My Shabbat Seven v2009.09.26

• Our annual family trip to Eckerts in Grafton. JT's favorite part is the animals.
• Columbia Bottom Conservation Area. It's one of my spots for my mini-retreats to the woods. I went there for a bit on Friday for a spiritual checkup.
• Fried Zuchinni like my mom used to make. Ah--but she was the one who made it this time!
• Teaching my son how to play dominoes. Friday was family game night, though there wasn't a lot of "game" due to a tired "family" and a late supper making the evening a short "night."
• Google calendar. I've been experimenting with different calendar tools. I'm thinking Google's gonna be the winner. Sometimes our family calendar, my work calendar, and the church calendar make for colorful days.
• My mp3 player. Whether running, working, going to sleep, or just trying to refocus, I love having portable tuneage! Often, it really does help me be me.
• Free, extended babysitting by Grandma Donoho...again. She's getting in her "grandma fix" before harvest begins in central IL. It's so nice.

Praise God, from whom all blessings flow!

The Shurtleff Fund [An FYI to UABCers]

UABCers would be interested to know that the legacy of Shurtleff College, which was a huge part of the life of our church for decades, continues to advance the name of Jesus in the environment of higher education...and your pastor gets to be part of it.


On Monday I drove up to Springfield for a meeting of the Board of Directors of something called the Shurtleff Fund. This Fund is a non-prof effort made possible by the sale of Shurtleff College to SIU back in 1957. Every year we give money from the Fund's interest income to various campus ministries in our Region and to two Regional scholarship programs.

Unfortunately, we're never able to give anyone as much as they'd like of course, and this year the decision-making was compounded by the investment performance of our economy this past year. Still, it is good to be able to give significant amounts of money to several groups, including the Baptist Student Foundation at UofI where Alison and I met and the Shurtleff Campus Ministry at SIU-Edwardsville where my friend and UABC's own Rob Kirbach is the University Chaplain.


I realize that not a few in our church family are acquainted with our connections to our denomination or know much about what it means to say we're "American Baptists." So I hope that this helps connect a dot or two.

My Shabbat Seven - v2009.09.19

For For those of you who follow my wife's blog (http://alisondonoho.blogspot.com/), you know she has her "Favorite Fridays" postings. Well, I'm going to imitate her good idea and call mine 'My Shabbat Seven.' (For now, you can read more than you want to know about "shabbat" here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shabbat)

• Free, extended babysitting by grandmas! Thanks, Jan, for Monday! Thanks, Mom, for the last couple of days!
• My flexible job...so when my son gets sick and my wife has critical meetings, I can adjust my schedule temporarily without creating a lot of major issues for my employer.
• The first place St. Louis Cardinals and getting to go to games with the fam.
• The spiritual growth campaign we're doing with church, Outflow. Already seeing how people are responding to God's grace!
• That we paid off the student loan! We highly recommend Dave Ramsey's Financial Peace University to help motivate you to do with money what most of us know on some level we should do with money, but don't.
• Diet Mountain Dew Ultra Violet. Thank you Pepsi-cola for this diet drink that this pre-diabetic will actually drink.
• This weather is awesome! The only thing better would've been if I'd been able to work & play in it more.
  

Praise God from whom all blessings flow!

Adjusting

It’s been a difficult adjustment. My three-year-old son has been going to preschool for two weeks now (3 days/week, am & pm sessions). And I have had a hard time adjusting.
Thanks to going to Busy Bears twice a week this past year and already being familiar with the teachers and setting, JT has adjusted well to preschool from all that we can tell. I, however, do not have a new routine yet.
4 ½ of the 6 days he’s been in preschool, I have been close to ticked-off-at-the-world by 3:30pm. I recognize that it’s no one’s fault except my own, and I’ve tried to not displace my anger towards anyone (though Alison might disagree with that assessment).
Since his preschool is across the hall from my office, it makes a lot of sense for me to take him and pick him up from school. However, that means my workday gets chopped down to 6 hours from the pre-preschool level of 8+ hours. At 2:30 I go sign him out, help him gather his stuff, talk to the teachers, give him a snack, and talk with him about his day. Then, unless he takes a nap (happened once) I become 50% (at the most) effective…which gradually turns my insides into a raging, resentful jerk.
Now, legalistically, I’ve managed to get an appropriate amount of work hours in due to a lot of evening meetings. Yet, I still don’t feel I’m giving my vocation what I should. My Jesus and my congregation deserve better.
So, Thursday I went into the office early (and sent our Preschool Director into shock) and Alison brought him to school. This worked much better for me, though it inconveniences Alison. I think we’re gonna try that a few more times. And if that doesn’t work, we might be looking for an afternoon sitter and/or changing my day off. For now, if you read this, say a prayer for me.

Get Those Knees Up!

Today our family got back out to the park for what I hope will be a fall routine. Alison & JT walked a bit then went to the playground; I ran. Though my body complained, my shoulders were tight, and my form was out of whack as evidenced by my upper appendages flailing across my chest…it felt good to get back out there running.
While scuttling up and down and around the pedestrian path at Glazebrook Park, I realized how often I recall one of the few pieces of running wisdom I picked up back in the day: “when going up a hill, get your knees up higher to maximize your stride.” Racers who know this actually can pass other racers while going up a hill. Even now when I run and approach an incline my mind begins repeating the mental mantra, “Get those knees up! Get those knees up!” Now, I’m not gonna be running any races anytime soon (maybe a mini-marathon before I’m 40 or away from a mountain lion while hiking), but that mentality is part of me.
So I continued to scuttle up and down and around and another dimension of this principle occurred to me. When life gets tough and everything seems to be going uphill, we have to change our stride. This doesn’t mean it gets easier necessarily—it’s still requires concerted effort. Our stride—our pace of work, the extracurriculars we choose to do, our spiritual habits, the time we spend with which people—has to adjust how our energy gets applied. Now, I’m personally not going up any hills right now…at least nothing more than the one-day climb occasionally, but this was what I thought about while trying to figure out how to run again this evening.

"Don’t you realize that in a race everyone runs, but only one person gets the prize? So run to win! All athletes are disciplined in their training. They do it to win a prize that will fade away, but we do it for an eternal prize. So I run with purpose in every step. I am not just shadowboxing. I discipline my body like an athlete, training it to do what it should. Otherwise, I fear that after preaching to others I myself might be disqualified." (1 Corinthians 9:24-27, NLT)