Welcome to Chris’s Blog

I’ve heard several teachings on the Father Heart of God. I’m not going to say I never believed that God loves us like a Father loves their child, but I definitely think I now have a much greater understanding of what that means. Words are great and all, but let’s face facts. Some things you just can’t put into words, they are much clearer when experienced. Some examples.

I’ve always known God loves me like a father, but how does a father love a son? When I look at Ethan my heart swells. At least that’s what it feels like. There are times when hugging him just doesn’t feel like enough, when it feels like there is so much love rising up inside of me that I have no sufficient method or outlet to actually express it. I do silly things to make him laugh, because seeing him smile brightens my day.

Now I look at myself. Several places in the Bible it talks about how we are seen as sons of God. I get so caught up in life that sometimes I forget that when God looks at me, His heart swells with love. That He likes to see me smile, and will even do things to make me smile. To those who believe that God is impersonal or distant this all sounds crazy, but I can assure you that what I’m saying is true. Grab a Bible concordance and look it up. The cool thing is that when you realize it’s true it will completely change you.

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Ethan can be funny sometimes. I learn a lot from watching him. He has some strange habits when he’s eating. Now most people know this but there are some who don’t so I’ll quick cover it. When feeding a baby you have to stop halfway through to burp them. Otherwise the air builds up in their belly causing discomfort and then they spit up all over you. Then they lose all the food they just got.

For awhile he displayed a lot of impatience. When Michelle would stop feeding him for the 15 to 90 seconds that it took to burp him, he would go absolutely crazy because he wanted food NOW!!! Wailing and screaming and all sorts of uppity emotional emotions. It reminds me of how we sometimes act with God. God always knows what’s best, and He always sees the whole picture. Ethan doesn’t understand why he needs to be burped, he just hates that there’s an interrupt to his getting the food that he wants, but also needs. Sometimes we don’t understand why we don’t get the things we think we need, or even the things we do need in the timely manner that we expect. The bottom line is that God is good, loves us and takes care of us, and sees the whole picture. When Ethan cries because Michelle takes him off the bottle (or the 2 bottles she carries on her person at all times) for a whopping 2 minutes, I usually find myself thinking, “Geese kid, calm down. This is ridiculous, you can wait 2 minutes while you’re getting burped.” But then I realize that I do the same thing. So where are the areas in my life where I’m crying or throwing a fit (though I usually just do it in my head) because things aren’t going the way I think they should?

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Crazy weekend I must say, but good nonetheless. Last Friday I was privileged to be able to participate in a dinner theatre production put on by a local church. Those of you who know me know that I absolutely love live theatre. I like acting in it more than I like watching it, but both are fun. Acting is one of those things that kind of got backburnered by the business of life. I really enjoy when I get to do it. That’s one of the main reasons I like helping out with Vacation Bible School so much every summer. But this was exceptionally fun because I’ve never done dinner theatre before. It adds a new element, because you never really know when the next scene is actually going to start. It depends a lot on when the people get through the line, and when your crazy cast mates decides to begin the scene. The show went really well, and I had a great time. The pastor asked if she could call me to help out again in the spring. I said, “You can call, for sure. I just make no guarantees as to whether or not I’ll be available.” I’m also still considering helping out with the drama department at the high school. I would love to, but I’m just so busy lately!

School is going well. School is the primary thing that keeps me really busy these days. I can barely keep up! However, I am really having fun with it. I’ve gotten to the classes that I really enjoy. Sometimes it’s hard for me to focus on doing my work because I just want to go and try this stuff on the network here at work. The things I’m learning are really going to help the campus out as well, and I’ve got a lot of ideas on thing to make things work smoother here and to increase what we can do.

Michelle is doing well. She gets sick sometimes, but I suspect it’s because of the baby living in her belly. She felt it kick for the first time last night. We’re both really excited about the little young’un. We’re expecting him in early to mid June. Good times indeed!

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Hello folks. Been awhile since i’ve posted anything. School and work has been keeping me so busy that I can’t keep up too well. But then again everybody is busy this time of year. Things are going well though. All of you who know me know how much I love live theatre and have spent many years involved with it in some way. Well I got a call 2 weeks ago and it would appear that one of the local churches are doing a dinner theatre and needed someone to fill a spot for them. So it looks like I’m doing a Christmas dinner theatre this upcoming Friday. I’m really excited about it, but I need to hurry up and get on my lines. I’m also doing a lot of work on the website at the moment. I’m very excited about it. Michelle is doing well. We had our 2nd doctor’s visit not that long ago. Everything checked out good. Those are the main things. Lots going on though. The outreach team leaves pretty soon. I’ve got a list of things that I want to do while their gone, so I’m excited to be able to get those things done.

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One thing I like about being married to Michelle is that she appreciates random things about me that surprise me. Sometimes I go purposefully do things with the sole reason of blessing her. Dishes is one of those things. I have a strange take on dishes. Dirty dishes don’t bother me. A lack of clean dishes for me to use bothers me. So until I’m out of clean dishes to use, there’s no reason to do the dishes since the dirty ones don’t bother me. So when I go against my natural grain and do the dishes before I think they need to be done, she’s the sole reason. Now I know dishes aren’t that big of a deal, but when I’m busy at work and then I come home and have homework or classtime to put in and have to do that and then finally get time to just sit down and relax and think, that is when dishes are the last thing I possibly would want to do. Times like that are when dishes seem like a big deal.

So sometimes I go out of my way to bless Michelle. Tonight was different. Tonight I came up and found a note from her. It basically said she appreciated something I had done during the day that I did and never really thought twice about doing. Doing what she was thanking me for was just what I do. It was a little weird to be thanked for it. But it felt really good. It’s dawned on me that she just likes who I am (most of the time, sometimes I’m a punk).  I like it that she likes who I am.

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Over the years many interesting things have been said about me, that’s for sure. It’s been said that I walked in “an icebreaker anointing”. Basically that in life I often go in ahead and break up the hard ground so that others can come in. It makes sense I suppose. When I was a student here at YWAM I went on my first outreach and it was to a country that is very closed to the gospel. When I went to Thailand it was to a village that had to our knowledge never received a foreign missionary team. That first year was basically just building relationships and loving on people. It wasn’t until the following year that we really began to see any people begin to accept Jesus. That second year I remember very vividly when the first person decided to follow Jesus. I was really excited, but I remember thinking to myself, “Okay, now what?” It is difficult to explain, but once people began coming to Christ I felt at a loss for what to do next. It felt like my job was done. Interestingly, I haven’t been sent to Thailand since. Teams still go every year, and God is definitely moving there, but it seems that I did my part and now it is time for the next crew to take over.

I seem to have different personas depending on what part of the world I’m in. When I’m overseas I prefer to be somewhere where there are no Christians and it’s difficult to even talk about it because people are so closed. When people begin to become open and come to Christ I feel like I’m out of league. When I’m in the U.S., however, I prefer to work with young Christians. In the U.S, I’m much less of an evangelist and much more of a discipler. I’d rather teach a young Christian how to get closer and grow in God than go out and witness. So when I’m overseas I naturally want to witness to the hardest people, but here at home I’d rather not witness much at all but just want to teach disciple Christians. Why is that? Things have been changing a bit. Now even when I’m in the States I just want to get the word out about who Jesus is.

It dawned on me the other day that I think God is still having me walk in an icebreaker anointing here in the United States, which I didn’t even think was possible. I thought I had to go to some weird place where Christians had never been to break new ground for the Lord. It’s not quite the same, but it’s still breaking new ground. Everything I’m doing in the IT department has never been attempted at all on this campus. We now have automated backups running and servers that share files and make the exchange of information between departments and machines much easier. I’m learning tons about security and networking, things that I could definitely use to help people here in the local areas and overseas. It’s hard though. There’s absolutely no protocol for doing anything that I’m doing. No one on campus really even knows what I’m talking about, so I can’t sit down and bounce ideas off of people or ask for advice on the best way to do something. Once the technology is in place I have to implement and train people in new policies to make it all work. Where once God had me breaking ground in a village that had never been reached, God now has me attempting and implementing things that have never been done in this campus. I never really know where God will take me next, but it’s always guaranteed to be quite the trip….

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I was pretty surprised last Monday night to check my email and find something from Colorado Technical University (CTU)  saying something about me getting some sort of a certificate. I open the email for further analysis and find out that I’ve been awarded a professional certificate in client java programming. Through all the classes and work I’ve done for CTU I had met the criteria for a certificate in java. So that’s pretty cool. By the time I get my Associate’s Degree I’ll also have a certificate in Unix system administration.

School overall is going well. I’m really enjoying the classes, but they can be difficult at times. Tomorrow I start classes on spreadsheet applications and operating systems. I could really use both classes, so I’m really looking forward to this session.

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So last Monday was Michelle and I’s first doctor’s appointment. It was quite the time, that’s for sure. For starters we were a little late because Michelle got sick on the way in. But that’s alright. I must say that up to this point it’s been a little difficult for me to completely wrap my head around the entire thing. At first nothing seemed different at all. Michelle looked the same. There was little change in how my days played out. How can you completely wrap your mind around it? That changed on Monday. We get to the doctor’s office and they start the exam. They gave out more literature than I’ve ever seen a doctor give me, that’s for sure. Finally we get to the part where they take take the little audio box and find the baby’s heartbeat. Everytime the doctor would find the heartbeat the baby would move and the doctor would have to find him/her? again. It actually kind of reminded of of when I used to have to catch fish at walmart. You pretty much have to corner them. It looked like the doc was having quite the time getting a lock on the baby long enough to get a good heartbeat sound, but she did eventually. The beat was 170 a minute.

They had us come back in the next day to do an ultrasound. No worries, everything’s good. But then I got to see the baby and not just hear it. It was tiny. We’re sitting at 9 and a half weeks old-ish. Wouldn’t ya know it, the baby was really active that day too. Michelle and I could see the little arms and feet moving all around. It would seem that perhaps we have a very energetic young child up and coming. Knowing Michelle and me, I’m really not that surprised….

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It’s 2 in the morning and I’m down in my office working on my machine. These past few days every possible thing that can go wrong on a computer has done it. I tried to upgrade to the newest version of ubuntu, a linux operating system, and everything has been downhill ever since. The short version is that some things got broken or corrupted during the upgrade and I’ve spend the last 3 days or so trying to fix my laptop. It’s gotten so bad that here I sit still working on it. Basically I’ve backed everything up on my machine to our backup server and have done a clean install of the new operating system. Now I’m just trying to figure out how to restore from my backups. Let’s hope this goes well…

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