.
• rearranging our living room.  Not sure how yet, but I’ll post pics if we do.
• when I’ll find time to start the projects in my head.
• when the best time is to buy plane tickets for our trip in January.  I dunno this stuff.

I’m excited about…

• meeting Ashley’s (& mine I guess…) nephew this weekend finally.
• getting a chance to talk to Tony & Katie about marriage.
• Hardees on the trip home.  Oh yeah – Monster Burger, here I come.
• new business ideas for both the photography and the web design.
• some time away from life in June with good friends.

I’m hooked.  I installed Linux Ubuntu 9.04 on an old desktop here at the house to use as a home file & media server, and it’s grown on me quickly.  It’s clean, it’s simple, it’s STABLE, and it’s free!  There’s no need to pay to upgrade OS every few years because it’s an Open Source project.   Here are the things I’m currently working on figuring out: getting a workaround for iTunes/iPod, a graphic vector design program, and a photo editing program on par with Photoshop (not GIMP).  Once I get these three things figured out well, I’ll likely make the switch over to Ubuntu on my laptop as well.

Yeah, I know… I’m a nerd.  But, I’m a nerd with a sweet server and a cool computer system…

I really liked Ryan Theriot last year and thought he was deserving of a spot in the line up this season on a regular basis.  He and the other half of the Cajun Connection (Mike Fontenot) have provided a great deal of youth and energy to the middle of the Cubs infield.   Suddenly Theriot has found a power surge, already hitting for 5 home runs this season compared to his 7 previous career dingers.  On top of that, he’s already had a grand slam and a two home run game.  It only takes one look at his short and stocky body to realize that he hasn’t been anywhere around a ‘roid needle.  Here’s to players actually getting better on their own merits and hard work.   Go RIOT!

Last Sunday she got to go with Ashley and I and the Waters family to go get ice cream at Mirandas.  It was her first official outing, and she did awesome!  She soaked up the attention and had a huge smile on her face from ear to ear the whole time.  It’s moments like that which remind me of why we foster dogs from shelters that would otherwise be put down. I am amazed at the sweetness and love that these dogs have from all they’ve been through in life.  I am a HUGE believer that with discipline and patience that any dog can be rehabilitated to be a peaceful and loving animal.  Naula is the most recent example…

Concept #1:

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Concept #3:

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Concept#5:

I’ve got friends that sit on both sides of this fence, so I’d like to hear thoughts…  Is it possible to be a part of THE CHURCH (notice big T C), without being part of a church (little c)?  Is your view from scripture, personal experience, passed on theology, etc…?  Not looking for a fight here so please don’t come guns blazing…

I find it interesting that a guy like me who inspires to be paid for my words cannot seem to find the right words to say to express to my wife the love that I feel for her. Sometimes it comes out correctly, but most of the time there is something great lost in translation in the short, yet seeming eternity, that it takes for a few words to make it from my heart through my mouth to her ears and into her heart. My heart thinks and feels in Shakespearian quality poetry when I am around her, yet I feel like the words I choose to express those profound feelings often sound more like Milli Vanilli than Romeo. Sometimes the love is so strong that it hurts. Literally hurts. The only way I can describe it is that it’s like that painful feeling you get in your chest when you swallow an air bubble or have a sudden shot of heart-burn. If you’ve been in love – real, sacrificing, deep, lasting love – you know what I’m talking about. Words cannot accurately describe the pain as there’s nothing else like it, but your heart literally hurts with a pain that aches in a deep place you did not know you were capable of feeling.

I remember when Ashley and I were dating that we had those blissful pre-marital conversations about what life would be like once we were husband and wife. We had such blurry red love-tinted glasses on as we looked towards our future together. Everything was going to be amazing and romantic. Yeah, that’s it… romantic. We’d tell each other that once we were married, we would fall asleep together laying in a tangled mess of arms and legs because we could not stand to be apart even when we sleep. We’d talk of sex and love and intimacy and raising children and all of those important conversations that couples need to have before they choose to get married. Those really are important conversations, ones that are essential to the foundation of your relationship. Conversations are important because it’s communication, and if you can’t communicate before you’re married… well, good luck trying to get that figured out after you’ve said your “I do’s”.

What you don’t talk about in those conversations though, is the fact that one of you snores or that the other one has a huge need for personal space when they’re sleeping and cannot stand to be touching anything else, let alone being tangled in a mess of arms and legs. Bottom line is, married life is not always the romantic dream that it is played out to be in our minds as we begin to enter into this crazy covenant of a relationship. At the alter you make some promise statements including that whole “for better or worse” thing. No one thinks that the “worse” part of that includes dealing with real life things like a snoring husband, wet toilet seats, buying tampons for your wife, and all the other things that go along with occupying the same home and life as another human being in close proximity. The rubber really hits the road in marriage in the daily grind of life where you choose to make things work because you truly love one another. It is not a head in the clouds endeavor where life is always perfect, toilet seats are always put down, dishes always washed, and dinner on the table at 6 p.m. each evening. Pleasantville is no where near where I live, and I have a hunch that it’s not going on in your home either.

One of those rosy dreams about marriage that we had was our thoughts on sex. Having chosen to save sex for our relationship until we were married, we both had that dream and understanding that sex would alleviate that heart pain. Surely literally being one with your spouse would create some kind of metaphysical pathway in which your two souls could finally communicate face to face without any loss in translation. I mean after all, if that doesn’t do it, then what hope do we really have in trying to possibly get someone else in this world to understand the endless well of emotion that we carry around inside. I can remember being out at “the bins” one night. Brief commentary – “the bins” were a set of two grain bins out in the middle of nowhere in the country outside of Lincoln where we went to college. It was one of the few places that for better or worse, we could find solitude as a couple away from campus. Anyway, I can remember wanting so badly to make love to Ashley that it hurt – both a good and bad pain as you men can unfortunately relate. By this time we were engaged, and knew that the marriage bed was only a few months away. That knowledge can really be a double edged sword as it can both raise and lower the defenses when it comes to intimacy. We put on the brakes and separated ourselves and began to have a conversation about what our sex life would be once we were married. I could not wait to finally be able to express to Ashley all the love and emotion that I had been bottling up inside in a physical and real way. There are some things in life that words just cannot adequately express, and I was convinced that my love for her was something that fit into this category quite well.

Fast forward a few months and our wedding night arrived. We were awake into the early morning hours of the following day opening cards and reading notes and letters from our beloved friends and family. On a practical level, we did this because we needed to open them all up to get the loot to pay for our honeymoon, but there was also the elephant in the room which was constantly shouting “you guys are going to get it on!”. Eventually we ran out of cards to open and the elephant got louder so we decided there was not much else left to do but shut it up. I can remember undressing my bride and crawling into bed with her and feeling that aching pain in my heart. It hurt so badly – the love I had for her was welling up inside and wanted out so badly that my chest physically throbbed. We took things slowly and made love to one another. We didn’t have sex – that’s too cheap a way to put it. For the first time in my life I understood what it meant to make love. But I was somewhat disappointed. It had nothing to do with Ashley – the act itself was beautiful and great and honestly even very enjoyable. But when it was all over, I laid there holding her in my arms and the pain was still there. Some part of me thought that it was just a “breaking in” period. Surely after five or ten rounds of lovemaking it would go away. Maybe it was just the residual buildup of having all that emotion and love from the months of engagement with nothing to do with it all. But alas, we have tried and tried and tried, and while the act is still beautiful and gets more and more enjoyable, the pain still exists. It’s there when I hug her, it’s there when I think about her when she’s not around, it’s there when I’m making love to her, it’s there when I lay next to her in bed and listen to her snore and thank God for her anyway. The pain just simply won’t go away.

I’m actually convinced that the pain has worsened. It’s one of those things that I’ll never understand, but you can bet I’ll be asking God about it later. For now, I’ve learned to live with and embrace the pain. It’s a necessary pain – one that I hope and pray will never leave me. I want to love Ashley so much that it hurts for the rest of my life. God willing, I will. But being me, I cannot think about love stuff like this and not bring God into the equation somehow. I think He’s actually got a pretty big role to play in all of this. After all, he created us, so he must know what nerve ending sensor keeps tripping off in my chest each time I think too much about my love for my wife. I’d like to consider it a flaw in design, but I am under the impression that he probably didn’t screw up when he built that into me. When Moses wrote Genesis, he said that we are made in God’s image. Adam and Eve screwed a lot of that up when they met Granny Smith, but there is still a great deal of the creator left in the created.

Over in Ephesians, a pretty wise old guy talks of the unity between a man and a woman a profound mystery. It’s obvious from observation that there is something more than meets the eye which takes place when a man and a woman become one and enter into the covenant of marriage. Paul tries best he can to relate the amazing bond between a husband and wife to Christ’s relationship to the church. He seems to be saying, “Take a look at the beautiful sacrificing relationship between a man and a woman. The man should love his wife so much that he’s willing to lay down his life; the woman loving her husband so much that she be willing to lay down her desires and submit to his leadership. But, Oh yeah – I’m talking about Christ and the Church, not you married folks…” In the end, I think he gets tongue tied and there are some things lost in translation. If Paul can’t even put to words well what he’s trying to say, then I think maybe there is hope for me after all. One thing is for sure though – I think Paul understood that the marriage relationship is the closest thing this side of Heaven that we’re going to understand well enough to get any idea at all of what our relationship with God looks like.

Being created in God’s image, I have to figure that He’s also got that screwy nerve ending that trips whenever He gets overwhelmed with love. How cool an image is that? I mean really – God loves you so much that it hurts. It truly and physically hurts. It’s not just heavenly heartburn, it’s an aching and longing inside Him to try to express to you just how much He loves you. In my small, finite human level, I have shared the physical pain and emotion of genuine love. It hurts like hell, but man, it’s awesome. We can talk about this human love stuff until we’re blue in the face, and it would be appropriate and even genuine, but Paul is right – this is about God, not marriage isn’t it?

We also have a second foster, Naula (Noola) that is from the SPCA. She’s also a pit, that was deemed “dog aggressive” and slated to be put down, but a good hearted person turned us on to her story. We got her as a foster the afternoon that she was supposed to be euthanized. She has some aggression with other dogs, but it’s completely fear motivated. She’s had a crazy rough first year to her life, and has the scars to prove it. She’s made a great deal of progress in the two or three weeks that we’ve had her, and were confident that in time she’ll be adoptable and will make a great pet. Originally she was to be fostered by the person that discovered her, but we think that she is better suited for our home right now. She’s a longer term foster as we work to get her balanced and teach her that the world is an OK place. I’ll post a picture of her sometime soon.