This is a photograph I took when I was 18. I was good at photography then. Not that I'm bad now, but I certainly had a more keen technical grasp on the skill. I've still got an eye for composition, but now I'm reacquiring equipment, creativity, and practice.

I was thinking about the reason I got away from photography for several years and it was such a strange pride / approval thing back then. I made the decision to stop photographing mostly because I couldn't bring anything new to photography.

I took what I believed to be a pretty high-quality landscape at one point and I was proud of it. I was going to show this photography in a gallery and everything. It was good. The next week I saw almost an exact replica (only better) in a photography magazine and for some reason I began believing the lie that I had nothing I could bring to photography. I also thrived on the attention that I received and when I wouldn't be praised for something I shot I would feel inadequate.

The truth is though...I'm good at this. I'm not good at much. I can't build anything. I stink at most artistic mediums. I can't draw or even paint by number for that matter. Wish I could sing or play an instrument...no luck though. But I can take photographs. And if God has gifted me this way I think it's up to me to run with it. So, I'm getting back in it.

So what are you supposed to be doing?

My bride picked up the phone a couple of days ago to find an unfamiliar voice. My grandma Nevada. Nevada was the foster mother of my mom. My sister Amie and I grew up knowing her as our grandma of course. We didn't see her nearly as much as my dad's mom though.

Nevada called us to let us know she had come across some photos that she was getting rid of to see if we wanted them. She said basically that once her and my grandpa Don die off, there won't be anyone around who knows who all these kids are. They raised many foster kids. Those foster kids had lots of kids. I had a different cousin pretty much every time I went over there. All loosely connected...all a little confused.

So I called Nevada yesterday and I drove Allison, Ava, and I over to meet up with them. We sat around and chatted for a while and reminisced. It was certainly bittersweet as I only realized just how long I've been away as I was walking through the door. It's been about 9 years since I've connected with them. How can you be so close and just drift away for 9 years?

I picked up some photos and it was so exciting because I don't remember any of them.

My mom and dad together...and looking happy:

My sister before the drugs, before the accident, before her innocence was ripped away:

Looking forward to everything:

Mom (she called me yesterday and she sounded straight.):

Apparently mom had something to do with the church...I always thought she was lying:

I was 14, Amie was 13:

It was a good trip to my grandparents house. It boggles my mind to think of just how introverted an extrovert can be. I've got to make time for the important things in my life.

We watched Juno last night. I liked it. I didn't know if I liked it at first because it made me uncomfortable...but it was good. I reminded me of real life and how things happen. So many people want to look deep to find where problems come from...so often they're just a result of boredom or the chips falling in the wrong direction. Juno was worth seeing.

Do you ever feel like you aren't the best at being who you are? And this time I'm not talking about being phony. I'm talking about feeling like an imposter in my own skin.

People would call me an extrovert...and I would too, however, when given the opportunity I withdraw and I'm fine to be by myself. This would only be for short stints of course. I always begin to miss my family and I crave community after while. But I don't need it constantly. I can run away from everyone and stay gone for a while...usually what brings me back quickly is the ideas that people are wondering where I am. This feels prideful and yet it usually turns out to be true when I'm thinking it.

I kind of feel like a lone ranger even when I'm in a crowd of people. Like I fit in...but I don't. A sabbath from the good comes to mind. A break from the healthy, not for unhealthy things, but other healthy things seems needed. Solitude and a chance to clear my head are a must for me and I realize it too little and often too late. Hmm.

I shot some selfish photos for a post on Ragamuffin Soul. Check it out and share any tattoos that you have while you're at it.

Hell hath no fury like this twelve year old boy. That's my thousand-yard stare...

I am 25 years old. I am also a pastor. These two things conflict sometimes. Now while I'd love to tell you that I feel with certainty I've been given a Divine Vocation or that there's some "calling" on my life, I...um...I can't. Sorry. I was thrust into ministry. Having come from some pretty rough places growing up, I fell pretty hard for Jesus shortly into my adult life.

I was addicted. I was addicted to the life that the bible promised me. I was addicted to the power of the Holy Spirit. I was addicted to the love I was receiving from people who didn't seem to care where I had been. I was addicted to Jesus. So I began to serve. And I served and I served and I served. I was good at serving. God was using me and I was letting Him. So I served some more. I couldn't quite figure out what I was good at so I tried everything. It got to the point where my regular job was getting in the way of my serving with the church. The church recognized this and so they offered me a full-time position. My title? Associate Pastor.

I was 23 years old and I was going to be caring for hundreds of people. I had no idea what I was getting into. Two years later I still have no idea how I am in the position I've been given. It's somewhat surreal, but isn't God?

There are a lot more challenging areas in the realm of leadership, things I was not ready for. What do you do when people continually assume that you're the Student Ministries guy? The answer, "Nope, I can't stand teenagers." can only work for so long. What do you do when someone declines your council for input from "the REAL Pastor"? Everything inside me wants to hide in the corner and cry, but I think I read that's unacceptable in some John Maxwell book or something. I feel like a poser. I feel like I'm the wrong guy for the job. I feel completely and totally inadequate. All of these feelings are only sometimes, but when they're there...they're there.

The most challenging thing for me would have to be the battle that rages in my mind. When your head pops out of the foxhole that's when you get shot at. Sometimes I feel like my hole isn't dug deep enough and there's a target on my dome. Satan lies to me and I agree with him more often than I'd like to admit. I'm happy to report that I've recently been stomping on Satan's punk face though. I'm able to quickly fall into the serving man rather than God category. Thankfully, God has been reminding me that He looks at my heart rather than my outward appearance. (1 Sam. 16)

So there...I admit it. I don't really know what I'm doing. God sure seems to though.

I began growing a beard about three months ago for a project in my mind. I wanted to see how my beard would grow over a 90 day period. I started taking photographs each morning about one week into the Beard Project. I devoted myself to take a photo on my laptop as soon as I woke up each morning. The results weren't pretty.

I had no idea how different I began to look after about 90 days. My face took on a totally different shape. This may seem obvious, but my wife and daughter were shocked when I shaved. Ava couldn't stop looking at me with this strange, bashful gaze. It was so adorable. She was flirting with me. It made me want to stay clean shaven. Too bad I look like I'm twelve.

Here's a before and after the shave:


I told you I looked like I was twelve.

Here's a video (remember, it was first thing in the morning!) of the growth:

I cleaned my aquarium the other day. We were having a party and it looked a bit on the disgusting side. Ever since I worked for an aquarium maintenance company a couple years ago, I've had a hard time keeping my own little piece of indoor ocean clean. Rebellion? Laziness? Yes.

Whenever I clean my aquarium it causes me to think about odd things related to it. For a moment, I think about the inconsiderate and mindless ways in which I pulled together a few thousand dollars to get it. I worked my butt off, but I also stole, lied, and cheated my way into owning that aquarium. I look at it's beauty and I remember the person I was. And then I look at it for a few more seconds and I remember the Jesus who came to forgive me and restore me...thank you Lord Jesus. Thank you for leaving the ninety-nine to come and get me.

Looking at a beautiful saltwater aquarium also brings up some really offbeat memories. I can distinctly remember the first time I laid eyes on a marine aquarium. It was brilliant blue with bright orange Clownfish and gorgeous Anemones. There were Blue Hippo Tangs and amazing corals ebbing and flowing in the current. My face was glued to the glass as I watched the Volitan Lionfish prowl through the crystal clear water. I was hooked. At that very moment, even though I was only 9 or 10 years old, I vowed to myself that when I was older I would own one of these marvels. This amazing and majestic mini-ocean was sitting in a man named Phil's basement.



Phil was bi-sexual. I say that because I am certain that he was "with" my mother and I am also certain he was "with" other men. I'd rather not go into the details. Phil was one of the random scumbags whom my mom would drag my sister and I to stay with. To this day I still have no idea how she met these people. She would go over there to get drunk or high while my sister and I would try to keep ourselves entertained. Phil was one weird dude. I remember he always gave me the creeps and I never wanted to go over there. My dad would go to work and during the summer mom just took us wherever she went. We would tell her we didn't want to go over there and she would convince us that it would only be for a little while and she would buy us something or take us somewhere we wanted to go. Many times a couple of hours would turn into a couple of days and World War III would take place when dad finally found us. It was a mess.

As strange as this Phil character was, he didn't hold a candle to Dave. Dave lived directly across the street from Phil. Dave had a repugnant house that made me want to vomit every time I was in it. It smelled of urine, tobacco, alcohol, marijuana, and death. There was garbage everywhere. He had two gigantic Great Danes and a sofa/love seat combo that were covered in thick plastic. You wouldn't want the furniture to get all messed up in a fancy place like that now would you?

Dave's pinnacle of weirdness was achieved in the form that he wasn't Dave anymore. Dave had become Rebekkah. Dave saved up his money and had a sex change operation and was now a nasty ugly man with woman parts. Dave's candy...excuse me, Rebekkah's candy was Cocaine. He/She had little brown vials of cocaine all over the place and my sweet mum liked the same kind of nose candy as DavBekkah. I'm not entirely sure, but all signs point to DavBekkah being a cocaine dealer. Both Phil and Dave had children...oh how I'm praying for them right this second.


I believe the most insane memory I have of Phil and DavBekkah would have to be the night my mom had some sort of overdose at DavBekkah's house. As I try to remember to the best of my ability I see myself as being 11 years old. There was some sort of freak party going on and I was supposed to be with my dad. Mom said she was taking me over to his apartment, but we were going to stop at Rebekkah's house first. Mom and dad were divorced by this time and they hated each other a good bit. Dad got custody of me and mom got custody of my sister Amie. I was sentenced to spend every other weekend with my mom. Although I tried to make the most of it each time, there was anguish and a sense of impending doom rising up in me each time dad dropped me off.

Minutes stretched to hours at DavBekkah's house and I continually tugged on my mom telling her we had to go. The next time I came in the room to request our departure my mom was laying on the floor with white vomit pooled under her face. She was passed out and did not look okay. She would shake every now and again and I was freaking out. I remember they wouldn't let me use the phone and I was cussing at them.

All I wanted was my dad, he could make this better I thought to myself. Or at least be a sane person to talk to. I didn't know what was wrong with my mom. I'd seen her passed out many, many times, but this was different. I found my mom's keys in her jacket pocket and I dragged her outside and shoved her into the car. This was a lot of work for a boy my size. I took a deep breath and I started the car. I knew how to get to me and my dad's apartment from there...it was only 5 or 10 minutes away. I weighed the benefits and the consequences out in my mind. I thought about what would happen if I got pulled over by a police officer and I remember I was so mad at my mother I knew I could place all the blame on her. So we drove.

I couldn't see over the steering wheel, but I could see through it. I drove straight to my dad's house and by this time it was 11 or 12 at night. There was hardly any traffic out...I remember this because ever car I saw was an anxiety attack in my mind. I drove 2 exits down the interstate and within a couple more minutes I was pulling into my familiar little apartment complex. Oh how happy I was to see that complex. We pulled up and I noticed that my dad wasn't home. He and my sister were probably out at my uncle's or something...I can't remember. I do remember that I started to drag my mom into the apartment and I decided against that. I left her in the car to sit in her vomit and I went inside. I sat there and cried for a while waiting on my dad to get home and I fell asleep on the couch.


I don't know why I didn't call 911 or drop my mom off at the hospital. I guess I didn't really know how bad that could have been. She could have died that night. The next morning and abstract time period after that incident have all become very blurry to me. I can't quite focus in on what transpired of all that nonsense later on...there had to be consequences for some of it.

I have no resolve or moral of the story for the end of this post. I can tell you that I am alive, my family is alive, some of them more alive than others, and I'm filled with joy because Christ lives in me. Jesus is the opposite of those things I remember and that gives me even more hope for the future. I heard a few years back that Phil died of AIDS. I am unsure about DavBekkah as that was the last time I ever saw him/her. Pray for these people...God is big enough to restore.

Jeremiah 29:11 says, "For I know the plans I have for you, plans to prosper you not to harm you. Plans for hope and a future."

Amen to that.

I'm one of those people who has suppressed a lot of my childhood memories.

The thought of that statement annoys me. I never wanted to be someone with fractured thoughts and memories, but the more I look around inside my brain the more it's become apparent that I've got compartments to be unlocked.

Even when I try hard to focus on the past, I cannot think back to before I was four years old. I've got a couple of memories during that time, but most of my recollection comes in from the time I was five to now. There are many breaks in between though. Sometimes I takes a person mentioning something that has happened or some random tidbit that will spark a conjuring of thoughts.

Allison told me a story the other day about an owl that her dad found in the yard. It was rather large, and in my estimation probably a Barn Owl. It died mysteriously and landed on his property. This caused a flicker in my brain and I began to remember a field trip I went on in the second grade. I would have been seven years old and during this time my mom would have been a full-blown alcoholic as well as a drug addict.

She wasn't addicted to crack cocaine yet. Crack wasn't that well known on the drug scene in 1989. Marijuana, and "White Crosses", which were amphetamines, were a a daily devotional. Mom would smoke, snort, or gag down anything you put in front of her. Needles didn't fit her style though so that form of Heroin was out. Everyone's got boundaries.

Dad worked for Coca-Cola as a beverage systems specialist and things were rocky at the workplace by now. Mom's alcohol and drug related shenanigans proved to be too much for a regular work schedule. He and mom had already lost the house and the car due to reckless lifestyles and an inability to conform to adulthood. They were party people and they were bad with money. That combo removed us from a nice bi-level in the suburbs to a $300-a-month dilapidated trailer. Oh how I don't miss that place.

I woke up the morning of the big field trip and I was so excited! Dad had taken me to lots of parks and nature preserves, but there's something about a class field trip that gets you all keyed up to solve the world's problems. You're a better human being the morning you wake up for a field trip. You don't have to do actual school work and you get to explore something new...what could be better? Breakfast perhaps. That would have been too much though.

Dad was off to work and mom's sole responsibility was to get me to school to catch the field trip bus. We would be heading to Governor Bebb Preserve to explore some old village and take the lay of the land. It was going to be great. We were going to check out their little wildlife sanctuary and have a picnic and make pioneer toys and learn about different cultures.

Mom wouldn't wake up though. I was awake. Of course I was awake, I was charged for my upcoming adventure. But I couldn't wake my mom up. She just wouldn't get up. I shook her and I yelled and I pleaded and I just couldn't get her to wake up. This happens sometimes when you have an alcoholic/drug-addict parent. You miss days of school ever now and again because they are sick. This happens sometimes. It's expected sometimes and it's not surprising, but it can't happen on the day of the field trip!

...ha...yeah right.

Well at least there will be no more stumbling via the stumbleupon bar at the top of my web browser. I got rid of that thing.

If I told you that you should get one (a stumble bar) then I take it back. Do not get one.

A stumbleupon bar basically gives us constantly bored people something to do when we have 2 spare seconds without gratification. You hit the "stumble" button and it brings up a random web page (video, image, blog, news story, etc...) that it has determined as "relevant" to you.

It tries to show you things that it thinks you'll like.

Problem is...it works. It shows me things that I do like in a sense...but they are things that I shouldn't be looking at. Not if I want to have sexual purity that is.

I'm about 90% of the way through this battle...that last 10% is the hardest.

You could say...I need to stumble less. Athankyou.

I think I have a disease. It's called Black-Eye-Syndrome.

I developed BES close to 3 months ago. Here's what my first outbreak of BES looked like:

Now believe it or not this was right after the first flare up and it actually got worse than this. Half of my eyeball filled up with blood. I had blurred vision for over a week. There is some kind of hairline fracture on my eye-socket.

All of this from dodgeball of course. I love dodgeball. I'm not very good at dodgeball, but I love dodgeball.

I'm posting this because it's nearly 3 months after my first outbreak of BES and I can't seem to get it cleared up. Every morning I look in the mirror and I'm like, "What the crap??"

Here's what I look like this morning..."What the crap??" p.s...this image is reversed due to photobooth being weird and backwards...or...forwards. Whatever.


No that's not a shadow on my face. I still have BES. Every single day someone asks me..."do you have a black eye?" or "did you get hit in the face again?"

I'm ridiculous.

I have to wash my hands a lot when I'm in super clean environments. I'll wipe things down with cleansers and bacteria-fighting agents regularly.

Then I go camping and I'll eat butter off the ground and drink water out of a lake.

I'm ridiculous.

It's been awhile in the making now but, today was my first day back to work in retail hell.

I believe it's been around three and a half years or so since I've been in the selling role. It felt quite strange today. I felt a bit lost...a bit uneasy. I think I'll get used to it and I'm pretty sure it will help me in my relationships with people.

My style was really starting to get cramped hanging around Christians all the time. Some of them are great. Some of them are spectacular people who truly walk what they talk and live life in amazing ways...but, that's only some of them.

I need to experience some realness. I'm around so many phony people all the time that it's amazing when I meet someone who is authentic. It shouldn't be an amazing thing to meet someone who is authentic. Not that outsiders from the church scene aren't phony too...don't get me wrong. We've all been someone we're not at some point.

A woman knocked into a ladder and it fell over and broke something today. She screamed "Jesus Fucking Christ!". I thought to myself, the overbearing Christian in me wants to be offended. I'm not offended though. I don't know if I should be...all I know is that I kept thinking, 'So that's His middle name?'.

Lord have mercy on us...we know not what we do.

For me, I can think of no other thing that's quite as relaxing as an automatic car wash.

Getting my hair cut is a close second, but I've never fallen asleep while getting a haircut...probably a good thing. I'm not quite sure what it is exactly. I mean, these touchless car wash deals are extremely noisy and yet it's like they cut out all the noise in my head.

I love getting my car(s) washed.

The reason I'm mentioning this is because I think I may have cut my automatic car wash supply off this year. I typically try to get a washin' every few weeks or so and it's always like a mini-vacation. No more mini-vacations planned. Why?

That's why:


I've been dreaming of one of these man-toys for a while now...that dream has become a reality. I simply had to wait for the right opportunity (enter my wife throwing a baby shower at our house) and viola!! 2600PSI...yes please. 5.5 Horsepower...yes please. Muahahahaha.

So...it's a bittersweet victory. While I can now blow the paint off of nearly any hard surface, I'll have to sit on the washing machine with my eyes closed and my imagination turned way up for the same car wash effect. It's a trade-off I'm willing to get used to.

Now if I could just figure out how to get gasoline to flow through this thing...