More Important Things

There are methods of changing our worlds so much more effective and therefore more important than government.

In America we have the ability to guide our government in ways still unequaled around even the free world. So our involvement in government is a good thing.

But it is our involvement in government, and not it’s inverse, and more natural state, government’s involvement in our lives, that is the correct, proper and more important of the two choices.

Further, beyond government is the heart of man.

Government has not the ability to lift the heart of man the way that forgiveness, salvation, and redemption do.

The more important thing is our work in individual lives and in groups, drawing them to Christ and His salvation.

Only as individual lives and communities are changed from the inside out will effective and true change come about in the rest of world.

It’s Not Just Talk: Words Mean Things

What Washington fails to understand is that freedom is not the problem: it is the solution. ~Congresswoman Michele Bachman (R) Minnesota

Michele is waging war against the law making standard incandescent light bulbs illegal in the US in favor of the compact fluorescent bulbs (CFLs) which, while using less energy to burn, cost more, contain trace amounts of mercury, and take more energy to fabricate.

Talent, not affirmative action, will save CBS News. ~Andrea Peyser, New York Post

Katie Couric was hired for politics, not talent. Don’t count on CBS changing it’s tune though: to liberals, it’s the thought that counts.

It’s not surprising, then, they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations. ~Senator Barak Hussein Obama(D) Illinois, Presidential Candidate

It’s hard to hide who you are, Barak. Stop trying.

Government Is Not The Solution

Watching this news report regarding a real problem, the issue of blind people not being able to hear the quiet hybrid and electric cars to know to avoid them, I was both dismayed and heartened.

Near the end of the report the reported says with apparent relief “the government is going to study this, we have nothing to fear” (quoted loosely), and the automakers response: don’t bother, we already know it’s an issue and we’ll fix it ourselves.

Lawmakers are not engineers or usability experts or researchers or anything even remotely related to that.

They are usually those too stupid to actually succeed at life by their own merit and yet unusually skilled at convincing other dupes of their innate superiority and a seriously inaccurate view of their own self-worth and self-ability. A terrible combination.

So as the lawmakers are spending time, lots of time, subpoenaing testimony by experts and every snake-oil salesman who catches their eyes, those with something to actually do (say, fix the problem by putting proximity sensors and and AI which senses intersections and pedestrians and putting an automatic, low-volume, low-frequency horn which will not disturb other drivers but merely warn pedestrians) will be unable to do so as their hands will be tied and their time sucked away by the zombies we keep electing to office.

Anybody catch my drift here? Or the *slight* bit of vitriol coursing through my veins?

Government is not the solution, and it should keeps its mangling and sticky claws out of most everything.

Thoughts On Life In Early Spring 2008

It’s easier to ask permission than to ask forgiveness, because asking forgiveness requires initial guilt, which sucks and means your screwed up.

Rain in early spring in Chicago is almost as good as sun, because neither of them are snow.

Love is indeed a many-splendored thing, because it makes life exciting like a kaleidoscope.

There are few better things than working a long hard *cough* day and then going to see your someone wonderful and seeing in their face the love you trust. It makes me look forward to Heaven.

Our Story, From Grace’s Eyes

It was 2004. I received a letter from Moody Bible Institute telling me I hadn’t been accepted. I was crushed. I was so sure I would be accepted.

At the time I was working for Child Evangelism Fellowship® (CEF) of Dallas, TX. As I continued working with CEF, I felt led to receive further training from them. So I applied to Children’s Ministry Institute, the three month training program offered at CEF’s headquarters. I started the program in January, 2005 and graduated in April, 2005.

While at the training, I re-applied to Moody. I cried when I learned that, through some mix-up with the Post Office, my application never arrived at the campus.

The original plan was for me to continue working with CEF in Dallas for the summer of 2005 and then attend Moody in the fall. Now, I would not be attending Moody in the fall, and due to CEF of Dallas having a new director in training, I would be unable to work with them for the summer.

Basically, all my plans fell apart.

It turned out that there was an opening with the next closest chapter, CEF of Ft. Worth. So, after being home for a month, I moved to Ft. Worth and began a year long internship there. During this internship, I re-applied to Moody for the 3^rd time. I was frustrated with the application process by now.

If not Moody, I didn’t know where I would go to school, but I was pretty much determined not to apply there again.

I received a letter back from Moody in April 2006 and was hesitant to open it. Once I did, I learned that I was accepted, but also learned that I was on the waiting list. They were to keep in touch with me over the summer to let me know whether I would be able to attend for the fall 2006 semester or the spring 2007 semester. By June 2006, I knew that I would be attending in the spring. I rejoiced over finally being accepted!

My internship would be over in the summer, so I started making plans for that fall. I was given the opportunity to learn more about CEF by participating in a three month internship at their world headquarters. Those months were a great time of learning, growing and bonding with the other interns.

I returned to Texas mid-November, unpacked, and then re-packed for moving to cold, snowy Chicago. Mom and I left Texas on January 1 and arrived the evening of January 2.

By the way, January isn’t the best time of year for a Texan to move to Chicago. [grin]

I settled into classes and began visiting churches in the area. I became frustrated, for various reasons, with searching for a church.

I knew that some of my friends picked up two other Moody students for church each Sunday morning. I asked them if they had another spot available in their car. Since they did, I went to visit the church and knew this was the church I was supposed to be at.

After church that day, a group of us went out for lunch. It was a fun time of camaraderie and visiting and the first time I met Matthew.

Incidentally, though I didn’t know it at the time, the Sunday I met Matt was only his second Sunday to be back in Chicago. He had previously lived in Chicago for year and a half, and had returned to California to work on his degree. During the time I was waiting to be accepted into Moody, Matt was working on his degree and waiting to return to Chicago. God has amazing timing!

Due to some transportation issues, I was unable to visit the church again for several weeks. When I returned, I recognized Matt, but honestly couldn’t remember his name (I’ve always been bad with names…just ask my sister). We spent a few minutes chatting after the service and then I left, not really thinking twice about him, other than as a potential friend. I went to the church once more before Spring break and was beginning to feel a little bit at home there. Because of Spring break, I was gone for three Sunday’s in a row. Upon returning, the other Moody students and I still had transportation troubles getting to church.

One of my good friends suggested I call Matt and have him give the three of us on-campus students a ride to church. My reply was, “I’m fairly new at this church, you’ve been going there longer and know him better- and I don’t have his phone number- you give him a call for a ride.” I was NOT about to call anyone, especially a guy I barely knew asking him to come pick us up for church.

So, my friend arranged everything and on that Sunday she and I left the dorm together. When we arrived at Matt’s car, I learned that I would be the only one actually riding in his car that day. Because the weather was nice, my friend and the other Moody student decided to take his motorcycle to church.

I felt so bad because Matt, someone that I barely knew, had driven all the way into the city just to pick up one student that he hardly knew. Still, it was my only option if I wanted to attend church that Sunday. As I got into his car, I was fervently wishing that motorcycles fit three people and was already planning the lecture I was going to give my friend for leaving me alone.

Though I felt awkward over the situation, Matt and I had a good visit to and from church. We found we had a lot in common and talked easily together.

During the semester, the associate pastor and his wife invited the college group out to their house a couple of times for fun, movies, games, etc. I was able to make it out to one of these, but because I was busy at the beginning of it, Matt offered to come pick me up later.

It was a good afternoon of hanging out with Matt and the other Moody students. At this point, I still thought of him as nothing but a good friend. As I like to say, I was “completely clueless” that he was interested in me.

My “completely clueless” mindset was going to start to change soon, on a Saturday, when several of us were helping some friends move apartments. Matt seemed to be around a lot that Saturday and we worked on several projects together.

I distinctly remember him giving me several compliments throughout the day. That night, after the move, I was sitting in my dorm room thinking over the day. I remembered Matt’s friendliness and was trying to remember if he had given compliments to the other girls who were there- but I really couldn’t think of any. However, I convinced myself that he was just going out of his way to make the ‘new girl’ feel welcome. (I still considered myself new at this point because I hadn’t been attending the church for very long).

So, I still just saw him as a good friend, but did occasionally wonder if there was something more. Since he hadn’t said anything though, and had always been a gentleman, I tried (rather unsuccessfully) to put these thoughts aside.

The semester ended a few weeks later and Matt offered to drive my roommate (who, ironically, was from CA as well, and knew Matt’s family) to the airport. Her terminal was first and I told her goodbye. It was a short, but very quiet, ride to my terminal. Matt took my luggage out of the trunk, and, after debating, I gave him an awkward side-hug, told him thanks, and left to catch my flight.

Once seated on my plane, I wondered again if he was interested or just a good friend. I went back and forth over mentioning anything to my mom. After all, I really had nothing to tell her. Matt hadn’t said anything to me, so I had no real reason to think he was interested. I had realized at this point that there was something attractive about this man. I couldn’t exactly put my finger on it, but there was definitely something.

I ended up mentioning something to my mom, but assured her that I really had no reason, and nothing to go on, to assume that he liked me. As I puzzled over my attraction to him, I realized that there was something about him that made me desire to be a more godly woman- one that would be able to assist him in his walk with God- even if I was just his sister in Christ and nothing more. However, I also realized that I wanted to be more than just his sister in Christ.

He called the next day and my mom answered the phone. She and I were in the middle of a board game, and well, that game never got finished. I spent four hours on the phone talking to Matt. There still had been no mention of the possibility of a relationship, but mom had fun teasing me over how long the phone call lasted.

The next day, as I was out running errands, Matt called back asking to speak to my dad. Since my dad was at work, he had to wait until the next day to actually speak with him.

Side note: Several years before this, at my old college and at various jobs, I’d had several guys express an interest in dating me. One thing I always told them was that they needed to talk to my dad first. Not only was it true, I found it a very effective tool for ‘weeding out’ the guys not worth my time. If they weren’t willing to talk to my dad, they weren’t worth dating. Matt didn’t know of this stipulation of mine and I’m very glad he approached my dad first before talking to me.

After a month of talking to my parents and even writing one essay for them, Matt was given permission to court me. At this time, I was in Missouri receiving training for a summer mission program in New York City that I was a part of. Matt drove the five hours to come see me the weekend he asked me to court him.

I stayed in NYC for five weeks, then returned to Missouri, and then headed back to Texas. Matt came to Texas for a week in August to meet my family and many of my friends. School was starting up again, and we both had the same flight back to Chicago.

It was a time of learning and growing together as a couple. I learned to appreciate his strength, tenderness, sensitivity and patience. We planned a trip to California so that I could meet his family over Christmas break. Though I was very nervous over meeting them, I fit in well with his family. His sisters and I shared many laughs together.

After we returned, Matt mentioned marriage to me. We both knew we wanted to marry each other and now we started talking about dates. We received counsel from many and spent much time in prayer.

Since we were still unsure about when we should marry, we took a week to devote to prayer and seeking God’s will for our lives. We did not contact each other at all that week. We each came to the conclusion to marry August of 2008. I knew a proposal would be coming, but I had no idea when it would take place.

When we were walking out to his car after church on February 24, he completely took me by surprise by getting down on one knee and saying, “I love you Grace, I want you to be my wife and the mother of my future children; will you marry me?”

I said yes!

I get to marry this wonderful man on August 2, 2008.

Our Story, From Matthew’s Eyes

She was smart, beautiful and funny, and most of all, she loved God.

February 11, 2007: Sunday morning I walked into Sunday School with the other Young Adults at Brainard Avenue Baptist Church. It was my second week back after being gone just over two years in California.

I had met the church and felt at home and accepted and appreciated back in 2003, and with that knew that I was to relocate at least for a while to Chicago after spending a few more years at home. After spending just over 2 years back in California, I returned to Chicago at the end of January 2007 and thanks to the generosity of friends church family in the area I was putting down roots.

Little did I know where those roots would grow and how my life was to change. Soon.

Back to that Sunday, February 11th. In my visits back to Chicago while living in California, I’d met some new members of the Sunday School class, students at Moody Bible Institute who were able to drive out to the suburbs for Sunday services at Brainard. It was good to see these people again in addition to the regulars and long-timers.

The Moody students had brought friends this Sunday. One young lady, in her first semester at Moody, had been searching for a church she could feel at home at while attending school, had taken advantage of her friend’s extra car seats, and was visiting the church for the first time.

The quiet, beautiful girl did not return for a few weeks.

When she did visit Brainard again, I made a point of talking with her for a few minutes. Making her feel welcome, I told myself.

It began as a friendship, nothing special. But I quickly moved beyond an average interest in her.

This was a Godly woman, beautiful, caring, very loving. All that attracted me very intensely. I had to get to know her better.

And so I did. Grace visited family in Washington for spring break. I missed her those weeks she did not come to Brainard.

I had offered to drive students to church from Moody when they needed extra seats, and one beautiful spring day they took me up on the offer. Three students needed a ride and so I went out early Sunday morning to pick them up. Due to the beautiful weather, the two others decided they were going to ride a motorcycle out to church that day, leaving Grace to ride with me by herself. She was not exactly comfortable with this situation at the outset, being alone in a car with some guy she hardly knew. But it was that or miss church, and I’d already driven out, so to not make a scene, she got in the car.

We began talking and found we had similar standards and backgrounds, and we both liked country music.

That afternoon several of us spent the afternoon at my apartment eating lunch, playing games, listening to music, relaxing. Grace and I continued to talk and get to know each other. I drove her back to school too, and said goodbye.

Over that spring the associate pastor and his wife invited several college students over for extended times of fun and fellowship, watching movies and entertaining their young boys. Grace was able to take some time off studying to attend one of these, so I volunteered to pick her up from school and bring her out to the suburbs so she could spend time with us.

The other Moody students had come out earlier in the day and so again I was able to spend time just with Grace, getting to know her better.

We also spent a Saturday helping some other students move to an apartment off campus. While there were others around, I sought out Grace and helped her and asked her to help me in specific tasks. I was twitterpated. And I believe she knew I was possibly interested in more than friendship.

Our friendship continued to grow and as the semester drew to a close I was trying to decide if I should ask her if we could move into a potentially romantic relationship or talk to her dad first. Various things led me to decide to speak with her dad first, but as I drove her and a mutual friend to the airport that morning in early May I bit my tongue.

Our parting was awkward as our relationship was possibly changing and yet neither of us had mentioned it to each other. We parted with an awkward side hug and I drove to work while she winged her way home to Dallas.

Earlier in the semester she had given me her cell phone number but had informed me her phone was broken and so I had not called her. As she left for the summer, she left a few boxes of things which would not fit in the summer storage at Moody which I was to take to the associate pastor’s house for storage. The boxes had her home address.

I spent the weekend visiting friends in Louisville, Kentucky and trying to work up the courage to call her or her dad. I still wasn’t very sure of her interest in me and I feared rejection. So I decided to try and talk with her one more time, just to gauge her possible interest.

Leaving Louisville late Sunday afternoon for the long drive back to Chicago, I called her. I’d used the address on her boxes to look up her home phone number in the phone book online. And now the phone was ringing.

Her mother answered.

“Can I speak with Grace, please? This is Matthew, a friend from Chicago.”

The phone call and the trip went quickly, all 4 hours of both. And I had my answer. We still had not talked specifically of our relationship, but I knew that if it was that easy for both of us to spend 4 hours talking and with similarities between us in standards and beliefs, I knew I wanted to pursue this lady.

The next day I called her dad. I spoke to him on Tuesday and asked if I could begin courting his daughter.

Over the next few weeks he asked me questions regarding my views and opinions on various matters and eventually told me he and his wife would allow me to court Grace.

I was planning a trip down to Missouri by then to see her for a weekend. She was working at Child Evangelism Fellowship’s headquarters outside St. Louis.

June 15th, 2007: The Friday before I drove down to see her, when we were having what by then was a regular evening phone call, I told her I’d been talking to her parents about courting her (she knew that already) and I asked her if she was willing to court me.

She said yes.

Over the summer she traveled to New York to work with children in the projects and other parts of the city, returning to Missouri and then Dallas in August, where I spent a week meeting her family and friends and having fun together.

We flew back to Chicago together: her to begin classes and me to get back to work.

Through the semester and now these months together I grew to appreciate more and more her strength, her tenacious love, her sense of direction and purpose, and her Godliness. Not to mention her beauty and her spirit, her consistency and organization. I knew rather quickly that she was definitely the one I wanted to marry.

Apparently she knew too.

After a winter trip to California meeting my family and friends and receiving further counsel from my parents, I began seriously considering marriage to this wonderful woman God had brought into my life.

After an intense period of counsel, thought, and prayer we were still unsure when the best time would be for our wedding to occur and our marriage to commence: Whether to marry this year or after she graduates in 2010.

Grace and I decided to have a period of time where we were to not contact each other but to spend that time seeking the Lord’s will and answers in our lives.

Ending Valentine’s Day, 2008, these 7 days were painful but rich, and we both, individually, felt God leading us to marry this year.

In the church parking lot, on February 25, 2008, 1 year and 2 weeks after we’d first met in the Sunday School classroom not too far away, I got down on one knee and asked Grace if she would marry me, be my wife and the mother of our children.

She said yes!

American Texan and I will be married August 2nd, 2008, in Dallas TX.

See our website at MattLovesGrace.com

For The Love Of Power

Political Power, unlike money, is a zero sum game.

In order for one to gain and consolidate more of it, another must lose it through neglect and carelessness or bitter struggle.

At the same time, power is not necessarily directly correlated with size. A large organization can run fluidly and freely given good leadership and skilled and involved members. A power-grabbing entity does tend to bloat with those drawn to power and the ease of corruption.

It is not size that corrupts, but immoral people.

The presidential race should give us each an opportunity to see honestly and completely the morals, ethics, and skills of those who would lead us but which instead tends to show us carefully scripted appearances controlled by any number of variously corrupt entities.

The candidates themselves try to control their images. None of them have nothing to hide, and therefore, they dodge and obfuscate.

The media, with it’s control over what is shown in living rooms across the world, has a powerful ability to shape the discourse. If it doesn’t show up on the nightly news, it didn’t happen.

Charles Kessler, in a speech before Hillsdale College summarized in In Primis, speaks to the difference between size and power, and how size and corruption are not necessarily related.

Juan Gonzalez, in the New York Daily News, tells the sordid tale of pork and corruption which has birthed an amazingly idiotic tax hike in downtown New York:

No one could recall such a naked combination of arm-twisting and pork-barrel handouts to pressure City Council members to approve the huge tax increase known as congestion pricing.

The real problem is always complex and deep, but a significant part of the root is that we, the people, don’t really care.

Like Charlie Brown’s baseball team, we don’t want to be held accountable for our government. We pass the buck to the elected officials, who pass the buck on and on.

If we and a larger percentage of the population of America took responsibility for our government, there would not be a problem of usurpation of power and conglomeration of authority.

An aware and concerned citizenry is a powerful citizenry and the bane of corrupt politics everywhere.

Every Family Has One…

…in my family it was me.

From ICanHasCheezburger

And some linky love:

• The Night Writer is a recent discovery and addition to my blogroll.
• Neil at 4Simpsons keeps up the quality, like always. I like his dogs.
• Animate Matters’ Wes keeps my connected to Vox Day by one order of separation, a distance I can handle.
• TikiRae from Haemet keeps me up to date with current conservative thought on the Cornell College campus.
• Ironic SurrealismII and Velvet Hammer keep hitting things, plushly.
• MomLovesBeingAtHome loves being at home. My fiancee will appreciate her.
• Jay at OldFordRoad grew up on old Ford Road, it’s who he is. Stalwart.
• Sol at SolomonHezekiah keeps us up to date on the state of education in rural UK.
• SunflowerDesert keeps me wondering where I can find that desert.

And finally, this fine adaptation of Abbot and Costello’s famous “Who’s on first?”