Marc's Musings

I love watching Facing the Giants. Tonight, my son laughed, “We’re not even 35 minutes into it and dad’s already bawling!”

Tonight, the part that really hit me was an exchange between the football coach and Mr. Bridges, a guy that had been praying for the school for years.

Mr. Bridges felt God gave him a word for Coach Taylor. It was a good word.

Then there was this exchange:

Mr. Bridges: 2 farmers who desperately needed rain. And both of them prayed for rain but only one of them went out and prepared his fields to receive it. Which one do you think trusted God to send the rain?

Coach Taylor: Well the one who prepared his fields for it.

Mr. Bridges: Which one are you? God will send the rain when He is ready. It’s your job to prepare your field to receive it.

How about you?

What have you been praying for? For a really long time? Some situation where you really need to see God move in your life?

Are you preparing the field?

My brother-in-law, Paul Bruce, introduced me to Microsoft’s Photosynth. It’s a cool tool that will synthesize your images, putting them together and, if possible, making a 3-D composite.

Well, I didn’t have the zoom to make too much of a 3-D composite, but I dumped the 138 photos I took from my phone while at Fenway last night into PhotoSynth and got this:

It’s pretty fun! (First hit the “Click to view synth” button. Then hit the “play” button for the easiest way to see the pix.)

P.S. The Red Sox beat the Orioles 7-2. Big Papi even hit a home run in the first inning!

We’ve just had quite an adventure with YouTube!!

My wife found this Thriller video done with Legos. It’s a hoot!

[If you want to see how well they did, you can see the original Thriller video here.]

For some reason, she then found the A-Team, Legos style!

The A-Team is a hit with our family so we had to show the A-Team one to the kids. When we did, we found a Lego version of Bohemian Rhapsody!!

As you can see, there’s rarely a dull moment in the Pitman family!

14 years ago, at about this time, I was getting ready to walk down the aisle with the woman who was to be my wife. (Yes, we both walked down the aisle.)

14 years by the numbers:

• 5110 days
• 7,358,400 minutes
• 441,504,000 seconds
• 1 trip to India (the other was in the few brief months before we were married!)
• 12 moves
• 3 babies
• 3 states
• 3 employers (and 1 pyscho I worked for when I was self-employed)
• 1 church plant
• 5,000 individuals in the Waterville area shown God’s love in practical ways

What is harder to quantify is the ups and the downs, the curves God’s thrown on our path, the growth that comes from hardship and the joys that come from growth.

But any way you count it, I’m grateful for these 14 years and am looking forward to the next 114!

My wife’s grandmother turns 90 next month.

But what do you get a woman who’s turning 90? Nana is spry and full of life so somehow an “Official Nonogenerian” t-shirt doesn’t seem quite right.

Twitter and Facebook friends came to the rescue again!

Here are their replies:

and

Aren’t these great?! What would you add?

This morning, I told job Caleb to stop talking. His sister dropped her breakfast and what he was saying things that would get her worked up.

He looked at me and asked me, “Why do you tell me to stop talking so much?”

Good question.

I reminded him of the gasoline and water analogy our pastor told us. We approach every the fire of every conflict with a bucket in each hand: one full of gasoline, one full of water. It’s our choice which we one we pour on the fire.

I pointed out why I thought he was adding gasoline in this situation.

Frustrated, he said, “You seem to only comment on gasoline. Why don’t you comment on my water ones?”

He went on, “Dad, if you don’t see the water ones, you shouldn’t mention any of them at all.”

He’s right. 9 years old and he’s right. And I told him so.

Isn’t this a great leadership lesson? If we only point out the deficiencies, we frustrate those we lead.

While it’s great to try to prevent fires ourselves, it’s even more important to notice when those who report to us–or when those who look up to us–try to put them out too.

This morning my kids were using a newly invented Lego space shuttle to save us all from an alien ships that had kidnapped earth.

It was enough to make a dad proud.

But this evening, I had to put my foot down.

I got home, and my son showed me two more of his Lego creations: a new space station and…an alien space ship.

Me: Is that one of the alien ships that kidnapped the earth this morning?

Son: Ah…yes.

My goodness. What am I teaching these kids that they’d allow that into our house?!

I guess maybe I should ask him if he’d captured the enemy ship…

Cale got a rootbeer kit for Christmas. So last weekend we made it!

It tastes great…especially if you can get over the enormous amounts of sugar that are used!

Cale got so into it, he went online to look up the history of rootbeer!

And the label design was his idea!

Our six year old daughter lost her first tooth tonight!!

My three year-old daughter is wonderfully precocious.

One of my favorite things about her is the way she puts on socks. Ever since she started dressing herself, she’s always matched her socks…just not with each other.

She generally matched each sock to some color in her outfit. It’s a wonderful sign of her creativity that we never saw fit to “correct.”

Well this morning, she matched her socks. To each other. She hasn’t done that in years. It was as though part of her had died.

With a sense of foreboding, I asked her why. She said she matched them because “Those people at the hop-spit-al laughed at me. I don’t like people laughing at me.”

You see, yesterday, while she visited me at work, many of you called attention to her “mix-matched” socks and laughed. You never bothered to learn that the white sock matched her white shirt; the pink one the pink flowers on her shirt. [The picture to the left was taken a couple weeks ago. She wasn't wearing that orange shirt yesterday.]

I tried explaining to her that your laughing was simply enjoying her, not making fun of her. But she doesn’t undertand that. So many of you commented on her socks and laughed, she thought all of you were laughing at her. When she explained her “missed-matched” socks, you laughed even more.

I understand your mirth. She’s really cute. She has a great vocabulary for a three year-old. And she has a knack of making people feel happy. But she didn’t understand your laughing. She just knows you laughed because her socks weren’t normal.

I hope she’ll get over it and do her own thing again. I hope the damage isn’t permanent. And I hope this will be a learning experience, teaching her to not worry about others think. To be herself. To march to the beat of her own drummer.

I hope this will teach her to be a leader, not a conformer.

That’s up to her…and us.

As for you, please think twice the next time you laugh at someone or something you don’t understand. Just because you’ve been doing something the same way for 50 years, and everyone else you know has been doing it the same way, doesn’t mean it’s the “right” way. “Different” isn’t necessarily wrong and certainly doesn’t need to be mocked.

Please remember this.

Sincerely,

One Sad Father