birthday day

fourteen. Fourteen. FOURTEEN. fourteen years of brown-eyed-curiosity.

fourteen years of focus on trains and bulldozers, lawnmowers and tractors. fourteen years of watching the weather turn from hail to snow to ice to rain and back again to hail.

fourteen years of pushing and pulling and growing and changing and challenging and laughing and crying. my eldest son is fourteen today.

i remember how he didn't want to be born. tucked in the eternal womb of warmth, he'd rather have stayed, snugly comforted by a environment that was constant and controlled.

i remember how he was eventually taken via c-section and how he didn't want to eat right away and didn't want to be undressed and changed.

from the word "go" this fourteen year old of ours thrived in routine and predictability. and we eventually caught on.

oh, how i pray this fourteenth year will bring deep and true and long lasting blessings of hope and joy and peace and strength.

may the year ahead be filled with calm strength that carries through every storm, wisdom that rides every wave of conflict, and love that fulfills every dream dreamt.

perspective

my perspective on a subway train bombing. horrible. unthinkable. how could someone do a heinous act? how could they take innocent lives? how could they knowingly strap a bomb to their bodies and in one act decide who lives and who dies? who do they think they are? why is their vision of life and death and eternal glory superior to another?

my perspective. the suicide bomber's perspective. who is right? who is wrong? who determines? if i have a choice and the suicide bomber has a choice, then we act of our own free will.

Why would I blame God for the suicide bomber's choice? What did He have to do with their act? Could He have prevented it? Would He have? My perspective says, "yes, this time, He should have stopped it, intervened, prevented loss of life. Or maybe, no, those people deserved to die because they don't live in a christian society." When I play God, I step into a dangerous role. I am limited. I don't have the entire picture. I don't have an eternally perfect perspective.

When I wrestle with horrible acts committed in the world I live, I recognize that I don't have the full perspective God has. And the only thing that gets me through is faith that I don't see it all clearly right now and I won't know why, but I can trust in the only true God who does. And that's a comfort, a strength, a power I can rest in.

passion defined by a nascar fan

Large, square-framed glasses encompass bright, blue eyes as they dance in animation with the passion the nascar fan expresses as he explains what nascar is. He introduced himself as "Stan" and patiently answered all of my ignorant questions regarding a sport I know nothing about. Stan shares the 9 hour journey that lead he and his wife from California through death valley to the Las Vegas 400. "Turn four", Stan proudly informs me, "is the best place to sit. You see it all!" Stan is covered in nascar gear, from his hat to his sought-after M & M designed yellow jacket. "There are three racing series...in my opinion, the truck series is the most fun...man, they really race. Nationwide series is next, then comes the Sprint Cup series. If the ran delays the nationwide series on Saturday then they'll race in Monday. We will stay through, probably until Wednesday. It's really great to watch'em race." "Now, Michael Waltrip is something else. Decent guy. I once watched him spend extra time with 4 kids from one family-see-that's the future of nascar-and he hung out with them. Incredible......"

Passion-I saw it through what he was wearing. I experienced it as he talked with me. I recognized the legacy it leads by bringing up younger generations in it. Stan was a non-stop-full-throttled-testimony to passion.

So, application time. What am I passionate about? Do people, strangers even, know what I am passionate about while in conversation with me? Do I spend time bringing the next generation up to speed with my passion? The greatest enemy in my life is melba-toast-bland living.