It’s true. Sarah and I are the proud parents of a baby boy to be born February 11th(ish), 2009.

I’m so excited. At the beginning of the pregnancy, I had it in my head that we were going to have a girl. Not sure why, it just felt like it. I was really excited for ‘daddy daughter time’, having a little girl I could protect, cherish, and teach to spit. But, in the past few weeks, I have been just gradually coming to think of baby as a boy. And, now that it is confirmed that he has a penis, I’m so excited to be having a boy.

I grew up without really having a dad around. My grandpa was there, and he filled the father roll in my life in many ways. But, my dad floated in and out so much that I missed allot of the things dad’s pass on to their boys. The most predominate one I can think of is learning to shave. I remember trying to shave by doing what they did in the commercials and movies, not by trying to do what my dad did.

Little things like that add up in life. While I may not have memories from my child hood of learning man stuff from my dad, I get to create those memories for/with my boy.

Redemption comes in the greatest and smallest places.

Anyways, here are a few pictures from our ultrasound last week: Read the rest of this entry

I put way WAY too much pressure on my self.

Pressure to get it all right, to be the hero, to impress people… pressure to have all my shit together hidden from everyone else.

It’s a whole lot of heavy pressure to carry around.

It just feels like if I don’t do it right, if I can’t carry the weight I’m going to be a failure… a small person who has nothing to offer anyone… if I can’t do it all I am going to be un-likeable, un-loveable, and un-worth anything.

Like I said, it’s a whole lot of pressure I put on myself.

With this much pressure, cracks start to show, things satart slipping through those cracks, and things fall apart. When things go wrong, they go spectacularly wrong. At least that’s what it feels like. Feels like the world is crashing down and that nothing is ever going to be ok again.

Even though things usually work out.

I have no idea why I put this kind of pressure on my self. I don’t demand perfection from anyone else… in fact I expect flaws from people. I expect people to be imperfect. I try to just accept people and their flaws. But from myself, I’ve got to get it right. Every time.

I’m tired of the expectations I put on myself. I’m tired of not being able to be honest about the real mess I am. I’m not the stronger one, I can’t juggle three side projects, two jobs, family life and still try and be a contributing part of my church community. I can’t make money that isn’t their stretch to cover all our bills. I can’t take care of everything so my wife doesn’t have to ever worry about anything. Hell, I can’t even remember to eat and brush my teeth every day.

I can’t.

And that’s ok.

Like someone said to me this morning, “Don’t sweat it man.”

Sometimes, I’ve got to just let go. No, that’s not right.

Sometimes,I just have to let go. Do what I can with what I have, but I can’t hold so tightly to the need to be perfect. After all, I’m not my own savior.

I need to remember that.

I am not my own savior.

I can’t save myself, solve every problem, always have the energy and stamina to solve everyone’s problems. The world will go on with or without me. Even when I can fix things, it doesn’t change the fact that I am a flawed person, with my own mistakes and failures. And I am still lovable, just like everyone else. My ability and lack their of to carry the weight of the world does nothing to change my value.

I am not the hero.

Jesus is.

My friend Thomas Ward started a discussion with me via twitter about how one can measure faithfullness in following Jesus. This is the sermon rant that resulted from his challenge of factoring Matthew 25 into understanding measuring fidelity without falling into judging everyone by some standard of works. This this is long. Kudos to anytin who can last the whole thing. I’ll buy you a cookie… mmm… cookies…

Metrics of Fidelity

Read the rest of this entry

Sometimes, you have a crappy year.

I have a friend who has had this kind of year. He goes by the handle Strawfoot. I won’t go into the details, but it’s been a year that makes me go, “Damn dude.” The icing on the cake came about two weeks ago. A lightning strike near his house fried most of the electronics in his house, including his mac.

So I want to do something nice and get his mac replaced. I wish I could afford to just out right buy one for the guy, but that’s not something within my means right now. Instead, I am giving everyone a chance to get in on this random act of kindness.

I have set up a dog-eared account on pay-pal. Anyone who wants to bring some happy to Strawfoot’s life, feel free to give whatever you can. I don’t care if it’s a dollar, everything counts.

So, help me bring some happy to Strawfoot’s shitty year. Let’s get Strawfoot a mac!

Crush It!: Why NOW Is the Time to Cash In on Your Passion

I’m not one to go off ranting about the ‘next best thing’. Usually, as soon as something gets popular it makes me like it even less.

That’s just how I roll.

Right now, there is a flood of talk and books about how to use social media to grow your brand. Seriously, every is talking, blogging, and tweeting about “sure fire ways to get thousands of followers and make tones of moneys every month” using social media.

As annoying as most of these voices are (seriously, if you have to tell me your a social media expert I’m gonna probably not really trust that you are… just saying), they have hit upon one HUGE thing. The landscape of business has already changed dramatically.

Take the idea of personal branding. The very fact that everyone, their dog and their grandma are doing it, as well as corporations, CEO’s, churches, movie stars, bands, etc… really should make us stop and think. Twelve years ago, business was dominated by corporations and multi million dollar ad campaign. Now, if your willing to hustle and work it, you can be more effective for your passions and business than any corporation. The time is right for anyone and everyone to actually cash in on what you are passionate about.

Gary Vaunerchuk has been doing this stuff for a few years… for quite a few years. He gets how social media, blogs, facebook, twitter, etc… can actually help you grab your passion by the balls and make money doing what you love. His book Crush It is his road map for how to actually do it.

This ain’t no get rich quick scheme. If you know anything about Gary (for those of you that don’t, go hit up his bio), he believes in working hard at what you love so that what you love can take care of you. Yes, he is a business minded guy, and yes this is a business book, but you gotta understand its still about work ethic, getting down and dirty, busting your ass to make it work. But, the entire game has changed so drastically in the past eight years or so that it is to your advantage to seriously think and rethink about business.

Crush It is a map to this new business landscape. The book is an overview of business strategy, as well as details about how to play that strategy out in the game. It’s not just a pithy book about concepts people talk about at power lunches and board meetings. It’s some rubber meets the asphalt/boot meets your ass type stuff. Have a look for your self. Go download the sample chapter and read it.

The book looks to be a quick, easy read that is gonna give you some direction on how you can take what you already love (photography, quilts, cooking, cats, open source, books… whatever it is), use tools that your probably already using (come on… who doesn’t have a facebook?!?), work your ass off, and make a living at it.

The economy sucks, but the time has seriously never been better to start doing what you love, working hard at it, and getting paid for it.

Now, The book comes out October 13, 09. It’s going to be reliesed in a  hard back edition and a version for the Kindle. Go pre-order it. Come on, you know you want to CRUSH IT.

What if heaven isn’t about a return on your investment? What if it’s about the kingdom of Yahweh and his messiah swallowing up the broken kingdom of man? What if heaven starts now in how we give, receive the broken and outcast, about how we sacrifice and serve?

If all that was true, what would your sign say?