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

Thoughts & Prayers: Southern Winter Tornadoes

Keep abreast of the latest news on the rare winter tornadoes which tore through the South last night.

Our thoughts and prayers go out to those who lost family, friends, and shelter last night.

The Numbers Don’t Lie

Two stories about numbers that aren’t lying. Unfortunately, numbers often don’t have voices capable of counteracting lies made by their misuse.

First, from The People’s Voice blog comes a bit of misinformed and communist rhetoric in support of HR 676 by our old friend Congressman Conyers.

Beginning with with the classic assumption that everybody worthwhile agrees with him, the author, Stephen Crockett, claims that:

It is obvious that none of the major Presidential candidates of either the Democratic or Republican Parties are supporting the right approach to providing universal healthcare. Frankly, all the Republican candidates are going to be major obstacles to achieving this national goal. While the top Democratic candidates (Clinton, Edwards and Obama) do support the concept, they are all offering Band-Aid approaches for a life-threatening economic and health crisis in America.

I’m not sure, Mr. Crockett, but I don’t find it obvious. While I agree that there are several challengers on each side whose policy proposals are so bloated and impossible as to be laughable, the fact that you apparently don’t think they go far enough is proof positive that it is not obvious.

Just a warning: it goes downhill from there.

From Thinking Out Loud: Visions of Universal Healthcare Dance In Their Heads.

Second, in what is becoming an unpleasant task considering the number of good friends who support this guy because he is a Christian while ignoring the obviously un-christian nature of his policies, Mike Huckabee is listed as one of the top ten “most wanted”corrupt politicians of 2007.

Judicial Watch placed Mike as number 6, surrounded by such other luminous paragons of anti-virtue and un-justice as Hillary Clinton (#1), Rudy Guiliani (#5), and Barak Obama (#8):

Governor Huckabee enjoyed a meteoric rise in the polls in December 2007, which prompted a more thorough review of his ethics record. According to The Associated Press: “[Huckabee’s] career has also been colored by 14 ethics complaints and a volley of questions about his integrity, ranging from his management of campaign cash to his use of a nonprofit organization to subsidize his income to his destruction of state computer files on his way out of the governor’s office.” And what was Governor Huckabee’s response to these ethics allegations? Rather than cooperating with investigators, Huckabee sued the state ethics commission twice and attempted to shut the ethics process down.

Aforementioned Congressman John Conyers is#2 on the list. And California’s Senator Feinstein and Representative Pelosi are numbers 4 and 9, respectively.

Middle East Votes Huckabee

The FARS news service of Iran writes a glowing piece on Huckabee.

Regarding the conduct of Huckabee in the White House, there is a lot we do not know. Like another governor from the same state, Bill Clinton, Huckabee has little experience in foreign affairs. Nonetheless, last week he dropped a bomb in an article he published in Foreign Affairs, where all the other candidates have contributed articles. He wrote of “urgent concerns” regarding Iran’s nuclear program and its support for militants, saying that he does not discard the military option. But he was critical of the Bush foreign policy, which he described as “arrogant bunker mentality.”

In the Iranian context, his policy is being interpreted as a change, calling for bringing to the table non-military options as well. Huckabee is of the opinion that relations with Iran deteriorated following Bush’s “axis of evil” speech. In many points his message on Iran is more akin to that of the Democrats: there is a need for dialogue with Iran, and more diplomacy is needed. He quoted the Chinese strategist Sun Tzu, who authored The Art of War 2,500 years ago: “Keep your friends close and your enemies closer.”

They like him.

Thanks to Hugh Hewitt.

Holidays And New Year

From I, Pandora, here are wishes for a Merry Christmas to each and every one of you.

May this be an enjoyable time for all alike as we gather with friends and family to celebrate the giving of the greatest gift.

Over Christmas and the New Years and up until the 11th of January, I will not be blogging regularly.

However, I’ve schedule several new articles and several reposts of articles from when I, Pandora was young, over a year ago now. Regular posting will resume on the 14th of January.

I will be visiting in California the first two weeks of the New Year, seeing my hometown for the first time since I moved out to Chicago nearly a year ago now. Accompanying me will be my girlfriend who will be meeting my family for the first time (pray for her).

And so I pray that for each and every one of you, God will speak peace into your hearts as He did to us all so many years ago.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

The Dark Ones

It is not the quiet ones who go on to commit heinous crimes, it’s the dark ones.

After a crime such as a school shooting or the like, the neighbors and acquaintances are trotted out on TV saying they always wondered about this person. A phrase they usually use is that they were quiet.

I know quiet people who are just in a shell which needs a little cracking, they aren’t potential murderers, they’re just thinkers.

It is not the quiet ones who kill, it is the dark ones. A darkness of the heart so deep it can be seen in the eyes. Usually mistaken for pain, it is a festering rot which requires great and heroic effort by those around them to draw out.

What troubles me is the inability to describe this sin on the part of those around them. I would submit that the vast majority of those around actually did not see anything which concerned them too greatly, in the glare of the limelight however they speak with sagacity and deep import.

No one wants to be the idiot.

In contrast, a friend of mine told me he knew the murderer at the mall in Omaha. They grew up in the same neighborhood and while they were not friends, per se, they were acquaintances. He commented to me this boy was the darkest person he ever knew. That is an accurate assessment.

We don’t recognize the rot of sin because we’re all in it. A caring, loving individual would see the problem and it would be a true test of their care and love to seek to intervene in that life.

Those in a dark room don’t have the perspective to see how dark others are. As noted in the Bible:

He who fails to find Me, injures himself,
All who hate Me love death.
Proverbs 8:36 (ESV)

Now wait a minute, we say. The audacity of that claim is appalling. We know plenty of people who do not believe in God and yet are good people who would never kill or commit crimes like those we see around us.

But if God is life, and not just life, but Life. The epitome of vitality. The very essence of Being. Then to not know Him is to not know life. To not follow Him is to not follow life. And to not love Him is to not love life.

God does not accept ambivalence toward Himself.

Therefore, those who are around us living life as they feel they ought instead of how God directs are suffering from the same root condition as those who have killed without mercy.

Our responsibility to them is the same: we must show them Christ. Show them a way out of their lives of quiet (or in our modern world: hurried) desperation.

God’s responsibility is the same as well: accept repentance, shower mercy and grace, and when necessary, dispense judgment.

Real Baghdad

This is what’s happening in Iraq now:

Michael Yon has catalogued the truth of the war and the life and the rebuilding of Iraq. This picture and the accompanying article spoke volumes to me, as I hope it does to you. And yes, those are Muslims in the front row, showing their public support for their Christian friends and neighbors who fled persecution by radical Islamics. They want them to come home.

Redemptoween

Halloween. Bugbear of knee-jerk non-involvists and new ‘favorite holiday of the religiously atheistic media and cultural leaders’. Where did it come from anyway? And can and should a Christian participate in it and to what extent?

I make no claims to historical accuracy in this article, merely stating what I’ve heard over the years and researched myself, all thrown into a big puddle and stirred until I get this… mess.

It is common to hear that Halloween is a night dedicated to the worship of Satan, the prince of evil and darkness. The favored decorations are dark on the nice side, and hideous on the bad side. Tales of ancestor worship and demon calling are frequent and true. Yes, it does happen.

The current version of Halloween borrows, as do most holidays we celebrate, from a plethora of traditions and belief systems. First we shall visit the Christian roots. The early Christians celebrated days when brave Christians laid down their lives as holidays. As persecution grew and the number of martyrs rose, it became impractical to even celebrate only your regional martyrs, and one day, the 1st of November, was dedicated to the celebration of the lives of those who gave their lives for Christ’s glory. Eventually, the rumor grew that on All Hallows Eve (Hallowe’en) God allowed the saints one day to walk the earth, visiting and comforting people and their loved ones and doing good deeds. This of course fueled the imaginations of people, feeding ghost stories and our natural fear of the unknown, the dark, and the dead.

The primary pagan roots of Halloween are Celtic. Druidism is an earth-worshiping, animistic, pan-theistic, evil religion which practiced, at various times, human sacrifice and erected marvelous structures facilitating it’s domination of the superstitious Celts. An brief but accurate description of the Druid’s hold on early Britain can be read in the early chapters of Charles Dickens’ A Child’s History of England (an excellent book for family and table reading). Around the time of Halloween has always been a time of harvest festivals, as the last of the summer and fall crops have been stored, the fields and woods were full of fat, lazy animals to hunt and kill. The storehouses of the industrious young civilizations were stuffed and the people were ready for one last wild fling before being confined to their hovels and huts by inclement weather. The Druids had convinced the populace that they were responsible for the success of each year, and that the god’s must be payed with ritualistic sacrifice in order to procure their blessing for the long winter and hope for the coming spring. The spiritism and human sacrifice and overall dark tone of the Druid religion permeated this time of the year for the pagan Celts. With the arrival of Saint Patrick in Ireland and other missionaries and conquering cultures such as the Romans, Druidism gave way to a hybrid Christianity, much as it did in South America, where a pagan reverence for the Dead mixed with a Christian knowledge of eternal life and an entirely human desire to see one’s loved ones again.

Halloween retains it’s Christian name: “All Hallows Eve”, and for most of us it retains a good theme, going into the neighborhood one last time to knock on all the doors and receive gifts and give greetings before the cold of winter chases us all indoors again. For a few it retains the pagan trappings of animal sacrifice, for others it involves getting drunk and/or high and naked, making pentagrams, lighting a fire, and chanting loudly at midnight and waking the neighbors.

For the vast majority it means walking your kids around the neighborhood worrying about razor blades in candy and never finding any (kids will digest ANYTHING) and waving hi to the neighbors who fuel your children’s sugar rush for the next 2 weeks.

For some Halloween is a time of remembering Luther’s 95 Theses, which he nailed to the door of the Wittenburg Cathedral on this day 490 years ago. His 95 arguments against the teachings of the Roman Catholic church set fire to the revivals of spirit and social and cultural upheaval and growth which started immediately thereafter and have continued to some extent even to this day.

Some even still remember the martyrs for the faith, whose numbers are growing at an ever greater rate as many nations seek to expunge the redemptive work of Christ from their borders.

But it is important to note that evil has not, cannot, and will not ever create anything new for itself. Evil is only capable of perverting things that are good, taking them out of balance and propriety, assigning more of less significance to them. That is all evil can and will ever be able to do.

God is capable of redeeming all things because He first created all things. Just as man was not made for the Sabbath, but the Sabbath for man, days and times and seasons have no inherent control over us, and can only affect us to the extent we allow ourselves to be controlled by them. The only thing we as Christians should allow to control us is Christ, and through His power we share in His overcoming the world. Greater is He that is in us, than he that is in the world. We are not given a spirit of fear, but of power, of strength, and of a sound mind. Our God has overcome the world, and nothing occurs without His knowing it and His plan and purpose directing it.

Halloween, for me, is a time to enjoy the change of season, to remember the faithful who have given their lives for Christ, to visit the neighbors while enjoying costumes and goodies. These are pics of my costumes for Halloween 2005 and 2006. I went to work in these. The English Lord included poofy pants and leggings and THE most uncomfortable shoes ever, and I went trick-or-treating with several of my friends that night. It was fun. The other one is, obviously, Mr. Clean, and yes, I shaved my head. It was the first time ever, and it felt weird.

The important thing to remember is that we are called to be light in a dark world. The culture’s current view of Halloween reinforces very strongly the fact that we are indeed in a very dark world that desperately needs light. We are also called to do whatever we do for Him and His glory. If that is not our goal, whether we participate or not, we’re doing it wrong.

EDIT: Scott over at Verum Serum has his own response to kids he teaches and knee-jerk non-involvists.

Broken Colored Pencils And The Stolen Ring

I’m speechless…

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First off, how does this narcissistic, immature search for self-worth and validation compare with what I do?

Granted, I’m not really a 13 year old, pimply private school kid who really hasn’t a clue, period.

I think this comparison is brought home to me because when I thought about his clip as though I were a 13 year old boy, parts of it made perfect sense. I understood him. Sadly.

I’m glad I grew up. I’m glad my friends didn’t put up with stupidity. I’m glad my parents made me play outside and encouraged my love of reading and Legos and digging holes and climbing trees and swimming and biking.

Seeing what this boy wants: approbation and girls; what he’s willing to do to get them: lie, steal, cheat; and how he feels about it: glee; I’m quite sure his parents, teachers, and peers have modeled for him behavior of a normal but despicable variety.

I wanted almost the same things at his age, and even yet where we differed in desire I did not usually resort to his methods, and when I did I knew I was wrong and did not feel glee about my deception, much less go on the internet and tell 300,000 of my ‘friends’ what I’d done.

His apparent social situation and the prescriptions for fixing him as found in the comments, recommending the standard “get laid”, as though that is the magic wand which fixes all idiocy and immaturity, present little hope of this boy ever getting far out of the morass he’s in.

The only thing which can change him is Christ, and His work is needed all around this boy, his family, and his friends. Who shall tell him?

Until I or another finds him though, his parents ought to pull his computer out of his room, take away his webcam, and make him go outside to play with the neighborhood children. Then perhaps he’ll get the slap he so richly deserves from the little girl, and learn that breaking pencils and stealing rings do not a handsome rogue make.

The Good, The Bad, The Ugly, And The Relative

The Good:

Justice Clarence Thomas has been in the news recently because of a book he has written, a memoir of his life heretofore. He’s making the rounds of radio and TV talk shows and Rush and Hannity, Miller and others are uniform in their approbation of his story. And it is not just conservatives enjoying the narrative of this amazing life. Deborah Douglas of the Chicago Sun-Times, a self-described liberal who believes Anita Hill’s story regarding sexual assault by Thomas, has a few wise words of support and agreement with the aims of Thomas’ life:

…my elders always said, “You may not respect the person, but you have to respect his position.”

Thomas strikes me as trying hard to envision the day when race doesn’t matter, and he offers a strict approach to the Constitution that backs that up. He’s a firm believer in a meritocracy, which becomes devalued when clout, patronage and nepotism persistently usurp it.

The problem is that so many people feel that day is so far away, they can’t take a chance on a guy whose misplaced colorblindness could undo years of racial progress. A man who has tried so hard to flee the burden of race has found, perhaps, that burden is inescapable.

Compare this with the New York Times’ printing of a article by Prof. Anita Hill, one-time subordinate of then Mr. Thomas, in which she continues to maintain the veracity of her story against the oft-reviled Justice. For further enjoyment read the Letters to the Editor regarding Hill’s editorial.

The Bad:

Close to home, in Oak Park, IL a school thinks it can prevent walkway roadblocks and last-minute dashes to class by outlawing “group hugs” at the school. Umm… does this even need commentary?

What about punishing lateness to class. Not allowing ‘lip’ to teachers. Teaching academics instead of the worthless garbage required by so much state and federal oversight and union hand-tying. Creating an environment where learning is the method and creating intelligent, functioning humans is the goal.

Good friends of mine teach at a private school where there are few, if any, field trips, and the students learn classical Greek and Latin as regular parts of their curriculum. When asked when they get to have fun the students themselves respond that learning IS the fun.

Reading the article it seems as though assault and molestation seem to be part of the problem. There is not a right to education, if the person decides they would rather be bringing bombs or molesting others or anything which prevents others from getting the education they are trying to get, kick them out, and send their parents to school instead where they might learn how they need to challenge, lead, and discipline their children before sending them to school.

There are plenty of remedial education options for those who find they really need to learn what they thought they didn’t need to know earlier.

The Ugly:

Dad’s abdicating their responsibility in the home. Living a life of half-way fatherhood, being “men” when others are around and being craven power-whores when they don’t think others see. Yelling at wives and children, psychologically abusing those they’ve sworn to honor, cherish, serve and protect. Psychological abuse is as harmful, if not more so, than physical abuse. Scars on the skin fade with time, scars in the heart only heal with mercy, grace, and forgiveness.

Yes, that’s all I have to say.

The Relative:

Dawn Eden, author of “The Thrill Of The Chaste”, a book on the better way of chastity in today’s unchaste world, debated Virginia Vitzthum, author of “I Love You, Lets Meet”, a book on hooking up through personals ads. In response to a question from the audience regarding why Dawn feels as though she needs to “evangelize” Dawn answers that she is speaking from the position of one hurt by the lifestyle and now speaking against it to protect others. Virginia begins her response calling Dawn “sincere” as though she were some little child, but worse than the haughty snub is the relativist thought that what is right for Dawn isn’t right for everybody else.

One of the most pernicious lies of out time is that of relativism. Humans are relative in that we perceive things relative to other things. Darkness is the absence of light, cold feels more pervasive and “cold” when we’ve just come out of a warm shower, listening to loud noises and we have trouble hearing a whisper we could’ve heard without problem prior. Standards are not relative. Humans invent some standards, such as for gaging temperature, noise, and light, in order to empirically relate different things. But just as the pot has no control over the wheel which spins it and has no say with the potter in its construction, there are standards which govern humans and which brook no relativist comparison. One is either right or wrong (we as humans, being inside the system, often do not have the faculty for judging right and wrong accurately, we cannot measure motive, and therefore must rightfully leave such judgment to the one who created both the human and the standard), good or evil, pure or impure.