Thursday, March 19, 2009

Next 4 years!!!

So the Medial School Nation wide match day was today. That is where you rank schools you interview at and they rank you and you...match. Victoia got her number 1 choice which was UT Houston! This means that no realtors will need to be notified that our house is for sale! We are thrilled that we are staying here and that she matched with a great school.

In other news, I remodeled the kitchen and my daughter will be born in a little over a month! Yeah, what other kinds of life change can we go through at once?!?

~Jody

Wednesday, March 4, 2009

Book Post

Here are a couple of excerpts from my book...that is no where NEAR finished!


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Being here next to my wife I wonder, how did I get here? How do we manage to have a decent relationship? Don’t get me wrong, we’ve had our battles and our down times, but currently, I am content. I have two jobs that provide me what I need to pay our bills. I often wonder what the financial circumstances of authors who write billions of good books or that author who writes a couple of amazing books happen to be. They always seem to write about their trips and adventures and how they used to have hard times. I am in the midst of my simple life and yet I find myself content. I go to a rather large church here in Houston, and I work in the music ministry and with that, the calling of my life, I realize my contentment. Is that enough? Is contentment what I have been placed on this earth to achieve?

John says in Revelation chapter three that we are not to be lukewarm Christians. This has been a struggle verse for me all of my life. Water in the time John was writing, just like today, was good when it was hot for the obvious reasons of cooking and killing bacteria--things my mother might think of. Practically growing up in my dad’s office in the church, I always thought it meant if you weren’t on fire for God, He would rather you not even be a Christian so you wouldn’t push people away from Christianity or lead them astray. They probably wouldn’t know such a churchy word like “astray” in the first place. I have come to realize that cold water can be a refreshing sense of newness on a hot summer day and a cool breeze in the humidity that I have come to loath in the heart of southeast Texas. God calls us to be either on fire Christians--telling everyone we know about Him--or cool refreshing Christians--cool breezes for people in a dry, mundane life. Where does me finding myself content with where I am in life come into play? I associate contentment more with complacency and a lukewarm lifestyle rather than what God has called me to--a courageous life of forgiveness and love.



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Like I was taught in church, meekness does not equal weakness. It is a simple ironic twist in understanding God’s desire for the molding of our hearts that the two words rhyme. If every young girl’s fantasy, other than becoming Hannah Montana’s best friend, is to be a princess, then I would guarantee that the little boy’s dream would be to ride his shining white horse to slay a dragon and save the princess. Either that or drive his awesome muscle car to the beach and save a dolphin while playing legos with his brothers, though that may have just been my dream. Imagine, if you will, the little boy’s massive white steed. A stallion of that size could do whatever it wants, but because of the bridle, or meekness, its power is controlled and used as the master requires. God desires for men to have power and strength, otherwise He would not have created muscles that can grow when they are pushed and torn, or gyms for that matter. Christ demonstrated the ultimate example of meekness on the cross. While He suffered and bled, at any moment He could have stretched his finger and wiped out half the globe and called thousands of angels down to escort Him from the cross. He chose to display meekness and expose his love and caring heart for His people.

The caring heart of a shepherd is also demonstrated when that lion or wolf comes to steal one of their sheep. They get out their sling and stones or staff and kill the beast before it even has the chance to think about their sheep. I knew you couldn’t wait for the display of manly brawn and the brute strength part.
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Thus ends my excerpts. I wanted to end it before it got too exciting so you'd have to come back for more. I hope you enjoyed them and got something out of them. It is a book for guys (or whoever wants to read it) that looks at a few characters in the Bible to discover the tenderness, meekness, and the caring heart God wants us to have. I'll put more up for discussion later on.
~Jody