Wednesday, October 31, 2007

The Man in Black



Early in the morning of May 11, 1965, officers in Starkville, Miss. arrested Johnny Cash for public drunkenness. As he told it in the song "Starkville City Jail," he was just "pickin' flowers."
Organizers are planning for this weekend in and around Starkville the first-ever Johnny Cash Flower Pickin' Festival in honor of the late country music legend.
Cash was tough enough to empathize with the hard-boiled characters in his songs and play for those in prison, human enough to struggle with addiction and connected to his faith and His Lord and Savior enough to live well his own story of redemption. He remains one of my favorite musicians.
Starkville is a little over halfway between Interstate 55 and the Alabama line along U.S. Highway 82 within a two-and-a-half-hour drive from Memphis, Tenn., Birmingham, Ala. and Jackson, Miss. It is also accessible by air at the Golden Triangle Regional Airport just east of Starkville.
Entry to the festival is free, though organizers suggest a $10 donation to support the Oktibbeha County Heritage Museum and the Starkville/Oktibbeha Boys and Girls Club.
Information can be found at www.myspace.com/pardonjohnnycash
or www.pardonjohnnycash.com .

Thursday, October 18, 2007

Over too soon

My wife, who does a much better and more efficient job at this whole blogging thing, summed up what happened two days ago. I will say that this pregnancy reinvigorated us with the idea of being parents again, and while I don't understand why things ended this way, I'm learning to trust that there are many valid reasons why things don't happen the way we think or plan, and by the grace of God, we'll try again.
Many wonderful, kind and generous people have expressed their love and support - including calls, floral arrangements and tears of sympathy and watching Jadyn for hours - for us in the last 48 hours.
We feel tremendously blessed to have the friends we do.
From here, I'll let our letter to the baby speak for itself. She already posted this on her blog.

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Dear Baby,

We found out today that you are no longer with us. We can't tell you how sad we are that we aren't going to get to experience you growing and coming into the world and becoming part of our family. We know that Jesus has other plans in mind for you, and that your brief time among us will somehow bring glory to God if we let it. We all love you so much and we look forward to one day seeing you when we all get to Heaven. Until that time, we know God will take good care of you.

Love,
Mommy, Daddy and Jadyn

Monday, October 01, 2007

Facing the giants

A lot of things have transpired in recent weeks to make me take a closer look at what I do in terms of interacting with others and how they perceive me and making changes to that end.
I've made some progress in taking a different approach to things with these issues, but in some other areas I'm still doing what I've been doing and it's created some problems for me.
I finally have had to face some truth about myself that I've been avoiding for close to 20 years relative to my upbringing. Suffice it to say that things which transpired in our home and in my interactions with my parents still influence my behavior today, even though they've been dead nine and 24 years respectively.
I've got some hills to climb to overcome some of these root causes. Finally facing the truth is a good first step.
I've had this image of God that at some point, I'll have had my last chance to get things right and because I blew all my previous opportunities, he'll say, "Nope, that's it!" as if He is some mean and vindictive game player.
Scripture says otherwise about His character, but I do believe that He sends messages to us through our circumstances. This time, I'm hoping and trusting that I'll pay better attention and start facing the giants.