By the way, did I mention that we got a lab puppy this past week?  Meet Samson, the dog!  This is Mariah’s dog, since the last one was mine.  Our last dog was named Buster, but was affectionately called @#$%! most of the time, at least on full moons.  Samson is off to a better start.  He was five weeks old and comes from two full labs with very laid back personalities.

We’re all excited to have him, the girls carry him around like he is a newborn baby, poor thing, they don’t even let him walk outside!  Clay has taken a huge affection towards him, having already spent the night sleeping on the floor next to Samson so the dog would feel “comfortable”!

We’ve heard all the horror stories of labs, which we’re so thankful for all our friends who’ve shared they’re wonderful tales of chewed drywall, and 80 holes dug in the back yard!  In the end, he’s a beautiful dog and we’re looking forward to him playing an intricate role in our family and our transition here in Texas.  But just to be realistic, I reserving Buster’s nickname in case we need it for our new friend!

 Isurvived week 1 of P90X!  I lost 6 lbs and the ability to scratch my neck without my entire muscle structure in my arms streaming. 

Last night I learned there was actually a schedule to the program, we had just been doing the videos in the order they came in the binder, but I guess there’s a method to the madness.  We were only off by one day, but we didn’t do the 15 minute Ab Destroyer X after 3 of the workouts, which I’m sure makes a big difference.  To be clear, after looking at the 15 minute Ab workout, I didn’t think I could do it, I mean I couldn’t do 5 minutes of it, which leads me to think that after one of the 50 minute videos the chances of me finishing the 15 minutes of Abs gets pretty close to zero.  But starting tonight we’re going for it!

I’ve seen quick weight loss, but still feel like I could eat the desk my computer is sitting on right now.  Mariah hasn’t had the weight loss but her strength is progressing pretty fast.  I’m excited to see what happens after this week is over, if we’ve seen these results after 1 week without part of the program being done right, I’m sure adding that extra 15 minutes will produce big results for both of us.

I love this video!  What an inspiring attitude, notice the Bible on the stage as he’s talking with the kids.

Mariah and I started P90X this week.  Its something I’ve wanted to do for a few years now, after watching the infomercial one night I couldn’t believe the transformation in people’s bodies!  I looked at myself in the mirror and thought “I want to look like that!”

That was a few years ago, I now look in the mirror and think “I hate looking like that!”  I’ve allowed myself to gain 15 lbs in the past year and half, and I’ve outgrown my clothes at an alarming rate.  Most people look at me and say “you don’t weigh that much!” which is more of a testimony to my ability to hide my belly than the reality of whats going on with my body.

When I talked to Mariah about it her reaction was “You’re Crazy!”  After I explained that I was going to be 40 in a few months, and she was right behind me, and our bodies weren’t going to get easier to control, but rather much harder, she finally agreed something had to be done.  So, we started the P90X program with the goal of getting our bodies under control and shaping up.

We’re on Day 4, and I am here to say its going to be a challenge to push through the 90 days!  I’m already hurting in areas I’d forgotten about!  My stomach was killing me yesterday, and today my legs are screaming before I even got out of bed!  I know the pain is the way my body is telling me “I need this!” but my mind is screaming “Run!  Go to the Donut Shop!  Get away from these people who are out to hurt you!”  Yesterday Mariah texted me and said “My legs are stabbing me!” in which I replied “My stomach has already killed me and buried me in an unmarked grave behind the garage!”

I’m looking forward to seeing my body change, but know its going to take a lot of daily effort and discipline.  We’re closer than we were four days ago, but have a long way to go!  I’ll post pictures when I look better in them!  For now, I’m going to try to dig myself back up and get busy with today’s brutal Arms and Legs!

I’m glad the summer is over, but I really enjoyed the past three months.  Some observations ….

98 degrees feels noticeably cooler when you’ve had several days/weeks above 100 degrees.

Don’t leave candy bars, sunglasses, small animals, children, nuclear material in your car during the summer.  It will melt, make useless, kill, and explode all things with the temp getting somewhere near 1000 degrees.

You cannot lose weight eating BBQ four times a week, but in the end its still worth it!

Dr Pepper has a secret formula with crack cocaine in it, its the only way to explain my addiction.

I love the city of New Orleans!  If you haven’t been there, you MUST go!!  The food is out of this world!!!

Camping is fun, especially when you’re with people who aren’t worried about germs, comfort, and personal BO.  Big Bend National Park is the place to go in Texas, incredible views, couldn’t believe I was there after growing up and living in Detroit for most my adult life!

Park Lake Drive Baptist Church is awesome!!!  I absolutely LOVE these people!!  God is doing some cool things, and I’m so blessed to be here with my family during this wonderful time of growth and renewal.  Wednesday Nights are a blast, and I look forward to see who shows up to church on Sundays.  Its going to be such a great ride over the next few years as we see God continue to transform our congregation for the next generation to come!  Its a great time to be here!!!

I love Texas, but I my Yankee body will never look good in tight Wrangler Jeans or a Cowboy Hat!

I much rather work on learning Spanish than Arabic!

I much rather eat Hummus than Re-fried Beans!

I love watching my kids play sports, even when I lose 3 pints of blood to mosquitoes and sit under the Death Ray otherwise known as the Texas Sunset.

Sonic coney footlongs should be sent around the world to promote World Peace, again, another reason why trying to lose weight in the summer is useless!

My kids are cool as heck, only because their mom is the BOMB!!

Our country is pretty messed up, it has me worried, but there is still no other place on earth I would rather be.  The United States is the best!  If you don’t like it you need to thank God you have the freedom to express your thoughts in a free society.  I’m sure there is room in some Afghan Village that would love for you to come and enlighten the locals.  As for me, I think I’ll just stay here and bang out all our differences while enjoying relative religious liberty and freedom of speech.

Nothing shows you how fast your kids are growing like buying school shoes!

Praise God everyday for His Grace and Mercy, your Family, and sweet opportunity to know Him in intimate ways!

Life is Good!

Parents, we made it!!  The summer is almost over and we survived!  I didn’t kill the kids, we all had fun, no life threatening sunburns, still have yet to catch a fish in Texas, the vacations have all been paid for, everyone ate their fill of grilled meat, and Humphries Nation didn’t melt in the Texas heat!  I would say that’s a pretty successful three months in my book.

I’ve asked all my kids if they’re excited about school starting back up, and all them have given me a resounding “YES!”  They can’t wait to see their new teacher, reconnect with their friends and classmates, and start on the fall activities.

I’m looking forward to the routine and daily rhythm that school brings to life.  The day starts a little crisper, bedtime is a necessity, there are tasks to be completed everyday, and there are concrete assessments on success.  School brings a simple structure to life that is a relief to parents who are trying to juggle how to take care of little ones while working a job so the bills can be paid.

I’ll miss the summer, and come the end of the school year I’ll be longing for these days again.  I know the lunches and countless activities and homework assignments will wear me down and drive me crazy, but you know, you can’t just live in perpetual “summer” all the time.  We’re not designed to live on vacation for the rest of our lives.  We need breaks, don’t get me wrong, but we also need to accomplish tasks, reach goals, invest ourselves into a community, we need to work and have a sense of success at it.

I loved the summer and the time with the kids, but I’m looking forward to seeing what they can do this year, what they can accomplish, where their struggles are going to be and how they’re going to tackle them.  The work is what makes the time off special, the work is one of the aspects of our lives that defines us, it allows us to feel we deserve the break.  The summer is finally over, let the work begin!

Its this balance between work and play, this tension between stress and rest, that becomes the challenge in adult life.  What I have loved about having children of school age is the predetermined seasons their lives bring.  I know when they all grow up and leave it will be challenging to find this yearly balance, but I guess that’s what grandchildren are for!  I’m just enjoying the process right now, school and summer, progress and challenge, success and disappointment, the ebenflow of school, its a wonderful thing.

Two weeks ago I was able to get away for some guy time.  My brother-in-law and I were able to get away and camp at Big Bend National Park on the US/Mexico border.  We had a BLAST!  I couldn’t believe how beautiful the park was, never did I imagine Texas looking the way it does in West Texas!  It was so different from what I was used to seeing, it really shocked me.  I enjoyed the whole experience of camping, outside of my air-mattress having a hole, and I loved not having the all the distractions of my everyday life pounding on me for a week.

We did a 14 mile hike the first day and ended up where this picture was taken.  This scene overlooks the Rio Grande and Mexico, and if you could see the wide angle you’d notice I’m standing on the edge of a serious drop off!  This picture also doesn’t represent how tired I was after hiking up 3,000 ft  in trails!  Not the outdoorsman, I know how hard that is to believe considering my upbringing in Downriver Detroit, I was overwhelmed with God’s workmanship and how inspiring nature can be.

I think its so important to get away and reflect.  Big Bend National Park was a great outlet for us last week, but this could have been done on a beach or cruise ship or cabin.  Getting away from all the business of our lives, and allowing new scenes to spark our minds towards God is essential to good spiritual health.  We often see Jesus separating himself from the masses and resting, reflecting with his disciples in intimate settings.

To a certain degree church fills this need.  On a weekly basis we’re encouraged to get away from our daily lives and seperate ourselves to corporately worship and reflect on God’s lives.  Just like camping, we’re to leave our daily distractions and rest a bit in God’s presense.  Its a time of getting away, of recharging our spiritual selves.

I hope you had the opportunity to get away this summer and rest.  I also hope you take advantage of a weekly retreat in the fellowship of a local church where you can worship and reflect on God’s Word, I guarantee that the views are worth the effort!

Last night we went to a party to celebrate the adoption of Cayden Thomas Brown.  It was a great moment for our friends Clint and Beth Ann, after waiting over a year and jumping through the complicated hoops of the foster system, they were finally able to officially call Cayden their son.  I just couldn’t be more proud of Clint and Beth Ann, they’re great parents and an incredible blessing to our church.

This Sunday at Park Lake we’re going to talk about Healing.  I felt it was appropriate to discuss healing after taking on the issue of Mental Illness and the effects of depression and anxiety the last two weeks.  If we can truly look at these issues as a sickness, then there must be a cure, a healing of the mind.  We’ve discussed the role of medication, professional counseling, and the role of proper thinking, but this week we’ll discuss in more detail the role God plays in our mental healing and how important it is to have the correct perspective on His interaction with us.

Cayden’s adoption seems to me such a perfect example of how God goes outside the box to heal an individual.  Cayden will grow up in a home that he wasn’t born into.  He’ll have parents who love him, will nurture him and provide a stable environment for him, and discipline him so he can be successful into adulthood.  Clint and Beth Ann won’t be able to keep Cayden from making mistakes along the way, they won’t be able to protect him from tragedy or struggles, we all know he’ll have his unique challenges to life.  But, in the end Cayden will have a better life than the one he should have had.

Cayden was healed by God before he was even sick!  God interceded in his young life and has changed the course of generations to come.  Cayden will grow up in a pastor’s home, he’ll learn about faith in Jesus and see it played out in his life on a regular basis, he’ll be challenged to live a moral lifestyle that’s characterized by integrity.  This will be in direct contrast to the life he should have, but it will be the life God ordained for him to have, God directly changed his course.  Cayden was healed, and he’ll never know, we’ll never know the full extent of how sick he could have been.

This comes back to the point of healing and perspective.  I think we often look at God and trip out on conflicts in our lives that we put the sole blame on His shoulders.  Rather than looking at “what life could have been”, we think in terms of  ”what life should be.”  We experience difficulties along our journey and cry out to God “Why!” but fail to recognize that either the blessings or protection He provided without our even knowing.

When my father died, in my grief I had difficulty thinking through the fact that God would allow my dad to die when we had such a good relationship, while God allowed so many other dads to live who didn’t even know or care about their sons.  It was during the process of healing that I began to reflect how grateful I was to even know my father the way I did, to have the relationship I had in spite of his poor health and constant travel.  I realized that despite the pain I experienced in losing my dad, it paled in comparison to the pain I should have felt never knowing my father, or even worse, knowing a father in only negative ways.  God had healed me before I was even sick.

God heals in all kinds of ways.  Sometimes he heals instantly, His word or touch is all that is needed.  Other times He heals over long periods of time, allowing us to grind though a process of getting up every day and realizing He has allowed us to live.  We should never forget though, that His greatest act of healing came through suffering the pain of the cross, taking on our shame and punishment for sin, and giving us eternal grace and mercy as a result.  God’s ways are not our ways, but there is no one I trust more than the Great Healer.

We’re talking about Mental Health at Park Lake.  Last week we tackled Depression, this week we’ll take on Anxiety, and finally we’ll finish up with Healing.  Its interesting how much the church has ignored the topic of Mental Health, as if Mental Health and Faith don’t mix.  For someone to feel free in a church setting to be honest and open about issues such as Depression would be like my daughter Hannah feeling comfortable swimming in a pool without a floaty or the side of the pool near by, as you can see by her picture here it isn’t an easy going experience.

Mental Health is a difficult topic to be sure.  Having to overcome the stigma of someone muttering to themselves as they stomp down the street is a challenge, but in reality the topic is like having a big gorilla in the room that everyone is trying to ignore.  If everyone has enough faith we wouldn’t have mental issues, but people of faith do have mental issues, and it is comforting to see that scripture is honest about the topic.

From Job to David to the Disciples we see depression, anxiety, and all kinds of irrational behavior.  The concept that great men and women of the faith lived lives void of dark days is in itself “crazy” and just plain wrong.  Part of our human nature is wrapped up in emotions, and unfortunately those emotions get us in trouble.

What I think is dangerous is ignoring the issue completely and sitting in a church service, feeling the dark void grow larger in your life, and thinking you’re the only one who has felt that way.  Guess what, our churches are filled with people with mental issues, and we need to be honest with the topic and shed light on the role our faith and God’s Word play in healing and recovery.

Jesus still is in the business of healing, but its important to be honest with what we’re suffering from.  We need to be able to look to our faith and find answers, but that can only happen if the church is honest with the problem.

I’m finding myself increasingly frustrated over the priorities that are coming out of Washington.  I recently read an article where the Nation of Mexico is taking the State of Arizona to court over their recent Immigration Law, Mexico is joining our own Federal Government in challenging a law that reflects an existing federal law.  I’m having a hard time figuring this out.

What I have the hardest time figuring out is the fact that the Obama Administration worked so hard and tirelessly to bring us Health Care Reform, that a majority of the country doesn’t seem to want, and when it comes to Immigration Reform, that a majority of the country needs, the Administration seems to be stuck in mud.  The best President Obama can do is sue the State of Arizona?  He’s proven to be more politically crafty than that!

We need to find a way, as a nation, to respect the rights and privilege of living legally in our country, while keeping the American Dream alive for millions of people around the world.  Keeping our borders secure is only a small part of the problem, we need to make the process of American Citizenship accessible to people who want to be here legally, and we need to press to treat new citizens with the respect and opportunity they deserve in our free society without the fear of racial prejudice.

This whole process has only highlighted the issue that we continue to look to Washington for answers to problems they are incabible to solving, sidetracking them from what should be their priorities.  What the real answer is I have no ideal, but you can rest assured, I’m not looking to Washington anytime soon for solutions. 

Praise God, we have the opportunity to love our neighbor as our self, worship God freely, and daily submit to His will for our lives.  We need to pray in earnest for our national, state, and local leadership as they try to work through these difficult times, but more importantly than ever, we need to pray for God’s gracious hand on our struggling nation.  Only God can lead our leadership to find any true answers to the mess we’re all in!