catching up...

It's been a little while since I've updated here. Meant to get to it on Monday but ran out of time.

Went to a couple of college graduations this past weekend which were surprisingly more enjoyable experiences than I had anticipated, mostly because sitting in one place for three hours while names are read off is pretty much close to hell, but both ceremonies were shorter than expected and I thought funny and interesting.

My friend Shoup graduated from Flagler on Saturday and my friend of 24 years, Jeff, graduated with his MBA from UF on Sunday morning. That really began the sort of surreal moments for me.

I remarked to Jeff and my wife over brunch after the ceremony that it was almost exactly 10 years ago that were in the O'Connell Center with our new B.S. degrees in Industrial Engineering. Sheridan and I had just started dating (about three months) and I actually told her that I loved her for the first time later that same day. I was heading for my job up in Ohio in about two months (Pepperidge Farm), and I thought that Jeff and I would end up being friends over the phone and Internet.

Fast forward 10 years and I am married to Sheridan, have two kids, one of whom now recognizes Jeff as Uncle Jeffy (the other soon will I'm sure, once he can talk), and I have been a youth minister for almost nine years. I am in seminary. I am almost 33 years old. Jeff and I have basically worked together for the past nine years and plan and coordinate the trips that we used to go on when we were in the group. Weird.

So Sunday night rolled around and my friend Cory Britt came over to talk with the youth. Cory is now the pastor of a church across the river from us. I grew up down the street from Cory and in the early part of my life, I pretty much hated the kid. He was a couple of years older than me and kind of ruled the street, being the oldest and all. I had a bad temper and he knew just how to exploit it. One of my favorite games was to go into the backyard and play tether ball while pretending the ball was Cory's face. I'm not proud of it, but our relationship was not always good. Things started changing a few years later when I started attending Cory's youth group (the one I now lead) and I saw that Cory was not the same person. He was nicer, gentler, and friendly. So over the years, we've kept up and Sunday night became surreal moment number 2.

As I watched Cory speak, I marveled that God works such a delicate, intricate web of experiences in our lives, bringing enemies to peace, bringing dreams to an end and starting new ones. God's view of life is so far beyond my own and when I make decisions, they affect so many beyond me. I think I knew this in my head but the idea that my salvation and journey with Christ are part of something much bigger than just me became very evident on Sunday. Good stuff.