Touched

I was trying to go to sleep and just couldn't. It's been in my heart all night to write about what happened at church tonight and I finally decided I needed to get up, come back in here, and do it.

My wife talks about "getting a blessing" at church. Usually this means something has happened during a service that has touched her and made her remember why she goes to church and connects her to her faith. It might be a scripture or a line from a sermon or a song or a prayer or something completely obscure to anyone but her, but when it happens it is a real connection, and the meaningfulness of it cannot be denied. I don't get that sensation myself nearly as often as she does. I'm not as religious as she is, nor as faithful. My blessings at church usually come from watching other people get blessed, and seeing the joy she gets from it. When she's happy, I'm happy. When she's blessed, I'm blessed.

Tonight at church I got a blessing of my own.

It was because of the kids. I've written on here before about the wonderful youth group we have at our church. Our church is small in terms of membership, but we have a disproportionately large number of kids. This morning when the kids got up and went to children's church more than half the congregation left the sanctuary. We have a large, vibrant youth group. Tonight, the youth that were at the evening service had rehearsed a couple of songs in sign language that they performed for us, then the singing began.

Usually on Sunday night we'll line the kids up in front of the platform and sing a few songs with them, then they'll take a seat and the grown-up Praise Team will take over. Tonight, for some reason, someone had the idea to put the kids in the choir section (usually empty on Sundays) and turn on the overhead choir mikes. They had a blast. There were maracas and wood blocks and tambourines for them to bang away on--one of the girls was using Beverly Boggs's big tambourine and I saw a couple of other kiddie-sized ones getting used as well. There was singing and clapping and dancing in the choir like I've never seen on a Sunday night. Some of the adults in the crowd were joking that the Sunday morning adult choir better be looking over their shoulders. At least, I think they were joking.

I stopped singing along at some point and just started listening to the kids sing. It wasn't particularly melodious--at one point I think some of them must have been having a contest to see who could sing the loudest--but it was passionate and honest and pure. It touched me. More than once I had to wipe away a tear, even during some of the more upbeat numbers.

I don't know if I can remember everyone who sang but I'm going to try: Jewel, Jessica, Morgan, Jazmine, Kayla, Brendan, Bailey, Matthew, Hunter, and Dylan. I think that's everyone. I don't know if the other Hunter was up there singing or not. If I left anyone out, I'm sorry, and I hope someone will please comment and remind me who they were. Kids, thank you for a wonderful night of music, and thank you for giving me such a blessing. It's nights like this that make me glad we found this church. I've always said it feels like a family. Tonight showed that to be true yet again.

I want to thank whoever had the idea to put the kids in the choir area tonight. Watching them perform gave me hope for the future of the church. It's a small church, and seeing the next generation getting into the spirit of the music tells me the future might be in pretty good hands. After the service was over I urged the pastor, as well as Lynn (the youth leader) and Mark (the music director), to make children's choir a permanent part of Sunday night services. I think it would add so much to the service. The church bulletin always lists the Sunday morning music as being provided by the Adult Choir. I'd love to open a bulletin someday and see that the Sunday night music is to be presented by the Children's Choir. I think that would be pretty cool.

Joy To The World

Seasons Greetings from Sandy Springs!

It's been a while again since I've posted. Before you ask, no, I haven't done anything on the story revisions. This post isn't about that. I was going to do some good catching up, but my wife did a good bit of that for me, telling all about the kids' Christmas play at church and our trip to family Christmas in N.C. I'm not going to repeat all that. Just go to her blog and read it.

At her request, I'm going to tell you about the Christmas choir performance. It was the Sunday before Christmas and we sang some songs and my parents came and listened to us sing. How was that? Didn't I do great? No, seriously, we had a great time. We did five songs and the show lasted about 20 minutes, I guess. Everyone said it was a good performance. I'm not really sure what else to say, other than the fact that we had a good time being a part of it. Kudos to Mark and Debbie for picking some cool songs and to Mark for his fine direction. Lynn rocked the solos as well, and I rocked the man-soli that one time we had to hold out that note while the women sang the chorus underneath it. It was cool.

We've had a great Christmas season and are looking forward to the New Year. The Falcons are in the playoffs, the Hawks are better than they've been in 20 years, I'm reading a really cool book, the kids are the kids (which is a compliment, even when they act a hot mess), my job is secure, and my wife has a sexy butt. Life is good heading into 2009. Hopefully yours is as well. Support your local blogger!

I'm back!

Did you even notice I was gone? You haven't missed much. The fantasy football front was pitiful. SFC split the last two games of the season and missed the playoffs, finishing #10 in the Power Ranking. We lost to Lethal Weapon 4 15-2 (that's right; we only scored two points the week we played the team with Keyshawn Johnson starting at WR. Gack. Then we turned around in Week 14 and beat a decent Hook-Ups team 20-16. Go figure. Maybe next year we'll have better luck choosing kickers and Tom Brady will be healthy again. Congrats to Rake, though, on his successful season, and Ben, for his successful season in our Yahoo league. Good luck in the playoffs, guys!

Christmas choir rehearsal was chaotic tonight. Kids everywhere, four babies in various laps in various stages of excitement, and in the midst of it all, eight people trying to sing and hear the director's cues over the uproar. It was a great time. That performance is coming up in a couple of Sundays. Wish us luck!

That's it for now. My blogslacking is over for now. Take care, and as always, support your local bloggers.

Happy Thanksgiving

Among the chaos and confusion of November, I thought it would be nice to sit down and write some nice words about some of the things I am truly thankful for this Thanksgiving.

• I am thankful for my family. My wife Darlene and our four incredible kids (and the crazed dog) have made my life so rich over the last three years. I still can't believe that my life has changed as much as it has. Darlene, I am so happy and proud to be your husband and I am so thankful that you have stuck around through all the craziness and kept me straight. I love you.
  
  
• Steven, Jewel, Jessica, and Sage, I love you all so much and I am so glad I get the chance to be your dad. I know I am too hard on you guys sometimes and I will promise to try and do better. I always wanted a family and with you guys beside me, that's what I have. I love all of you.
  
  
• Gracie, you're an insane doggy clown. You lick me too much sometime, but I'm glad you're part of our family. I love you.
  
  
• I am thankful for my parents and my in-laws. Darlene's folks are with us today, and my parents are crossing the Panama Canal on their cruise. I'm thankful that they're all young enough and energetic enough to travel and experience the world in their own way. I love all of you.
  
  
• I'm thankful that we have found a church to guide us and give our kids a path to walk on. The Shirey kids decided last night that they wanted to give their hearts to Jesus. That was such a huge step for them to take and I think it reflects the maturity that they have gained by being part of such a vibrant church community. Darlene and I continue to enjoy Christmas choir, and I am so glad that we are able to go each week. To my church family, I love you as well.
  
  
• Finally, I'm thankful that we all have our health, that Darlene and I have good jobs, and that we all have each other. It's been a wonderful three years. There have been ups and downs, but at the end of the day our lives are all so much better than they would have been otherwise because we are able to share our lives with each other.

Happy Thanksgiving to everyone in 2008.

November birthdays (and other business)

I told you last week about Darlene and I joining the Christmas choir at church (I haven't decided if I want to sing in the regular choir or not). We practiced again last night after church. It went well. We had four men there and five or six women. It's a good group of people with a good mix of vocal ranges. On top of all that, the songs are a lot of fun to sing. I think it's going to be a good time.

I also want to correct some omissions from my blog the last few days. Last Thursday (November 6) was Jewel and Jessica's birthday. Tuesday (November 11) was my mom's birthday. I should have mentioned these at the time and I didn't. I was so caught up in NaNoing and blogging about NaNoing that I forgot about those important birthdays. Today (November 13) was another important birthday--it was Darlene's mom's birthday. Our moms were born two days apart in the same year. I think that's kind of cool. To you four wonderful ladies, Happy Birthday from your stepdad/son/son-in-law. I love you all, and I'm very glad to have you around. I hope your next year is as full of wonder and joy as your last one was.

Singing!

They were looking for some help at church in the choir for the Christmas season, so Darlene and I decided to join up. This isn't a choir like the one Ben and Wanda have been associated with at St. Philip's. They don't wear robes and sing in perfect four-part harmony. It's a small group (it's ranged anywhere from 3-12 people since we've been going, depending on who's at church on any given Sunday) of regular people who want to stand up and sing. It's a great group of people and it's the kind of choir I can be comfortable being a part of. I'm looking forward to learning the Christmas music. The songs we started with tonight were pretty cool. So now the whole family is involved in the Christmas celebration at church. Darlene and I are in the choir and the kids (even Sage) are all part of the youth group's Christmas play. More updates as events warrant, I'm sure.

In which I try to catch up

I never wrote about fantasy football earlier in the week. Sandy Springs FFC got beat again, losing to Outlaws 33-25. That drops the record to 2-4. To make matters worse, Jon Kitna went on IR this week, making my two top QB's from last year hurt. I now have a QB corps of Kerry Collins and Jeff Garcia. We'll see. I also picked up Shaun Alexander in a move to possibly strengthen my RB crew. No idea how much work he'll get in Washington, but with Mojo on bye this week he'll probably get a start for SFC.

The other fun from today was that Da Bunch had gender-specific outings. The ladies (Darlene, Sabrina, the twins and Sage) went to the church for a mother-daughters banquet. I suspect Darlene will write about it in her own blog, so I'll only say that everyone won door prizes of some sort and they seemed to have a great time all the way around.



In the meantime, Steven and I went to the opening night Gwinnett Gladiators game at the Gwinnett Arena. They beat the Mississippi Sea Wolves 6-2. It was an extremely chippy game, with penalties all over the place. Gwinnett scored four power play goals. Steven was happy to get to see a fight. It wasn't a very long fight, a couple of good shots and it was over. The Gwinnett fighter won. It was nothing like the fight Wanda and I saw that time at the Knights game when that guy leveled Wayne Gretzky's brother (on his birthday, no less) and the teams fought for 20 minutes. That one was straight out of Slap Shot. I don't know if I'll ever see anything to top that. Still, we had a great night. I wore my Knights jersey. Exchanged greetings with a couple of other Knights jerseys and had a short conversation with a guy who said he was a referee in the IHL. That was pretty cool. It was fun. Hockey is cool.

In which I talk about football and church and stuff

I'm doing this post piecemeal. I'm making tea for tomorrow, so I have to keep running back and forth to the kitchen. I know that has no bearing on your reading experience, but it makes for an interesting writing process so I thought I'd bring it up. If you haven't already been bored to tears and clicked off somewhere else, keep reading. It won't be much longer before you bail on me, I'm sure.

The UFFL Draft took place this evening. The league is geared up now for our 17th season of fantasy football. 1992 was the first year we played together and there were nine owners running ten teams (one guy ran two teams). 17 years later there are 14 teams, and seven of the original nine owners are still in the league. I think that's pretty remarkable.

I didn't actually take part in the draft. It was started at 6:00 and we were in church at that time. I sent my draft preferences to the Commish though, so my team still participated even if I didn't. We run what is usually called a dynasty league, which means we carry over our entire roster from year to year. The draft then, is made up of rookies and players who were not on rosters at the end of the previous season.

I exchanged three players. I cut QB John Beck, RB Adrian Peterson (the one from the Bears, not the Vikings), and WR Deion Branch. I picked up QB Chad Henne, RB Jason Snelling, and RB Steve Slaton. Henne is the QB of the future for the Dolphins and Slaton stands to get good playing time in Houston. I just had a feeling about Snelling, who plays for the Falcons.

(The tea is done. I made some Kool-Aid too, for the kids. Pink lemonade.)

So after the draft, here is the roster for Sandy Springs FFC:

QB - Tom Brady, Chad Henne, Jon Kitna
RB - Maurice Jones-Drew, Steve Slaton, Jason Snelling, Leon Washington
WR - Nate Burleson, Plexiglas Burress, Jerricho Cotchery, Wes Welker
TE - Alge Crumpler, Marcedes Lewis
K - Ryan Longwell, Neil Rackers

I like it. I'm going to have issues in Week Four of the season as all three of my QB's and three of my four WR's will be on bye. We'll see what happens when the time comes. It's going to be interesting. Watch this space for SSFFC updates as the season progresses!

Church was cool tonight. Steven helped out playing the drums during the musical portion of the service. The usual drummer was not in church tonight, so Steven and Tyler (the 11-year old son of the music minister) teamed up on the drums. One would play the snare, high-hat, splash cymbal, and handle the tom rolls, and the other played the floor tom and the ride cymbal. They switched out positions several times during the service and did a fantastic job. Steven has come a long way with his drumming and we are really proud of him.

The girls got to take part too. The pastor invited all the kids to come up and help out with the singing so Jewel, Jessica, and Sage got to go up and hold microphones and sing with their friends. It was great. Sage didn't know as many of the songs as the twins did, but she really belted out the chorus of "I'll Fly Away" and the twins were doing their thing as well. It was really cool seeing all the kids on stage enjoying themselves and taking part in the service.

I start my new job Tuesday. Cross your fingers, say a prayer, send good thoughts, do whatever it is that you do to send good luck to me. I'm so thankful to finally get back to work and get the opportunity to take care of my family again. I was drawing unemployment this summer, but that wasn't a patch on what my paychecks bring in. It'll be good to have that security again.

That's all for now. I didn't get much sleep last night and I need to be sure to get a good night sleep tomorrow so I'm going to sign off, have a quick snack (PBJ, most likely) then go to bed. My lovely bride is sleeping in the living room chair with the remote control, so I'll have to wake her up and get her off to bed. She'll fuss at me for it, but I'm going to do it. I love you baby! You have a sexy butt!

That's it. I'm out. Happy Labor Day. Support your local bloggers.

In which I'm up WAY too late

I'm going to bed now. You'd think I'd know better than to be up this late on a Saturday night with church in the morning. Church is a lot more enjoyable when I'm not yawning constantly so I want to try and get at least a little bit of sleep tonight. Ah, well. Good night, all.

In which cool stuff happened

You can find out about a couple of cool things I've been doing the last couple of days by clicking on some links (support your local bloggers!):

My brother's blog has some pictures of the playhouse Steven and I helped him work on this week. It's not done, but progress pictures will be continuing as the work moves on, I'm sure.

My wife blogged about our search for a new church. We've been talking about looking for one and we finally got around to it. She's got all the details (and is a lot prettier than me) so go check out her blog as well.

Ode To A Silly Dibbun

This entry was originally posted on my old blog.

"I don't need no one to tell me about Heaven
I look at my daughter and I believe..."

Words by Ed Kowalczyk, song by Live.

I'm not a religious man. After examining my beliefs, you couldn't call me a Christian. I've always considered myself spiritual, though. I'm probably more agnostic than atheist. I believe in the concept of God, if not in the actual existence of said Being. I believe that God is a state of mind, that He exists differently (or not at all) for everyone depending on their own needs and belief. Personally, I don't believe most of the New Testament or in the existence of Heaven or Hell. I believe when we die, we die. I'd like to believe in reincarnation, I would like to believe the Bible is factually true, but I don't.

That having been said, I understand why ancient people created religion. They looked about them, at a world they didn't understand and couldn't comprehend, and had to ascribe a motive for it. Why did it rain? Where did the thunder come from? What is out there? They looked around them and felt awe, and the only thing to do was to assume that "someone" was responsible for it all, and to worship that "someone". At its most basic level, I believe religion is a repository for awe.

I do understand that, but until recently I had never felt it myself. I'm more intellectual than philosopher. When I see rain, I don't think God, I think cumulonimbus clouds and atmospheric pressure and fronts. I have romantic notions, but tend to be matter-of-fact about the world around me. However, I have a daughter. That has changed things.

She is three, and is the most beautiful, amazing thing in my life. She lives with her mom so I only see her every other weekend. I live for those moments. I feel the hole in my heart when she's not around, and when she tells me, "Daddy, we're buddies!" that hole fills and my heart soars so high I can't see the ground. She's my Silly Girl, my Dibbun (thanks for a great word, Brian Jacques), and my best friend. Without any irony whatsoever, I say too that she's a miracle. When I'm with her, when I hear her laugh, or watch her dance, or hold her tiny hand, I feel awe, for the first time in my life. I finally understand why people believe in God. I am closer to God when she's around than I have ever been before. It's not enough to make me believe like Ed does, but it's enough to make me understand what belief could be about. She broadens my horizons and makes me more complete than I ever have been before.

I love my daughter and am so proud to be a daddy. Just thought you'd all like to know.