Driving by braille

Wow, who would have thought that we would ever be back to the world of blogging. The plan is to try to upload pictures to make sure that people know what is going on in our lives. Of course, the drawback to that is that we have to know what is going on in our lives, which may not be so easy. Tonight we celebrated the start of our weekend with some pork chops given to us by our very sweet neighbors. They were out celebrating their birthdays and so were not going to use the pork chops, which meant that we were the beneficiaries of a tasty meal. Not to mention the fact that it gave me a chance to use the grill!

So, without further ado, I present a look at the food we ate:

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Now, it is time to get a bit of sleep!

Well, I made a big step a couple of weeks ago and asked Kelsey if she would be interested in marrying me. To set the stage for this question, however, I have to go back to how this all worked out. I had been sneaking around for a while in order to get the ring and I worked with a great guy up in Edmond (any of you guys that are thinking about getting engaged, talk to me, he does things for a pretty reasonable price). Kelsey didn’t know that I had been doing this, because I had “cover stories” for each time I went up there. I was “meeting a friend for dinner,” “going to a meeting after work,” or just plain “had a lot of things going on” that night.

I spoke with her parents on Labor Day and was pretty encouraged by their enthusiastic response - although when her dad asked why they didn’t have larger steak knives at Red Robin I was a bit more nervous. However, when her mom and dad were both excited and when her dad siad, “Now, Chris, if she says ‘no’ you give me a call, because I am still her father and I still have a little more discipline left.” That was an encouraging way to end the talk.

So, I wanted the engagement to be a surprise, but I wasn’t sure how to do that. I wanted to go to Colorado, because I have so many memories of times spent there with family over the years. So, I got tickets (I had actually had them for quite some time) and didn’t mention anything about it until Labor Day. Then, I told her that she needed to be ready for a trip that coming “weekend” (that term is used loosely, because I told her that I would pick her up after lunch and we would get back Tuesday night). I told her how long we would be gone and things that she needed to pack, but not where we were going. On Thursday I finally broke down and told her that we were flying, because for some reason women need to know whether they need to pack a carry-on or not.

Friday arrived and I picked her up and we went to the airport. She was very excited to see that we were going to Colorado. My heart about gave out on me when they pulled my bag out to run it through the X-Ray machine a second time. I was having visions about the terror of having to take the ring box out or having to somehow convince Kelsey that she needed to go up to the gate while I went through security. However, I made it through and watched my bag like a hawk for the rest of the flight. We got to Colorado and met up with my grandma and drove out to her cabin. I didn’t sleep very well that night and got up quite early to spend time praying and reading and watching the sun rise. I decided that morning that I wanted to propose in one of my favorite meadows on a hike that we were going on sometime that morning.

Well, when Kelsey woke up I spent some time telling her about how special she is and some of the great memories that I have about the time that we have been dating. I was a little worried that if I waited that I would forget all of the things that I wanted to say when I actually proposed. We ate breakfast and Kelsey spent a bit of time reading (I was a little upset that she needed to be so spiritual ), then we left for the hike. Quickly thinking on my feet, I put the ring box into a pair of long socks and told Kelsey I was taking them along “in case my short socks didn’t work out on the hike.” She doesn’t remember me saying that, but it was important that I explained myself . . .

We hiked up to this meadow and thankfully I had to use the restroom, so I could transfer the ring over without lying one more time (I figured that I had already done that enough in the ring-design process) . I then went and sat on a log right across from the one she sat down on and spent some more time talking to her about some of the things that I love about her and she agreed with me that she thought I was fairly special also. I then said, “And that is why I would like to spend the rest of my life with you.” And she said, “I’d like to do that as well . . .” I then said I had something to give her and took the ring box out (after having to use BOTH hands to open the silly zipper on the backpack) and said, “Kelsey, will you marry me?”

Apparently women never really plan through the answer to this question, they just dream abou the question being asked. At least that is what Kelsey told me. After probably five seconds (which seemed like five hours), she responded with a YES! So, we spent some time talking and praying and just gazing around the beauty of the meadow. Then we headed back to my grandma’s place and the rest has been a crazy blur.

Now, I look forward to seeing how God blesses this time of engagement and allows us to be successful as an engaged couple. Please pray for us in this time, that God would be glorified and that we would really establish a firm, God-centered foundation for the rest of our lives together.

I got the chance to visit the booming metropolis of Hooker, OK this past weekend. It was a whole lot of fun to spend time with Kelsey and her parents and to see the place where Kelsey grew up - it is quite the place! We stayed at the house where her grandmother used to live, walked around town to see places like her high school and places where her relatives had lived (or still live), grilled out on Saturday evening with Kelsey’s great aunt (we actually went to Hooker for her great aunt’s 80th birthday) and her family. So, I got to meet all kinds of people and they wanted to know about my trip this summer. I had a great time talking with them that evening - it is so fun to share about all of the things that God did this summer. On Sunday, it was the birthday party for Kelsey’s great aunt, so I got a chance to meet even MORE of the extended family, which was also a great time! I told Kelsey that I hoped that there wasn’t a quiz, because there was no way that I was going to possibly remember all of the names of the people who were there. That evening, we had a great time eating with some of the Scoggins’ family friends, which was a great time to eat pizza and learn more about the crazy antics of growing up in a small town. I would definitely suggest going to Hooker just for the Rex Chicken with jalapeños from Mr. Burger. Okay, maybe a five hour drive (one way) for food is a bit excessive, but it was amazing!

Greetings one and all! I am sorry that I haven’t posted in so long, maybe the initial glamour of blogging lost some of its lustre and sparkle, but do not worry, do not fret, I haven’t quit, I’m not done yet! I wanted to write a bit to let you know some of the new happenings around these parts. I am still working in the National Scholar’s office and am really enjoying what I am doing. I recently returned from an amazing trip overseas which was absolutely a great time to get a chance to see what God is doing and the ways that He is working in incredible ways in a land which has been dark for years. So, recently I have had a lot of crazy news - I found out two days ago that I am going to be a member of the Round Table at Trinity Baptist, which I am certainly totally excited about. It will be a challenging time, but I am excited to get to be around other men who are actively seeking God and I am thrilled to be able to learn more about the reasons behind the things that I believe.

Dating Kelsey continues to be a joy, there are certainly times of growing and stretching, but God is really using the relationship in both of our lives to not only draw us closer to each other, but to draw us closer to Him! What a joy it has been to be able to spend time with her speaking about our summers (we didn’t have a chance to contact each other during the month that I was overseas, which was really good, because it helped to draw us closer), enjoying walks in the evening, meals out, Frisbee, relaxing evenings just watching a movie, or just spending time talking together. God is good!

I don’t have a whole lot more news at this point in time. I am heading to Hooker, OK this weekend, so I am pretty excited to get to see the area where Kelsey grew up and get a chance to meet some of her extended family! I look forward to celebrating her aunt’s birthday, wandering around the town of Hooker (Kelsey told me that the tour of the town takes three minutes, so I had better be ready . . .), and enjoying some good quality time with my amazing girlfriend and her amazing family!

So, I have been trying to read three books at once here recently - it certainly keeps me on my toes. I am reading a commentary on Philippians for my seminary course, a book called Heaven (amazingly about what it is entitled), by Randy Alcorn, and Live Life on Purpose by Claude Hickman, the founder of . Reading through Live Life on Purpose has been challenging already and I have only read through the first two chapters. I am worried I might be more convicted as I read through the rest of the book! Yikes!

One of the ideas which was very challenging was the “compass” which God has given us for our lives. Hickman speaks of the compass being God’s ultimately fulfilled purpose, which we see in Revelation 7:9 - “After this I looked and there before me was a great multitude that no one could count, from every nation, tribe, people and language, standing before the throne and in front of the Lamb. They were wearing white robes and were holding palm branches in their hands.” God ultimately desires that this throng of worshipers will be with Him forever in heaven. This is our compass. I really enjoyed the distinction which he gave between a compass and a map. A map is what we often wish that we had for our lives - a very specific and detailed plan which lays out how we will get to the end goal. The compass, on the other hand, will help us to see if what we are doing lines up with the “North Star” that is God’s ultimate plan.

Another point that Hickman brought up in his writing was that we are often approvers of others. We do not want to rock the boat by telling someone that they are not living up to their God-given potential and are not living in light of the compass which we have been given. Instead, we allow these people to try and line God up with their decisions rather than lining their decisions up with God’s desire. Approvers are compared to Saul when he held the coats of the people who stoned Stephen. We are not the ones making the decision, but we stand passively by and let it happen.

A final point which really struck me also was his point that this generation’s worst fear is choosing the wrong path and missing their destiny. How true that can be. There are so many roads open to us that we think that taking one will ruin the rest of our life. Instead of doing something, we end up doing nothing, which is clearly not going to bring God glory! A quote which I think is challenging along with this idea is this, “Don’t be afraid of the unknown on the journey; be afraid of missing the life God has appointed you to live.” So many times I want to have everything mapped out so that I know exactly what I need to do. This is certainly not how I should be living.

One final quote (this one from Oswald Chambers - but in this book):

God does not have to come and tell me what I must do for Him, He brings me into a relationship with Himself where I hear His call and understand what He wants me to do, and I do it out of sheer love for Him … When people say they have had a call to foreign service, or to any particular sphere of work, they mean that their relationship to God has enabled them to realize what they can do for God.

It is pretty incredible how God uses His word to encourage us. As I have been processing through a lot of things here recently: job choices, evaluating my relationship with Kelsey (which gets better and better all the time), figuring out how to get to know the team I am going overseas with this summer, figuring out how to write a support letter for my trip, really glorifying God where I am right now, figuring out where my ministry should be at the moment and other smaller things, I have felt a bit like the seed sown among the thorns in Matthew 13:7 - overwhelmed with “the worries of this life.” This morning before I left to go to work, I spent a bit of time reading through some Psalms and was so encouraged by the words of Psalm 130. I’ll let it speak for itself:

¹ Out of the depths I cry to you, O LORD;
² O Lord, hear my voice.
Let your ears be attentive
to my cry for mercy.

³ If you, O LORD, kept a record of sins,
O Lord, who could stand?
⁴ But with you there is forgiveness;
therefore you are feared.

⁵ I wait for the LORD , my soul waits,
and in his word I put my hope.
⁶ My soul waits for the Lord
more than watchmen wait for the morning,
more than watchmen wait for the morning.

⁷ O Israel, put your hope in the LORD,
for with the LORD is unfailing love
and with him is full redemption.
⁸ He himself will redeem Israel
from all their sins.

So, I am planning on getting this Lasik surgery on my eyes on Thursday, April 7 (but seriously, where else would they be able to do Lasik surgery), which means that I have to go through this veritable barrage of tests in order to see if I am a worthy candidate for the procedure and to get a current prescription which I will then have etched into my corneas and will get to live with for a few years. I had already found out that I am a worthy candidate - just a fairly mild case of myopia (nearsightedness, for people like me who had no clue what that meant) which should easily be corrected by Lasik surgery. So, yesterday I got to go get my eyes dilated (yesterday was the first time I had ever experienced this joy).

You have been warned, don’t blame me and say that I am sick and gross (that may be true, but it isn’t because I didn’t warn you). Before I had my eyes dilated, I got them numbed so that they could use this cool tool to gently poke my cornea to see what sort of “eye-pressure” I have. I suppose that it could be considered like an air-pressure gauge for a tire. I was glad my eyes were numb, I guess, even though I had this weird “I-can’t-feel-my-eyes” experience where my eyes felt weird because I couldn’t actually feel when I was blinking. You wouldn’t think this would anything you would even notice until you have it happen.

Then, I got the awesome drops which dilated my eyes until I looked like my eyes were entirely black - I was definitely hoping that they would go back to normal eventually. I got my eyes checked out (they were in good shape), I got my new prescription, and I got these AWESOME sunglasses. Don’t be at all surprised when you see many people walking down the streets looking exactly like this:

Those will be the days! It took a while before my eyes were not incredibly sensitive to light, but now things are back to normal (at least my vision is back to normal).

For those of you who may have worried that I may have dropped off the planet, eaten the wrong type of mushroom, said something bad about the wrong Italian’s mom, slipped on a banana peel, sailed somewhere far far away, lost my ability to type, or been hauled off by aliens, thankfully none of those things have actually happened. What HAS happened is that I have been fairly busy. Not that it hasn’t been good, but my time to blog has been relatively short to say the least. So, what has been going on in these parts? Well, I am glad you asked. I have been spending a little bit of time with this really awesome girl who lives up in Edmond - if you have kept up with my blog at all, you might know who I am talking about - if you haven’t, her name is Kelsey Scoggins and she is pretty much the coolest (she’s taken guys, sorry!). I have been working on trying to recruit more National Merit students to come to OU, calling them, emailing them and generally trying to get them to come to campus. I have been taming wild honeymoon stallions, leaping tall buildings in single bounds, devising a plan to save the world, finding the cure for cancer (I am still working on that one), sticking things to Teflon (where is that copyright symbol, I am sure I will get sued), looking myself up on Google, practicing deep breathing exercises, living dangerously, spending wisely, eating well (lots of onions ), and brushing my teeth. I have been trying to keep track of where the time went, but it would take so long to figure it out that I would have spent a whole lot more time figuring out where the time went. So, rather than doing that, I will continue on with this insane blog entry.

I suppose that I do have some profound insight for this blog entry, I am not writing just to hear myself type. The profound insight is this - it is an amazing to see the faith which is exemplified in Matthew 8:1-17. The first example is demonstrated by the man with leprosy. When he sees Jesus coming he goes down and kneels before him saying, “Lord, if you are willing, you can make me clean.” What a simple, yet profound statement. This man knew that it was well within the power of Jesus to heal him of the disease which he had been experiencing for a while, but he also knew that Jesus was not obligated to heal him. What a wonderful attitude is reflected by saying, “God, I know that you can do this, but I only ask you to do it if you are willing.” This totally moves the emphasis from us to looking entirely at the power and wisdom of God!

The second example of faith is from the centurion. When he told Jesus that he had a servant who was sick at home and was near death, Jesus got ready to follow him to his house. However, this man replied that there was no need for Jesus to go and besides, the centurion said that he was not even worthy to have Jesus in his house. This centurion knew that Jesus didn’t need to be there physically to heal the servant and so he said that Jesus could merely say the word and the servant would be completely healed. Jesus was totally amazed at this demonstration of faith. As I look at this centurion, there are a couple of things that I see. He realized that Jesus had incredible power and he approached Jesus with humility. This is another great thing which goes along with faith. We certainly do approach the throne boldly, but we don’t do it in such a way that we forget our place. Humility is key in presenting our requests to God, because we are obviously not the ones who are making the final decision. Some interesting reflections to think about - faith with humility is certainly what both of these people reflect!

I hope this entry didn’t put you to sleep. It almost put me to sleep as I heard the gentle susurration (spelling corrected per Marilyn Scoggins - thanks for the heads up! ) of the keyboard. Okay, I need to get some things figured out for this evening!

WOW! Talk about a CRAZY day. We had 11 National Merit students in today - we had been planning on 10, which would have been crazy anyway, but we actually ended up having another student who called this morning and said that he was coming by. So, that certainly made our days exciting. It was really a lot of fun getting a chance to meet a whole bunch of students and it was neat as well because several of the students were very interested in spiritual things. I was certainly glad that I had a chance to spend a bit of extra time with Jesus this morning before work, or things might have been even more fun. God once again is faithful!

On other fun news, I got to spend some time at Key Man’s Friday and Saturday of last week. God certainly taught me a lot at the main sessions, but as usual, the best time was hanging out with these guys who have been walking with God for far longer than I have been alive! I loved Sunday at church as the emphasis was on missions - it was great to hear quite a bit from Alex Thompson and it was so neat to hear what Ronnie had to say about missions. Then, Beyond Gates of Splendor in the evening wrapped up a great day of thinking globally.

In the evening I got to hang out with some Monday night Impact folks and then got to spend some time with Kelsey, sharing things that God had taught me at Key Man’s and hearing some of the things that she has been learning recently. That was a whole lot of fun to get some good quality time with her!

Best Valentine’s Day ever recipe:

Ingredients:

• Suspense
• A long drive
• God-honoring, fun and encouraging conversation
• Random walks through malls
• Great dinner
• CHEESECAKE
• Meeting your girlfriend’s parents
• A long return trip
• More God-honoring, encouraging and fun conversation
• Leaving your Valentine’s Day card at home (optional)

Mix together in a Jeep Grand Cherokee and let stand for about ten hours. Warning: may lead to great memories, random videos, and a bit of sleep deprivation.

Okay, okay, here is the story: I picked Kelsey up from work at 4:00 and we drove down to Dallas (she didn’t know where we were going, just the time we were leaving). We pulled into The Cheesecake Factory in Frisco, TX at around 7:00 or so and we had to wait a while for a table. So, we wandered around the Stonebriar Centre until about 8:15 or so and then finally got to eat some great food and enjoy some wonderful cheesecake! We had a waiter with ADD, but managed to enjoy the meal despite that minor issue. Then, we headed over to Kelsey’s parents’ house, since they were literally about two miles away from the turnoff we took off of I-35. We got to see the very end of the Texas Tech v. KU game, got to chat for a while and even took some pictures.

After that, it was time to drive back. I dropped Kelsey off at her car at about 2:30 in the morning and then drove back home and got a bit of sleep before heading to work on Tuesday! What a great evening!