the Gently Mad

This has been an interesting month so far. Actually, it’s been an interesting summer. Well, OK, it’s been an interesting couple of years…

There are those periods of life where everything seems in constant flux, always changing, and while that keeps things exciting, I’m not a guy who looks forward to lots of adventure and surprises. That may sound boring to you, but I enjoy consistency.

I like spending time with my family. I like sitting out on the patio sharing a Guinness with friends. I like reading, listening to music, studying, watching Family Guy with my wife. You could say these are simple pleasures but they are the things I enjoy and look forward to.

But providence has a way of forcing change on us and for me, it’s a very uncomfortable experience.

Jessica and I are expecting the birth of our second (and possible third) child in about seven months and while of course I’m excited, I’m much more terrified this time around than the last.

With Izzie, I had first-time dad jitters, for sure, but I had no idea what being a father would be like, how it would change my life and how it would force me to change.

And don’t get me wrong, I wouldn’t trade Izzie for anything, but little things like getting married and having babies tends to bring to the surface all the impurities and inconsistencies in one’s life.

So it’s not because I don’t know what to do that I’m experiencing some trepidation about the future, it’s because I know this process will start all over again. What new sins are going to be revealed? In what new ways will I have to die to myself? How will loving my family become more sacrificial?

I feel a bit like C.S. Lewis’ Eustace Scrubb in Voyage of The Dawn Tredder. At one point Eustace had turned into a dragon and in order for him to change back Aslan had to strip away the layers of scales.

Every time a layer of scales is stripped away from heart I find there are more layers still to go. And that is a painful and process.

I know the future will bring more layers of scales to be stripped away and it’s easy for me to fear the pain of that process.

Being a husband has changed my life. Being a dad has changed my life. And both for the better. My hope is that this process, though painful, will teach me to hope in Christ and bring me closer to him.

I love your quirkiness  ❀  I love how you “cuddle” me  ❀  I love your hair  ❀  I love how beautiful you are  ❀  I love your passion  ❀  I love how everything is exciting to you  ❀  I love your hands and toes  ❀  I love your sincerity  ❀  I love your tender-heartedness  ❀  I love how you care about people  ❀  I love your artsiness  ❀  I love your distaste with the status quo  ❀  I love how you love me  ❀  I love your taste in music, books and movies  ❀  I love how you need to be close to me  ❀  I love how you care about our children  ❀  I love that our family is the first priority in your life  ❀  I love your boldness  ❀  I love how your style and tastes have very little to do with what is hip or cool at the moment  ❀  I love how classy you are  ❀  I love how you put up with me  ❀  I love how you make me feel like I’m the only man for you and the only one who can make you happy  ❀  I love how you realize your faults and want to change them  ❀  I love how important your relationship with Christ is to you  ❀  I love that you’re teachable  ❀  I love how you call me “berb”  ❀  I love how you want to share all aspects of your life with me  ❀  I love how you are willing to follow me anywhere  ❀  I love how modern notions of “security” are not your top priority  ❀  I love that you’re willing to apologize when you realize you are wrong  ❀  I love how you challenge me to be a better man  ❀  I love that you don’t need lots of “things” to be happy  ❀  I love how you’re willing to follow Christ, even if it’s painful  ❀  I love how you make me feel at home  ❀  I love how you are able to take care of things that would drive me crazy  ❀  I love your excitement about being a mother and raising our family  ❀  I love how you see through all the crap of modern feminism  ❀  I love how you see through all the crap of modern christianity  ❀  I love that you’re ticklish  ❀  I love your crazy accents and rap impressions  ❀  I love how thoughtful you are  ❀  I love how your presence immediately brightens any situation  ❀  I love how you mess with me  ❀  I love how you make me feel like you could be happy anywhere in any circumstance as long as I am there  ❀  I love how you wait up for me every night  ❀  I love how you don’t make me feel bad for not having a lot of money  ❀  I love how you don’t judge me for my faults and inconsistencies  ❀  I love how charming you are  ❀  I love how you live in the moment  ❀  I love how much you love Christ

Happy birthday darling. I love you.

Just heard this quote five minutes ago from a real person:

It makes me feel good to have name brand things. I could die tomorrow, but I’ll be wearing Dior.

The little peanut is due on March 4, 2009…

Again with the recommendation for Steve McCoy. Here is my response to his “Top 5 Romantic Movies” post.

As a preface, I would say that I don’t define romance as strictly “happy.” That being said each of these movies leave me with a sense of wonder at life and love and hope for the future.

I’ve devided my list into films that deal with romance and love and those that would be classified by Hollywood as “Romantic Comedies.”

1. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind: Probably the most romantically hopeful film I’ve ever seen and one of my favorite films of all time.

2. Garden State: Again, incredibly hopeful about love and life. Another all-time favorite.

3. Punch Drunk Love: Incredible portrayal of one man’s struggle to be understood and accepted for who he is. I guess I just love films that accept that life is broken and full of pain and still find reasons to believe in the power of love.

4. Lost In Translation: There’s just too much to say about this film. What an ending! If you haven’t seen it, drop whatever you’re doing right now and go watch it. Your soul may depend on it…

5. The Village: Say what you will about M. Night Shyamalan, but The Village is, at its heart, a love story. And a great one.

Honorable Mentions:

Pride and Prejudice: This is like romantic crack.

Moonlight Mile: Great film about the often inextricable nature of loss and love.

Romantic Comedies

1. Return to Me: THE greatest romantic comedy of all time.

2. Love Actually: Amazing. Great film. This is one of the best “happy ending” romantic comedies. It’s impossible to walk away from this film and not feel happy. And many of its observations about love and romance are surprisingly truthful and poignant, for Hollywood.

3. You’ve Got Mail: For every guy who has had to work hard at convincing the girl he loves to love him back. Is there a better romantic comedy couple than Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan?

4. When Harry Met Sally: Classic. This is one of the rare films that left such an impression that it has become an indelible part of pop culture (e.g. I’ll have what she’s having). The style of modern romantic comedies owes much to this one.

5. Serendipity: Just a great light-hearted all-around good romantic comedy. And who can resist John Cusack and Kate Beckinsale?

Honorable Mentions:

The Philadelphia Story: OK, classics are an entire different category all their own, but this one is great. One of the best scripts ever written, in my opinion. Jimmy Stewart, Katherine Hepburn and Cary Grant. They just don’t make movies like this anymore.

Annie Hall: Woody Allen’s second best film in my opinion and one that has set the tone for all great romantic comedies since.

I’m a sermon freak, which could be good or bad, but that’s another post.

Tonight, on the way home from work, I listened to an old Piper favorite on Romans 12:1-2. He was talking about the idea of being transformed and a statistic he used really got me thinking. He said:

It is an overwhelming thought to ponder this fact: Ninety-five percent of your life, you live without premeditation.

It is indeed an overwhelming thought. And it leads me again to the question that has consumed my thoughts now for most of this year: How do I live intentionally? I’m not asking for examples, I’m asking for how-to. Maybe those are the the same thing.

Most of us aren’t in vocational ministry. Most of us have jobs, spouses, kids, responsibilities and myriad other activities consuming our lives and the question that has been plaguing my thoughts recently is, how do we not miss the opportunities? How do I seize the day, take every thought captive, beat my body into submission and live every moment intentionally for the glory of God?

The days slip by so quickly. I get ready to go to work on Sunday afternoon and before I know it, it’s Friday again. And that’s the cycle that repeats itself over and over again and I strive to look back and find intentional living in that blur of weeks.

Piper’s answer is to be transformed by the renewing of our minds, e.g. Romans 12:1-2. I think he’s right because transformation leads to a new set of defaults.

But how do we do that? You can listen to the sermon here.

No better way to start restart a blog than with a little solipsistic intro. In this case, and for those who love brevity, I’ll forgo the details (you can read those here). The following is 28 years in bullet form…

• born in chattanooga tennessee in 1980
• spent a pretty standard childhood in the metro atlanta area
• homeschooled from third grade on
• developed a socially crippling inability to converse with members of the opposite sex
• graduated in ‘97 and job hopped for a couple of years before settling in at ibm
• developed an inexplicable desire to go to college and packed up for california in ‘02 where i majored in procrastination and obesity
• made several attempts to graduate in the ‘04/’05 time period but was, and have remained, unsuccessful
• decided to try my hand at writing and found myself editing the business section of the local paper
• realized i’d had enough of california in ‘06 and made my way back to georgia
• set up shop at the local starbucks and met the woman i would marry less than six months later
• decided money was a beneficial commodity and sought work at the local paper as an editor
• became a father in late ‘07 and am still trying to find the manual for how to raise a daughter that i’m sure must exist somewhere
• currently attempting to hide a complete lack of ability in order to remain employed and impress wife’s family with long, incomprehensible words and stunning wit

OK, so it’s been a long time. A long, long, long time. So long, in fact, the joke has been that I start new blogs just to put up “Coming Soon” splash pages. Unfortunately, that’s not an inaccurate observation.

But, the Gently Mad has returned. I’ve wanted to restart this blog ever since I got married and ever since my day job shifted away from writing.

Not all of the links are working yet, and I will be adding back posts from the Genly Mad 1.0 in case all two of you are interested.

The last time I regularly updated a blog I was an almost-graduated college student living in California. This time around I’m an almost-graduated newspaper editor with a wife and a nine-month-old daughter.

This blog is purely for my own benefit and will be repository for whatever I’m instereted in at the moment, which mostly revolves around the arts, the church and what it means to be an authentic follower of Christ in our day. I hope to add regular content and for those of you who would like to come along, comment ever now and then just to make me feel good.