Category: Featured

As I scroll through my social media feed I am very encouraged  to see powerful photos of life happening!  Some of the best are the pictures of a family photo session, as they are all laughing and looking right into the eyes of their loved ones.  Love seeing a father  holding their kid high in the air as their precious kid is smiling looking into their fathers eyes.  A newly engaged couple doing an engagement photo shoot is almost always a joyful session.  As the newly engaged couples looking intently into each others

eyes, showing the excitement about their life together.  These pictures are so captivating because it is rare to see this in our everyday life outside of social media.

The engagement pictures that are starting to really stick out to me are the ones where we are totally disengaged from life.  The ones where we walk into a restaurant and their is a family and each kid has an iPad with headphones on while the parents are on the phones at same time, and no one is talking or smiling.  When kids are trying to get the parents attention and we are on our phones and we “can’t hear them.”  When people walk all around with their heads down not engaging with anyone. them 

I am not saying I have this figured out, but it is something that I do work on and try to engage with people as much as I can.  I find this to be very fun and exciting to see the reaction of people when you start to actually talk to them.  I believe that for us to be as effective as we can for Christ, this is a way to open the door to someones heart.  Since we are called to we make a difference in this life then we need to engage others face to face.

People are not prepared for you to talk to them, they don’t know what to do when you are in an elevator with them and they are starring down at their phone, and you ask them how they are doing?

When your waiting in line at the coffee shop or grocery store and you have a conversation with the people in line.  You never know what will happen when we start to engage with the people God puts in our path, or even our own family.  When you look at the engagement pictures of people without devices vs the ones with devices look how much happier they look.  It truly is heartbreaking at times to see so many people missing what is around them for the device in front of them.

There is no doubt that we need human interaction.  Not only could this change someones day for the better, it could change their life for eternity.   I challenge you to leave your phone in your pocket or at your house and go out into the world and have some real engagement.

Jan 7th 2018 –

Our 16mth old daughter Copelyn had to go to an ER Clinic that morning due to high fever of 104. They released her and said she had an ear infection and told us we can pick up her RX and let her rest.

Erika takes her home while I am at church with our two other kids. She lays her down and then starts to hear some noises coming from Copelyn’s room. She goes in and Cope is not responding at all and is very limp. She then calls our friend Sherry (ER Nurse) and Sherry tells her to call 911 immediately!

At the same time this is happening we are on our way home from church & stop to pick up the RX. We get home and Erika runs out holding Copelyn and crying hysterically and tells me she’s not responding and she’s called 911.

I quickly get out of car and take Cope from Erika and have her run across the street to our neighbor who is a police officer – with no luck.

Copelyn is still not responding – as I’m holding her and praying over her our friend (Sherry, who Erika had called earlier) all of a sudden drives up and takes Cope from my arms and starts to work on her (I had no idea how she even knew where we lived or how she knew) I was in shock, but so thankful.

She then tells us to leave and she will watch our other kids as we drive to Texas Children’s Hospital before the ambulance arrives.

Copelyn is still very non responsive the whole drive with her eyes rolled back into her head. It’s a horrible feeling seeing her this way with your wife holding her crying.

We get to the hospital and they immediately start working on her and they tell us these are “febrile seizures.” She then has another seizure at the hospital – which was again horrible, but we were glad to be at the hospital when it happened. This seizure caused the ER team to run many tests.

All the blood work came back clear and after hours of being at the hospital they discharged us and asked us to watch her very closely. They asked us to work hard to keep the fever as low as possible to avoid anymore seizures.

As we have been home she is acting more normal, although her fever has gotten to as high as 105 again. We are praying over her and seeing progress in her.

These few days have been hard on us as we’ve seen our daughter in a way that we never want to see again. It’s truly horrible – although we are so thankful for all the prayers / hospital visits / friends, family and neighbors watching our other kids while we were with Copelyn.

I want to shed light on these febrile seizures.

These are absolutely horrible, but a little more common than we first expected.

This is one of our best songs ever! We loved doing this!!!

I love my sweet wife so much!! She is an amazing wife, incredible mom and super hard worker. We have had an outstanding 7 Years together and I thank God for all of it.

We have had some fun times the last 7 years. So for the next few days I will share some of those fun memories right here.

Here is one of our favorites from a vacation we took 2 years ago.

This is a repost from my wife’s Blog. She’s an amazing writer, very proud of her.  
Friendship 

“It’s impossible to live the right life when you have the wrong friends.” Craig Groeschel
Friendships are always evolving, wouldn’t you agree? And not only are the relationships themselves evolving, our definition of what we would consider to be a friend evolves as well.
I can recall the types of “friends” I had during my teens and into my early twenties. Good heavens, can somebody feel me? Makes me grateful for that evolution I mentioned. Isn’t that season necessary though? It’s impossible to really appreciate a good friendship if you haven’t had a few shallow, one sided, selfish friendships to grow from. I feel like the Lord has taught me a lot in this area over the last six or seven years. Here’s where I’ve landed and the guidelines I try to stick to when it comes to my friendships.
It starts with you. The day I began looking inward, I was on my way to better friendships. Instead of approaching a friendship wondering what I could get out of it, I began looking for ways that I could contribute to the relationship. I began working toward being the type of friend I wanted in another person.
There is a necessary season of cutting ties to experience growth. This was painful for me. This was also the same time that the Lord was really working in my life in lots of areas. Pruning, if you will. It hurt. It was lonely. But oh, sister. How beautiful the growth it brought into my life. Growth and relationships I still benefit from today. There hasn’t been one thing that the Lord has asked me to lay down that I have looked back on and wished I hadn’t. NOT ONE.
Not everyone gets the free pass to be your friend. This is what you didn’t hear me say. I didn’t say not everyone deserves your respect or your kindness. And I didn’t say don’t be friendly. What I’m getting at here is filtering those that have access to your most precious, private spaces. Guarding your heart and using great wisdom and discernment when it comes to the people you allow in. I wholeheartedly believe that those we surround ourselves with are essential to the story we want to tell with our lives. Friendships are such a sweet, sweet, wonderful blessing. They possess the power to make or break us. Know your worth. For this reason I say, not everyone gets a free pass.

Not all friendships are created equal. What do I mean? There are different, but necessary, levels of friendships. Be ok with that. From your acquaintances, to your play-date park moms, women at the gym, women in your church, people you see daily, to narrowing the funnel down to the closest relationships you have. Your bestie for the restie! Yeah I said it. Different levels of friendships are ok, and in my opinion, very natural and healthy. You don’t have to divulge all to everyone. This is also a great place to practice wisdom when sharing your life.
Are you the problem? Is your life a revolving door of friends? Are you constantly “on the outs” with someone? Are you always, or frequently the victim? Does drama seem to follow you wherever you go? Do you always talk about yourself, rarely pausing to consider others? If you answered yes to any of these questions, I’m gonna break it to you gently. There’s about a 100% chance that you’re the problem. Begin to ask yourself what you can do to contribute to others lives instead of taking from it. A life lived all about ourselves isn’t much of a life at all. It takes some effort to learn how to give instead of always take. Be intentional.
Here’s what this all boils down to. You can have a lifetime of shallow friendships that come and go with the wind, or you can get vulnerable, do some self reflection and soul searching and gain real, deep, true friendships that will alter your definition of what a friend truly is. What story are you telling from the friends you choose? Might be time to make some hard decisions. Do it. You won’t be sorry.

Have you ever been passionately heading in one direction, only to look up and be sorely off course, in a completely different place than you had originally planned? Often times, we set out to do something and we’re 100% in, we’re super excited and confident that we’re going to make it happen.  This could be a work opportunity, a moment in our relationship with our family, or even our walk with the Lord.  In the moment we feel as though everything is going great, then somehow, someway we realize that we are in a different place than we had originally planned.

We’ve been tripped up and there we are, on the ground staring up and wondering what in the world happened.

This is normal, although this is something that no one is talking about.  This is not the most popular Instagram post. People don’t tweet about how they’ve fallen or failed to be where they thought they should be. It’s not the most liked Facebook post.  People don’t want to admit or share that they’ve failed or fallen. Some just want their life to look perfect. When in reality, life is hard and people fall and experience pain.

The question is, what is our response? Some stay in the failure and in the pain, never getting up from the spot where they were tripped up.  The best response is to stand up and start running with all you have again!

Philippians 4.13-14 Brothers, I do not consider myself yet to have laid hold of it. But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, 14 I press on toward the goal to win the prize of God’s heavenly calling in Christ Jesus.

In Philippians, Paul commands us and teaches us through his life. He shows us that we need to forget the past, and get up and GO! We need to strain onto what is AHEAD, and forget what is behind.

This video of my son is a perfect example of this. Yes it’s funny and it’s ok to laugh. I think it’s neat to see that he didn’t stay down and cry in his pain, and he didn’t allow the laughs of the other kids to stop him.  Notice how hard he was running, he got tripped up, but got back up and continued on to destroy the goal that he originally set out to get!  Then he jumps with all he has to where the other kids were sitting.  He was pumped that he crushed the reason he first started running.  Let’s stand up and start running again, start today!