Here are 2 of my favorite worship tunes by the Wickham brother’s. Love leading these songs! “You are holy great and mighty the moon and the stars declare who you are…” And, “King of glory Lord of all your face I seek your name I call, Jesus…” So good!
She’s lovely
More today than those we’ve past
She’s lovely
Of all our love right now is most
She’s lovely
Reflection shows my love in yours
Forevermore from sea to shore
From dawn to day we stand as one
And all in sum it’s clear:
She’s lovely
Thanks for being by my side my love.
Everyday is better than the last.
I Love you so much.
Love, your husband-
So here it is… A little bit of honesty. This is as close to the real me as I can give you since this is straight from one of my regular worship sets. I get the opportunity to lead worship at a bunch of different places. When I lead at Calvary Auburn they record the worship time and I have got Chuck (their sound engineer) to graciously hand over some of those recordings. Now, I haven’t figured out how to load the entire worship set up, and so I am just giving you one song at a time, which is probably better anyway–short and sweet right? Anyway, there it is and I will post the rest as I get them loaded. It’s Rough but it’s real. Grace and Peace.
This was funny but sad. Anger is funny to me. I don’t know, it’s just one of those weird automatic reactions that you can’t help. When I see somebody get angry at something that could otherwise be handled calmly, I just laugh. Other people might get sad or embarrassed about lame behavior like that and that’s probably more appropriate but I can’t help my reaction.
Last night my wife and I went to the movies (a cheap date when you find movie passes that you forgot you had) and we witnessed this silliness. We walked into the theatre and it was about 3/4 full. We sat down a couple rows up where we found a couple open seats. Separated by one seat, we sat next to a bigger girl in her 20’s and her date. The seats in front us were all empty. We put our feet up on the seats in front of us—which happens to be seat-choosing criteria for us—and the couple next to us was doing the same. We were totally comfy!
The previews were rolling and in strolled the antagonist: a group of 3 that moved into our comfortable foot chairs. It was sad for me but it was not the proverbial end of the world. The girl next to us, however, flipped out! I began to smile. Luckily she didn’t see me or she may have tried to beat me up—angry people don’t like it when you smile. Over the noise of the theatre she started cussing and saying stuff that I can neither repeat or remember and the person in front of her totally ignored her—another thing that angry people totally hate.
As the tirade went on so did the smiling and ignoring. The smiling turned into small chuckles that had to be held in and finally her totally embarrassed date ended it by offering his seat since it was still empty. She declined and that was the end of it. See, angry people don’t really want what they are trying to get that bad, they simply can’t handle having things taken from them, a little something that lingers from when they were 2. At any rate. It is my own vice that I am amused by such behavior. I apologize. Does anybody have any counsel or empathy… perhaps a similar story? Care to share? You’re not “that guy” are you?
Alright… I’m back… Taking a quick breath from all that stuff. I mentioned my wife’s surprise party in the fog of a blog that I posted last Thursday. Easily the highlight of my month! And hers too! She loves surprises and this one worked out pretty well.
Imagine the clever people you know. If the clever people that you know are actually clever then go ahead and lump Celestial right into that category. (Congrats! Now you guys are friends and stuff. You know each other.) This is a problem though. Clever people are not easy to surprise. Extra work was going to have to go into the fooling effort since this was an extra special b-day, being the big Three O.
I needed a running start at this so I began talking to my buddy Nathan about the idea for this party back in April. We decided on some of the gist of it back then, including making it a potluck party with the theme of, “Stuff With Cheese On It” (Celestial’s expressed favorite dish). But since we had budget issues we had to quickly rule out the surprise trip to Paris where all her friends would be waiting at a hotel with a private show from U2.
Keeping that in the back pocket for the 40th though.
I’m not much of a detail guy—at all—so I stuck to the fun part, which was planning how I was going to surprise her and left the party details to her best friend Jamie (she was amazing). Jamie threw an incredible party. My sister Amanda and her Husband Troy made a sweet journey of Celest’s life via slide show. My friend Adam Dj’d. He’s one cool Puerto Rican. And all her friends did her the wonderful honor of showing up—pretty much the most important part. And my only responsibility was getting the birthday girl there. I totally almost choked.
Concealing the secret was the first step. Celest never has her phone on her but she does have mine. BECAUSE SHE STEELS IT FREQUENTLY!!! Yeah, in addition to being able to see all the calls and texts, my emails all show up there too. Makes secret planning a little tough. But we designated a separate email that Jamie and I would plan from and correspond with the guests and that worked great.
We decided that the party location would be the clubhouse at my apartment complex for 3 reasons: It is Free. Free. & Free. (ok… a fourth reason being that it was the nicest free place that we could get… don’t forget my budget). But how would I get her to casually stroll into the clubhouse on a Sunday afternoon? We never go to the clubhouse? Let alone on Sunday afternoons when all we want to do is nap!
But! 2 facts about Celestial: She loves getting packages in the mail and she rarely has her phone on (oh did I mention the phone part already?). Perfect!
This was my “IN”!
The day before the party I would call the apartment office and ask them to call Celestial’s cell phone and leave a voice message that she had a package waiting for her. She wouldn’t get the message until the next day after I charged her phone for her and when she did she wouldn’t be able to resist waiting an extra minute to get the package which would take her right through the door way to the party. It was perfect!
But it got complicated.
2 weeks before the party I sent out an email to let everyone know that the party plans were going great and to remind anyone who hadn’t rsvpd to get on it. Well, much to my freaking horror, Celestial got that email! I was sitting on the couch next to her, I looked at her computer screen and there was my email in her inbox. I was so stinkn sad because I really wanted everything to be perfect. She loves to be surprised and this was totally sucking it up. If there was anything positive about it, it was that the email was completely general and the only info that she got from it was that there was a party somewhere and sometime in the future.
No worries at all! Because I had a plan!
I had been wanting to do a fake surprise party for a while, back when I first kicked around the idea with Nathan in April. Who doesn’t expect a surprise party on big birthdays like this? What better way to extinguish the suspicion than to throw them a dud surprise party first. And we succeeded at that! I put the plans together fast and she walked into the restaurant and there was 6 people and our kids with some balloons and a present; that was her 30th. We made up some pretty great excuses about why everyone else couldn’t come, ate some pasta, and then we went home. She was totally sweet about it and tried to pretend like she had fun.
The next day was her party and it totally ended up amazing. She got the call from the office just like we planned. And, just like I told you, she insisted on getting the package immediately. She practically drug me to her own surprise. Effortless! She was so surprised and loved it all. Oh, and after she got totally rocked by everybody’s surprise for her, we ended the party by giving her a 3 night trip for her and me and no kids that a bunch of people at the party contributed to as their gift to her. We ended up doing a photography road trip from Tahoe to Idaho to Oregon and back down through Shasta and then home. Totally good times! The whole thing came together way better than I could have imagined it. She totally loved it.
So there it is. Now it’s to you. Tell us about your best surprise memory. We’d love to hear it.
Thinking about blogging again soon… but still a little too crazy with stuff. Trying to catch up. So many things to share. Life is awesome but insane right now. 3 Song EP coming soon! I recently started liking the North West United States as well as Foamy Black and White Mocha’s with Wip (2 completely different categories in case you were thrown for a loop thinking they were related… not so much). I’ll be back soon. Music. Family. Finishing a Double Major. Ecclesia stuff too. Really, really great surprise party that I threw for Celestial. I’ll tell you about all this stuff soon! Hang tight. Grace and Peace. BRB : )
My good buddy Drew brought this back to me from London. You know who those guys are. They’re walking across the ubiquitous Abbey Road. Those are the Beatles in case you were uncertain.
I tweet. Do you? I don’t know if you do yet or not. Perhaps I just said “tweet” and you muttered “WTF?” Let me catch you up to speed on what’s going on so that we are on the same page. It could be beneficial to you.
Myspace is pretty much dead. If you still use Myspace as a main social networking vehicle you may also have worn hammer pants or a ponytail on the side in 93’ (if you are wearing hammer pants or a ponytail on the side in 2009 you’re probably awesome but not in 93’). “Tweet” is in reference to what you do on Twitter. “I am eating Humus” would be a Tweet—exceptionally boring, yet quite healthy I’m told. Many of the people I follow are quite clever and entertaining in their updates, a bonus but not a requirement. The Gospel is the best thing to be able to tweet about.
Twitter is being used by so many so much because it’s updates are sent and received right from the phone via text message to everyone in your friends (following) network. Translation: we connect instantly to the people we care about and that care about us.
So, that’s Twitter. When I post, It’s me. I update several times a day (usually, but not yesterday). I tell you what I’m thinking, doing, not doing, really, really, really wishing that I was doing but not, that I just locked my keys in the car for the 957th time this month, stuff like that.
What I didn’t know is that, by doing these updates, I am developing a lucrative skill. Apparently, celebrities are paying people to tweet for them. Professional tweeters! New York Times just published an article about this phenomenon. Britney Spears, 50 Cent, Kanye West, and President Barack Obama are some examples. Several of them (Obama being one) pay 2 or more people to update their hundreds of thousands of followers for them. Tweeting must be harder than I thought.
So Tweet! It’s tough times in our economy right now and you never know when you might need a fall back plan. Why not have “Twitter Extraordinaire” in your back pocket for some resume padding just in case right?!
