What can I say?

It's "A Really Real Looking Bunny."
In fulfillment of my Christmas gift to my niece, Sandra of "a painting of anything you want."
...I love that kid.

Homecoming

I went back to my home church Saturday. I was invited to speak in both morning services about "how North Terrace short term mission trips changed my life."

My general philosophy of living is becoming more and more divergent from this church, and there's a lot of bitching I could do about materialism, america worship, and country-clubish-ness that I'm going to put aside to tell you this:

God used North Terrace to teach me what it means to make disciples. Sunday was the yearly missions rally and it was a great reminder of everything that the church is doing right. Multiple generations of people who have grown up at North Terrace and gone into full time ministry were represented. It was beautiful. My friend Michael preached and my friend Jessie was there representing a Christian school. Michael and I especially could easily point to mission committee members or missionaries present who had intentionally given us opportunities to feel out what we thought God was calling us to vocationally. Our church has an overall philosophy of "you think you could do this? Let's talk about it and then find a way for you to try it!"

I only spoke for about 4 minutes in each service about my experiences and what I'm up to now, but still, over a dozen people came up to me later just to tell me that they were proud of me. It didn't even feel a little patronizing and the more I think about it, the more I realize it's because the church made an investment in me and my friends. They're proud of what I'm doing and they own it because any ministry I have is fruit of the ministry they had with me first.

I also got to see my brother coach his son in a 7th grade football game. Drew looks like a half size version of Lee and acts like it, too. It's good to see my brother turn out to be a good dad.

On Sunday, I picked peppers out of my parent's garden with my brother Charlie and his daughters. They're beautiful and he looks at them in a way he doesn't look at anyone else.

It was good to be home.

Eye Sore

Um...literally.

It hurt like crazy when I took my left contact out last Thursday. As the night wore on, it hurt more and more. My eye was irritated and pink, and felt scratchy. So I rinsed it with saline. And rinsed it. And rinsed it. It didn't do anything, so I looked at my eye closely, shining a flashlight into it and found a little white dent on my iris. I said a white dent on my iris! It's the weirdest thing I've ever had happen to my body. I went to the optometrist the next day, and he said I had a sterile ulcer--as in, my immune system was trying to kill germs on my eye. I guess this happens to some people when they sleep in their contacts. But I know not to sleep in my contacts, so after being reassured that I wasn't going blind, I tried to figure out what the hell happened.

And then I remembered...

The bugs. I usually wear some kind of protective eye wear on bicycle, but I skipped it one day a couple of weeks ago to take a long bike ride at dusk. I couldn't believe how dense the bugs were on the southern part of the bike path. I got so many in my mouth...and my eyes...so many, in fact, that when I woke up the next day, I found one still in my eye.

So I guess the lesson is, try not to kill bugs with your eyes?

Oh, also, our computer crashed the same day I found the dent in my eye ball. This week has been much, much better.