Our Summer in Pictures

We have loved hearing about Josh's experiences preaching the Good Word in Illinois.

Here he is on the strait and narrow.

Here he is talking to a street sign.

Missionary Humor :-)

We also had fun at our youth conference where we were hit by a freak hail storm.

Pile of hail. Just for perspective, this pile is 8 inches tall. Seriously.

We also tried to get to Pineview as often as we could. About 4 times.

Wow, I love this place.

Tibby got up on a single ski for the first time.

Matt tried two for the first time. Yay, Matt!

Nate got up on a single ski and the wakeboard for the first time.

Matt tried the knee board for the first time too.

Nate and Matt decided to reach back to the 80's and bring back the "steps" haircut.

And our Tibby turned sweet 16!

Here she is spitting on her ice cream pie. :-)

Here she is with two friends who celebrated sweet 16 together by renting a princess bounce castle.

The End of an Era?

Matt wanted to ski on the ski board (yes, the original ski board that Dave built in Jr. High shop class) on our trip to the lake last week. As we pulled the board out, we looked at the poor thing. The nose of the board has splintered off and is quite jagged. The left "leg" has split and hangs down a good two inches below the right leg. The wood, once smooth and well-finished, is now rough and showing the signs of many hours in the harsh sunlight of summer.

We smiled and chuckled at the look of it. And realized that the day may have finally come to retire the ski board.

So, here is the video. Perhaps the final voyage of a Crowley original. Matt gives it a good ride.

Enjoy.

I once knew a boy who loved soccer

There was once a boy who loved soccer.

He was as quick as a wink and a pure joy to watch play. One Spring, he received a new pair of cleats as a gift. They were flashy and light. He loved the cleats and made the ball do amazing things when they were on his feet.

This boy played on a very good team. At times, they made the game seem effortless. Guiding the ball into the back of the net as if the ball itself knew that's where it belonged.

One Spring Saturday, the team travelled to the rougher side of town for a game. The field was sandwiched between an industrial warehouse and a muddy river.

This game went like most of the other games had gone. The boy's team scored early and were very much in control. The other team was outmatched, but they continued to fight and give great effort. One player in particular with dark hair and somber dark eyes was clearly giving everything he had to fight back. But it seemed he was struggling to stay on his feet as he tried to defend the more talented players.

It was during the first half that the parents noticed that this dark-haired player was not wearing cleats. He was wearing a pair of brown slip-on suede shoes. Some of the parents chuckled when they saw the shoes.

The second half of the game went much like the first. More goals for the boy's team. Continued effort from the overmatched team.

Mercifully, the final whistle came and the onslaught ended. The players shook hands.

The boy's father walked onto the field and put his arm around his son. They talked for just a moment. The boy nodded his head and glanced over his shoulder at the players on the other team.

The boy then walked over toward the other team and called out, "Hey, number 15. ... Number 15."

Players and parents turned to see what was going on. The dark-haired boy with the suede shoes turned around. One of the mothers, took a couple of tentative steps onto the field, unsure of what was about to ensue.

The boy asked, "Hey, what size shoe do you wear?"

The dark-haired boy's face scrunched up. "What?"

"What size shoe do you wear?"

"Um, a 1 or 2, I think."

"Oh, good," the boy said as he sat on the grass. "Would you like my cleats? I think they're just your size."

The dark-haired boy's eyes opened wide. He sat down quickly on the grass and pulled off his suede shoes. The cleats fit perfectly. A dark-haired mom appeared at his side.

"Thank you," the mom whispered.

____

This is a true story.

The things a 9-year-old thinks about

The other day, Janet was helping Matt with his homework.

Nate and I were in the kitchen, when we heard Matt say matter-of-factly, "If everybody dies, I get the Gamecube."

My Boy

I remember the day Josh was born. I was excited to be a dad. I was so completely in love with my sweet pregnant wife. Her strength and courage amazed me. (And they still do, by the way.) In the synapses of my brain, the realization that life would never be the same had materialized. But it was still a bit hazy. I knew we had much still to learn as first-time parents. In my youthful exuberance, none of that seemed to matter.

As the labor grew more and more intense, I knew the time was growing nearer when I would come face to face with my own child. However, nothing could have prepared me for that moment.

As they wrapped Josh up and handed him to Janet, I cannot describe the feeling that washed over me. A boy. My boy. A connection to God's plan. Something that reached so completely beyond that place, that moment. It reached into eternity. Father to son.

******

Last week, as I sat restlessly at work knowing that Josh's mission call was waiting at home, images of Josh as a little boy kept flashing through my mind. Soccer games. His first Primary talk. Days at the lake. Road trips. Skinned knees. Birthdays and family parties.

So many shared moments. Moments woven together by that connection that began the day he was born.

When Josh arrived home and got out of his car, I was struck by the man my boy had become.

It didn't really matter what words were printed on the letter that he opened that night. There was that sweet assurance of my boy's place in God's plan. A trust in God's loving hands and His gentle ways of shaping and guiding our lives.

He read the words. A call from a prophet.

I felt again a moment that reached beyond that time and place. A connection to eternity.

The Paradox of Life

Just had to share this thought from my morning reading. C.S. Lewis was not only wise, but so powerfully articulate.

God is the only comfort, He is also the supreme terror: the thing we most need and the thing we most want to hide from. ... the Christian religion is, in the long run, a thing of unspeakable comfort. But it does not begin in comfort; it begins in the dismay I have been describing, and it is no use at all trying to go on to that comfort without first going through that dismay. In religion, as in war and everything else, comfort is the one thing you cannot get by looking for it. If you look for truth, you may find comfort in the end: if you look for comfort you will not get either comfort or truth—only soft soap and wishful thinking to begin with and, in the end, despair. –C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity

Thanks Jesse for getting me to finally read this book.

Thanks everyone for your encouragement with my Ward Conference talk. It's less than 48 hours away. I do finally know what I'm talking about. Still deciding exactly what I'm going to say.

I'll bet you thought this post was going to be about Jimmer

Well, the whole nation seems to be consumed with Jimmer-mania. And admittedly, we've been a little obsessed at our home too.

But truthfully, my thoughts this morning have been completely consumed by one thing. And it's not basketball or how incredibly well my Cougars have been playing. Nope, not Jimmer. Just one thing. It's kind of a big thing. An important thing.

But here's the deal. I don't know what the thing is.

I'm obsessed with it. Ponder about it. Spend mornings and late into the night thinking about it. But I still don't know what it is.

In two weeks, it will be Ward Conference. I have to speak. And I have no idea what I'm going to talk about.

There. Now you know.

I guess it's not really fair to say, I have no idea. That's not really the trouble. It's that I have a multitude of ideas. Really good ideas. Unfortunately, these really good ideas have yet to come together in any kind of cohesive plan. Just scattered principles as if tossed about on the wind.

Guess I could give twelve two-minute talks. Yeah, that would be great.

Maybe I should just tell stories about Jimmer. :-)

Spending Time with My Own Thoughts

So a couple of months ago, I bought a used car. The stereo had been stolen out of it. The guy who sold it to me had purchased a replacement stereo but had not installed it yet. Of course, the wiring job required to install it turned out to be more complicated than expected. As a result, I've been driving my car for a couple of months with no stereo.

My commute is about 20 minutes or so. At first, it seemed sooo boring. I experimented with listening to my iPod, but something seems unsafe about having headphones in while driving. And I think it might be illegal.

Anyway, my point is, I've been spending more time in quiet solitude. And it's kind of nice. Just me and my thoughts. We have conversations. Sometimes those conversations turn into prayers. Sometimes they turn into plans. Sometimes they turn into creativity and sometimes we just quietly coexist not really needing to say anything at all.

It turns out, I would highly recommend it. Give it a try the next time you're heading somewhere in the car alone. Turn everything off. And spend some time with your own thoughts. You might like it too. :-)

***

"We live, in fact, in a world starved for solitude, silence, and private: and therefore starved for meditation and true friendship." –C.S. Lewis

Small Victories in Perspective

So, at the beginning of 2007, I was inspired by a phrase sent to me in an email from my mother. It was, "To succeed at what is easy is a small victory."

That inspiring phrase drove me to consider a return to college at 39 years old. I earned my MBA in two years while hardly pausing to take a breath. It was a difficult, exciting, time-consuming, enlightening, frustrating, friendship-building, confidence-testing, and at-times-tedious experience. When I walked across that stage and was handed my diploma, I felt that I had indeed won a meaningful victory.

It is now 4 years later. Life is as busy as ever. My kids are growing up so fast. My schedule is loaded.

As I reflect on that phrase that inspired me to take on as something as daunting as a graduate degree, I find a completely different motivation in my life.

I find that today, I'm longing for small victories. I recognize now more than ever before that the small daily battles are the pivot points around which our entire lives revolve. Small victories. Everyday victories. The little choices that make the big differences. The moments in which we define ourselves ... and our lives.

May you have a year of small victories.