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

Isaiah 55:8-9: Comfort In The Darkness

I do not pretend to understand why some things happen. But in times of deepest darkness, God chooses to shine His glorious plan into our hearts through stories such as this.

For my thoughts are not your thoughts,
neither are your ways my ways, declares the LORD.
For as the heavens are higher than the earth,
so are my ways higher than your ways
and my thoughts than your thoughts.
~Isaiah 55:8-9

Armed with nothing but a flashlight and finding no signs of life, firefighter David Harmon made one final search of tornado wreckage and made the discovery of a lifetime.
“I shined the flashlight across it and said ‘I’ve got a baby doll.’ And before I got ‘I’ve got a baby doll’ out of my mouth, it moved,” Harmon said.
In pitch darkness, in the middle of a field, Harmon found a baby boy covered with mud and debris.
“As soon as we rolled the baby over, it took a gasp of air and started crying,” he said.

(CNN)

“its no the ppls fault”

In comments following the video I found this observation:

“its no the ppls fault its the roads not being salted fault”

Obvious schooling and literacy issues aside, this is a supremely immature reasoning and conclusion. But I fear it is all too commonplace today.

To read the comment literally, we see the fallacy of blaming an inanimate, amoral object. But to take the apparent, obvious, or implied meaning, the government is to blame.

Because the government wasn’t there to plow and salt the roads, these people have suffered damage to their property and cars. That’s what is being said.

What about life requires that the government be responsible for such things? Sure, the government owns and is responsible for maintenance of the roads. But are they required to avert any “act of God”, preventing them from hampering the free exercise of stupidity on the part of the citizens of that government?

I would argue that the government has a reasonable obligation to work to maintain the safety of those things it owns and maintains for specific use and benefit of it’s citizens. If inclement weather is expected and normal, reasonable foresight should be employed to allow an efficient and orderly clearing of the snow or ice. But the government bears no responsibility beyond reasonable protection.

These people driving, and every person engaging in the fruits of freedom and/or liberty, take their safety and security into their hands. Each person is responsible for acting in a manner which minimizes risk to themselves and others on their own. Not because the government requests or requires them to, but because it is the right thing to do.

The government does not have the power in and of itself to say that speeding is wrong. Instead, it has the responsibility demanded by ethics to set reasonable restriction to promote the maximal good to each individual while not inhibiting the liberties of all.

So these people in the video went out on a snowy day with the responsibility to be aware their cars would not operate in the way they are used to them operating. They should have driven at much slower speeds and operated generally with much more caution.

As technology builds up, shielding us from elements of nature, we tend to forget that nature is a much more powerful force than technology and operates on rules much more established and concrete.

Drive at your own risk.

Global Warming Melts Down, Bush Wins, I Think I Like Mitt

With many thanks to Ms. Green, here’re a few bits of meat for y’all to chew on:

• Michael T. Eckhart, president of American Council On Renewable Energy (ACORE) is a hot head and really ought to keep up the good work of exposing his own side for the windbags they are.
• His email got to the wrong (right?) people.
• And now he’s on Youtube:

• Marlo “full of crap” responds.
• People keep saying Eckhart “apologized” but there are only two articles on his blog, and they’re from September of ‘06.
• Meanwhile, back where it matters, over 400 prominent scientists rebuke the Global Warming Alarmists and Propagandists, stating that, were it not for threats against their careers and livelihoods, there would be significantly more of them standing up against the claims of global warming.
  • I say they all should start their own school and weather station and policy think tank together and start throwing cool mud all over Gore and his sycophants.
• 2007 is now “The Year Of Global Cooling“
• …and RickKalgaard, quoting Martin Wolf, asks “Is Algore a ‘Red-Green’ or a ‘Green-Green’“?

Meanwhile, Bush is kicking tail and taking names. I don’t like some of what he’s pushed lately, but I see that I can continue to trust him as a man of his word: saying what he’ll do and doing what he says.

This strength has made him the winner by a wide margin in the battles between the White House and the Congress. Democrats just can’t lead when their leadership means whining and crying and flying in defeat. Passing useless resolutions and pointless pontification do not a leader make.

And Mitt is an honorable man.

Novak gushes, but I agree:

More and more this year, among the other pro-life candidates, I have been attracted by Mitt Romney’s good and cheerful disposition, level-headedness, and unruffable temperament (if there is such an adjective). You may think this is silly, but to me he both looks like and acts like a president. He would be easy to watch on the morning and nighttime news for the next eight years. His quiet and steady voice would be easy to take. He has the habits of an executive, not a legislator – action, not just talk. And I admire the way he honors his wife and his family – including his own mother and father.

Keep reading.

Today’s Interesting Stuff - December 3rd, 2007

As this years begins winding to a close, we have one of those news days which just makes me happy.

Hugo Chavez, the communist thug who wanted to run things forever in Venezuela, has been told he can’t hang around any longer than 2012, his original term limit. Students formed a coalition and grassroots campaign to fight his power grabs, and because he’s still constrained by a constitution he must abide by the law. The Communist News Networks print mouthpiece, Time Magazine, had the temerity to call Chavez’ power grabs “reforms“.

They cannot stand the thought of not using murdered babies to try to improve lives. And they aren’t afraid to lie about it. There has not been a single case of successful treatment of any condition using human embryonic stem cells. The only reason the government is being petitioned to fund this research is because private industry will not.

And what of the propriety of the government funding research anyway? Is it the responsibility of the government to do such things? Consider another expensive project: space travel. Now consider such programs as the Ansari X Prize which encouraged the production of vehicles which can enter space and return with a usable payload twice in two weeks. Using private money and initiative. Can the space shuttle do that? Can the government do that?

The State of Texas School Board fired their science curriculum coordinator for sending around an article critical of Intelligent Design. And the ruckus begins. With baited headlines such as “Hey Science, Don’t Mess With Texas” from the Huffington Post (which is apparently a major Yahoo Op/Ed outlet now) and “Evolution: Don’t even talk about it in Texas” the frenzied crowds cry foul. However, where is the issue? I’m not going to make a judgment on whether the coordinator ought to have been fired, there may have been other issues which led up to this. It would be unwise to fire someone just for sending around a document such as this. But a common thread through this hue and cry is that Intelligent Design and Creationism are some super heavy-weights in the world stage which have dominated Evolutionary theory in education and elsewhere.

Now tell me this: which theory has had the greater part of the last 50 years to indoctrinate our youth, guide our scientific inquiry, and silence any and all public debate? It’s not Creationism or Intelligent Design. No, evolution, a theory without proof or even a preponderance of evidence beyond that offered by the need for man to be able to define himself apart from an omniscient God, has enjoyed all formal and official public support. Evolution is no spunky underdog in this fight, it is instead the 800 pound gorilla which has dominated all arguments and quashed all dissent. Evolution is a flighty, sensitive thing too, which does not allow argument or dissent.

Further joy from the religion of Peace. Thank God she has been pardoned and is back in the UK now. Though with the ‘peaceful’ nature of British Muslims, her safety may not be guaranteed at this point.

The hurricane season is over. It was average, low average. And less than was predicted.

If they can’t predict a single season, why do they think they can predict the end of the world?

Send The Rain

J, given our pronounced differences on the state of America’s religious underpinnings and the propriety of visible exercise and application of religious beliefs by public officials: what is your take on the Governor of Georgia, Sonny Perdue, leading a session of intercessory prayer with Christian leaders on the steps of the State Capitol asking God to send rain on the drought-affected region?

“We’ve come together here simply for one reason and one reason only: To very reverently and respectfully pray up a storm,” Perdue said.

I believe that, just as an individual does not lose their responsibility to follow God’s commands. There is never a wrong time to humble ourselves, pray, and seek our God’s face. In the same way there is never a wrong time to speak and act for the truth.

Do your ideas differ or not?

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.

Do You Love Your Job?

It’s a choice, really. Happy people live longer, more productive, happier (duh) lives.

Do you enjoy the weather? It’s really a choice. Some people say they like winter as the scorching summer sun burns down on them and just as fervently pray for that very sun when they are shivering their way to their cars through the snow drifts.

It’s really all about choice.

Are you going to choose to enjoy where you are and what is going on? If you’re someplace really bad why are you still there? You’re either afraid or lazy, both of which are your fault, not your employers’. Especially in todays’ work environment, with unemployment at historic lows employers are paying more and giving better benefits to keep the good workers. If you’re doing all you can and you keep trying to do better and you’re still not being appreciated, get a new job. Sure it’s a risk. And don’t tell me I don’t know risk.

Have you picked up all your roots and moved more than halfway across the country to a big new city with no prospect of an immediate job and with bills piling up? I did, and I’m still alive. It was an adventure, and there were times I thought I should just pack up and head home. But I didn’t, and now I’m being paid more than I really expected to get for several more years, and I’m surviving and thriving, and the job offers are still coming in.

You have just as much ability to choose your emotions as you do to choose your lunch. Choose, choose wisely, choose well.

I Love Chicago

I love Chicago. It’s just the weather is all screwed up.

Einstein On The Mysterious

The most beautiful experience we can have is the mysterious. It is the fundamental emotion that stands at the cradle of true art and true science. Whoever does not know it and can no longer wonder, no longer marvel, is as good as dead, and his eyes are dimmed. It was the experience of mystery — even if mixed with fear — that engendered religion. A knowledge of the existence of something we cannot penetrate, our perceptions of the profoundest reason and the most radiant beauty, which only in their most primitive forms are accessible to our minds: it is this knowledge and this emotion that constitute true religiosity. In this sense, and only this sense, I am a deeply religious man… I am satisfied with the mystery of life’s eternity and with a knowledge, a sense, of the marvelous structure of existence — as well as the humble attempt to understand even a tiny portion of the Reason that manifests itself in nature.”

Einstein, in a brief essay on his philosophy of life, claims the mysterious is the most beautiful thing we finite beings can experience. And there is plenty mysterious around us to observe. It has been said that man fears what he does not understand, but this cannot be completely true. The sense of the mysterious is not a sense of fear but of smallness, of incompletion. It is a longing for that which is larger, fairer, truer.

Many people study to diminish the impact of the mysterious because they do not appreciate the feeling of being small, utterly insignificant. They become scientists and they observe the mysterious until to them it no longer seems mysterious. It is the hopeless dream of those who hate dreams that they can understand the infinite, or even the colossally finite. I believe that many of the crack-pot claims by egotistical scientists setting dates on the doom of the world, whether the destruction is to be by heat or cold, or wind or rain, or shaking, or melting, are based on their dismissal of the mysterious, their idea that by stint of study and expansion of knowledge they can predict the unpredictable.

The largest computer cannot compute even simple predictions of weather over just one local area with any accuracy at any distance of time or space, yet there are those who believe we can predict such monstrous disasters as planet-wide fatal warming trends at the distance of hundreds of years. We cannot observe a single case of documented cross species evolution, but there are those who know that all organic life has come from single-celled bacteria in some ancient primordial soup. We cannot understand the complexities of life at the bottom of the oceans of the planet some say we’ve inhabited for millions and billions of years, but there are those who claim to have grasped the intricacies of the planetary system and the entire universe.

Every scientist must keep rein on his own ego with a healthy dose of the mysterious. There are things we already understand, thanks to the toil and work of our predecessors. There are things we can understand, by the sweat of our own brows. There are things our children will understand, by standing on our shoulders. And there are things that will never be understood, because we are limited finite creatures.

Instead of chafing over our inability to understand the amazing or plumb the depths of the esoteric, let us be grateful to simply bask in the glow of the mysterious. Look up to the stars and think how small you still are and revel in the fact that you will never run out of things to learn.