Teaching to serve

Serving like Christ = Spiritual Maturity. This is a truth that I've talked about with youth over and over and over. Philippians says, "Have the same attitude as Christ... who humbled himself and took the form of a slave."

Transferring that truth into something engrained in Mac is challenging. I'm kind of frustrated by it because I just want him to GET IT. But I don't suppose that's how it works. We are heading as a family to a day of serving with DBC in Side by Side (The community mission day in conjunction with other churches) I guess my prayer for Mac this morning is that he'll get a taste of giving himself away.

Dennis

Wishing for unexpected.

One of the things I wish for that I don't expect is a spontaneous improvement in my shoulder. I get sidelined and suddenly every river and creek is running every time I turn around. Go to the links on the right and click on "Georgia River Gauges". See all the green. That means those streams have prime water for kayaking. Plus Tallulah is releasing.

I guess the best way to think about this is that this time for healing is an investment in being able to function better later. Here's another view of Soc-Em-Dog. That's my buddy Ben getting a good boof.















Another day you dog!

Organizing Pictures... and Rythm

Pictures (and especially series of pictures) tell stories. For instance, see if you can guess what happens in the next picture in the series.















Parker plotting, Mac being the object of the plot.















Parker Aiming?? Mac being the target.















Parker using fists of fury?? Mac still unsuspecting.

You can just see what's coming next can't you? Mac with a black eye. Parker laughing triumphantly as we break out the ice pack.

The day in, day out of life is such that we get into a rhythm and routine of the way things work. Get up. Get some coffee. Wake kids. Fix some breakfast. Get kids dressed. Break up a mid-morning tussle. Fix Emmy's bottles. Head out for the morning. And maybe with a few variations from time to time, that's what happens.

But there is depth of unexpectedness behind all of this that I'm noticing. Let me illustrate this in a couple of ways.

Way # 1

Yesterday was whacked! Got up. Started the routine. I was actually early. Got to the office. Nobody there. Checked the bulletin. Office closed for Good Friday. (That's a first) Raining like crazy. Routine is not so routine all of a sudden.

Let's get a biscuit. Went to Micky-Ds. Line at Drive-thru all the way to the hospital. Parked. Ran in, in a deluge. Got my biscuit with extra change (Thank you Dave Ramsey). Ran outside to get back to car. Got run over by guy going warp-speed through parking lot with no lights on. Rolled off his hood. Slid off and landed face down in the flood next to my jeep. Still pouring rain. He didn't even slow down. Way outside the routine! (I'm OK, by the way. Tweaked my shoulder a little when I landed, but I'm alright.)

Get home. Deidre is out running errands. Cop a squat on the couch and let the morning catch up to me. Not the morning I expected at all. Later after the rest, kids and D get home. Mac and Park and me take a trip to Wal-Mart. Get home. Eat some supper. STORMS! Call from Dawson Sherriffs office ("Please move to a safe location in your house") Go to basement. Powers out. Routine has left the building.

After storms pass, Go back upstairs. Get kids to bed. No power still, so no "Marley and Me" for me and D. Monopoly by candlelight. Turning into great non-routine date night with D. I win.

So all in all, not the day I expected. Day off I didn't know about. Ran over. Fun with kids. Awesome date night.

Way # 2















Ooohhhhhh. OK Just stretching.













Get it??? I'm gonna think some more about stuff and probably get some more pictures up sometime soon.

Dennis

Elbows in... Elbows in..... Elbows in (I gotta remember that)

That drop to the left is the Class IV drop called Soc 'Em Dog on Chattooga. It's about an eight foot drop off of what's called the launch pad over the foam pile hydraulic at the bottom. I've had some good runs of this drop in the past and last Saturday sitting in the eddy up top I was really looking forward to dropping off this puppy.

The current tries to push you way to the left (way off line) as you approach the edge. So you have to fight to keep your boat right so you can line up to drop. On this particular day I had some decent runs through the Five Falls above (Corkscrew upside down, rolled before the middle hole, it was sweet).

So I'm approaching the launch pad for Soc 'Em Dog and I'm getting pushed left but fighting the current to stay on line. When I finally get to the edge, I have a severe right angle as I go off the drop. I drop eight feet into the foam pile on my left side; left elbow too far up as I'm landing with the current pushing up on the paddle.

Suffice it to say that landing from eight feet with all your weight on your left paddle blade and your elbow and shoulder exposed too far out is not a good thing. The "POP" I heard as my shoulder gave way told the whole story. Upside down at the bottom, I heard it get somewhat quiet so I knew I had washed out of the hole. It was really difficult setting up to roll so I reached over and felt my shoulder in the wrong place. I reached back over and grabbed my paddle with my good arm and immediately felt my left shoulder move again (back into place). Oxygen was getting at a premium by this time, so I tried to set up my roll again and was able to come up finally.

When I made it over to the eddy at the bottom I knew exactly what I had done and now that time was catching back up with me, the pain was finally setting in. I just sat there for a good long while waiting for the rest of my crew to make it off the drop. They all had good runs. We ran the last two rapids (ironically the next rapid is called Shoulderbone). The we had the two mile lake paddle to get to the take-out. It's been a week now and it still really hurts. I think at the beginning of the week a referral to a physical therapist may be a good idea.

What We Say: Part II

Trees, or what we are aiming for, play a huge part in accomplishing what we need to accomplish in Summit. The trees for the steps through our process of discipleship act like a funnel in which we attempt to move students through. There are three steps in our strategy. Here they are with the corresponding trees.

Wednesday Night Community Groups (The top of the funnel) (Gathering)

Students meet in smaller groups called Community Groups on the second and third Wednesdays of every month. These groups discuss the important stuff that is being taught on the worship rally nights that meet the other Wednesday nights of the month. But even those nights are focused towards getting the students in the CGs to hit the tree. Here's the Tree for Summit CG:

Involve students in open and honest discussion about the important stuff and what it means in their lives.

Everything we do on Wednesday night in Summit is focused towards that goal because we feel like that tree is what undergirds "gathering" for students.

Summit Sunday School (The funnel is getting smaller) (Equipping)

Students are challenged in smaller groups on Sunday mornings with the intent of building them into disciples. Students funnel into Sunday School from Wednesday night. To do this, several things need to happen; better communication with CG leadership and SS leadership, the feel of the program being more of a deeper continuation of CG? We're working on that. With that in mind here's the tree for Summit Sunday School:

Insure that students have heard the important stuff loudly, creatively and repeatedly.

Everything we do on Sunday mornings should aim for that goal and that tree!

Summit Student Leader Community (The opening) (Sending)

What is going to be the "community" will probably start meeting once a month beginning in April. These are students that "get" the strategy, show influence and involvement, and want to "Be an Involver" by involving other students in this process of discipleship by pulling them along the funnel. The tree is developing for this community but at this point, it may sound something like this:

Be an involver of other students in the process of spiritual growth.

These students will use this strategy and image of the funnel to be leaders of their friends, those that they know, and others in being disciples.

The Important Stuff (In Process)

Jesus as It! (John 14:1-6, 3:1-17, Colossians 1:15-2:17, Ephesians 2:1-10)

• His life, His divine and human nature
• Surrender
• By grace through faith
• The Church as His bride
• Your identity in Christ

Spritual Disciplines: These are in the toolbox for your relationship with God. (Mark 1:26, Psalms 119, I Timothy 4:19)

• Navigating and Understanding the whole of God's Word
• Mediatating on God's Word
• Memorizing God's Word
• Prayer: Open communication with God
• Silence and listening
• Church and worship
• Accountability and fellowship

Family: Being a Godly son or daughter mirrors being a follower of Christ (Deuteronomy 6, Ephesians 6, Proverbs)

• Not dependent on your parent's faith, but yours
• Understanding discipline

Friends: Who you hang with is who you'll become (Psalms 1, Proverbs, I Corinthians 6)

• Friends = Who influences you
• Can encourage or discourage your faith. There is rarely a neutral firend!
• Compromise is a progression that begins with compromised relationships which leads to compromised behaviors and finally culminates in compromised beliefs.

Choices: Be wise with them because they chart your future (Ephesians 5, James 1, I Corinthians 6)

• Wisdom is God's view of any particular situation
• Asking "What's wise?" instead of "What's right or wrong?"
• Purity is a picture of who you belong to
• Temptation

Serving like Christ: Giving yourself away for Christ is Spiritual Maturity (Phillipians 2, I Timothy)

• Love has more to do with conviction and giving than emotion.
• Loving others for Jesus has nothing to do with you
• Leading others to faith in Jesus
• Removing I and focusing your life to loving others

Where to go from here and a couple observations

The important stuff is a work in progress. Please feel free to comment. Look for some upcoming articles devoted to different pieces of the important stuff.

Something to notice is that the content itself (the important stuff) is primary at all levels, but it also funnels in depth and application throughout the process. It's also not an accident that the six important things themselves are a picture of the funnel. We begin with Jesus, move through the primary relationships in our lives, and finally end up serving and giving.

I hope to see ya'll soon!

Dennis

Amazing Message for Dads

Matt Chandler is the Lead Pastor at the Village Church in Texas. Check out this AMAZING content in a message from him. I'm going to try to get some copies of this to give to our dads. Maybe we can dig up something for moms too.

http://hv.thevillagechurch.net/resource_files/audio/20070826BA01S_MattChandler_TheRoleOfMenPt3-MenAsFathers.mp3

Here is the address for other messages from Matt Chandler if you're interested.


http://hv.thevillagechurch.net/sermons

You can also download the above content for dads to your ipod or mp3 from the sermon page. The date of that sermon is 8/26/07

What we say

Just want to jot down a few thoughts and come back to this post as they develop.
Here's the important stuff we need to say LOUDLY, CREATIVELY, AND REPEATEDLY in Summit.

1. IT, Jesus as it
2. FAMILY, How to be a Godly son or daughter
3. HANG, Who you hang with is who you're going to look like
4. CHOICES, Decisions and wisdom in making them
5. GIVE, Serving and giving away to others in the name of Christ is spiritual maturity
6. DISCIPLINES, Developing the relationship with God

In Summit youth, at the end of the journey, these are the things that we want students to walk away with. Please comment, I would love to hear your input.

Dennis

Purity and Bungee Cords

Below we talked about compromise and that compromised relationships are the first step in the process of compromise. Well if any relationship opens the door to connection to someone else it's a sexual relationship. We've got two major truths we are dealing with when it comes to sexual purity.

When you connect with someone sexually, you are instantaneously connected to them emotionally, mentally and spiritually!

Rubber bands are cool! They can move and bend and stretch in all sorts of weird cool ways, but they always will return to their original length. Bungee cords are basically just hundreds of rubber bands bound together. When you connect with someone sexually it's as if you have tied a bungee cord around each of your waists and then tried to go on your merry way, after the sexual act. But all of a sudden your emotions, some of your mental capacity, and your spirit are tied to that person.

Let's illustrate this! It could be years since you connected with someone sexually. Maybe it was high school, maybe it was college. But years later you are driving down the road and that certain song comes on the radio. Out of no where those emotions of connection that were established come flooding back. Or let's say you thumbing through an old yearbook and you see the picture of that person. Now out of no where, you have some mental images invading your brain of things you've engaged in with that person. It's like the bungee of your emotions and mental images have been snapped back into place because of the sexual connection.

Spiritual connection with a person is even more complex and really only makes sense in terms of understanding that you as a believer in Christ are tied with a spiritual bungee cord to Jesus. If you connect sexually with someone outside of a marriage relationship, in a weird way even if that other person is a believer too, they are spiritually pulling you away from Christ.

The cool thing about being tied sexually and then emotionally, mentally and spiritually to a person is when their is a life long commitment. This truth that sexual connection instantaneous connects two people emotionally, mentally, and spiritually all of a sudden is an awesome thing, because now instead of guilt and doubt and disrespect, there's security and interdependence.

This truth about sexuality is why Paul wrote this in First Corinthians 6:18: "Flee sexual immorality. All other sins a man commits are outside the body, but he who sins sexually, sins against his own body." Sexual sins cuts deep and forever.

Yes there's forgiveness, yes there's grace. But anybody that has compromised sexually will tell you that this truth about sexual connection stands even in the midst of their forgiveness.

Sexual purity or sexual compromise is a physical picture of the spiritual truth that you belong to someone!

Take two sheets of construction paper and glue them together. Let them sit for a minute. We'll talk about the construction paper in a bit.

Paul keeps going in verse 19 and says this: "Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God? You are not your own, you were bought with a price. Therefore honor God with your body."

Now let's skip down into chapter 7 and say something pretty significant. Verse 3-4 of chapter 7 says, "The husband should fulfill his marital duty to his wife, and likewise the wife to her husband. The wife's body does not belong to her alone but also to her husband. In the same way, the husband's body does not belong to him alone but also to his wife.

You belong in a very real sense to Christ (if you are a believer) and to your husband or wife. And how you compromise sexually speaks volumes about how much you value Christ and your future or present spouse. Because in a very real sense when you connect with someone sexually you are giving away a part of your self that now belongs to that person. If you don't believe me take the construction paper now and try to pull them apart.

Little bits of each piece of paper have bonded to the other one and torn away. When you connect sexually, you are meant to stay together because it's just too stinking hard to pull you apart without leaving little pieces of yourself behind.

If you hear this message, I'll end it with a story that'll drive these two points home.

Compromise: Giving Away What's Not Yours

Just an overview! If you want all the sermon notes then feel free to email me.

Definition of Compromise
Compromise is when two parties that have different agendas needs or wants each give up a part agendas, agendas, needs or wants so that they can meet in the middle in the middle and find common ground. This is awesome when you are teaching kids to share their toys. But it is a huge deal for students faced with compromising their faith, spirituality, or morals.

Here's why for the believer in Christ compromise is a hug deal; because when a believer compromises, he's giving away something that is not his. He's giving away, exchanging and compromising the truth of God. Let's diagram this so it makes more sense. We'll show the two parties that are at issue here and actually what the believer is giving away.

The World ---(Compromise to meet in the middle)- --Believer in Jesus

Giving Away God's Truth

What we have to compromise to meet in the middle is at the heart of the issue. We have to give away the truth that we verbalize and live out, that Jesus is the one true God in flesh and that he is it for us. And that truth of God is not ours to give away as a bargaining chip.

Do you see what compromise in the life of a believer in Jesus really means?

Romans One

Everybody pounces on Romans one as a condemnation of homosexuality. It's really about compromise. It's just of this particular group of people, when they compromised the truth of God, it lead to homosexuality. Check out these verses below and the use of the word "exchanged". You could just as easily throw "compromise" in these verses in place of "exchanged".

Verses 18-21 describes a group of people that were opposed to God. I'm not going to get into particulars about these folks, Let's check out the next few verses though to see their real issue.
22 "Although they claimed to be wise they became fools 23 and exchanged (compromised) the glory of the immortal God for images made to look like mortal man..." ...25 "They exchanged (compromised) the truth of God for a lie..." And then again in verse 26 we see the word exchanged. Three times we see that this group of people exchanged or compromised the truth for a lie.

Let's check out the process of compromise that probably happened with these guys and definitely happens with us today.

The Process or Progression of Compromise

Remember that compromise is giving away something that doesn't belong to us; the truth of God in Jesus. And that doesn't happen all at once. It's a process or progression. It usually happens in three steps.

Compromised Relationships: In the lives of student's I've always see it start with who they hang with. I've said it till I'm blue in the face; who you hang with, is who you'll look like.

Compromised Behaviors:Behaviors are born out of relationships. That's why you can take a kid that grew up in church, get the cool kids to invite him to a drinking party, and even though he doesn't drink and believes it's wrong, he's going to be trashed by the end of the night.

Compromised Beliefs: In spite of what would seem logical this really is the last step. Over time the kid that keeps getting invited to the drinking party is going to have to deal with the conflict between his behaviors and beliefs. Psychologists call this adaptation. There's a vs. (verses but versus) situation between that kids behaviors and beliefs that's got to be rectified.

The further you get in the progression the harder it is to back out of the progression. By the time you get the compromised beliefs, it takes some major divine intervention to reverse the progression.

Then to end the message (for those that are interested) we talked about my friend stuck in the doorway halfway through the progression. Put yourself in the doorway and be aware of where you are in the progression.

I hope this little tool helps our Community Group Leaders and some of our parent's as you guys do some home devotionals.

Dennis

Summit Resource

I'm going to give using this blog as a resource to our youth ministry a go. And here's how I'm going to do it. I'm going to produce a series of articles here that will match up with this semester's Wednesday night teachings. The point of these articles is to provide in one place a teaching resource for our Community Group Leaders, parents and student leadership.

When this blog is updated for CG leaders and others I'll notify you guys with a general email to Summit youth and parents.

All the teachings this semester are based on "Compromise". Here's the overview in case you've missed it.

• Compromise: Giving Away What's not yours
  
• Purity and Bungee Cords
  
• Modesty Reflects
• Reputation: Video, Not Picture
• Christ Heart, My Hands

Dennis

Focus... on the water, and in the church

Bridal Veil and Focus
Bridal Veil Rapid is one of the funnest rapids in Tallulah Gorge. It's about a 40 foot waterfall slide. It's class V because of the hydraulic at the bottom. This is a keeper hydraulic that could one day be fatal for somebody. It's eating water back into itself from about 10 or 15 feet out from the fold. Getting out if you got in there would be very very hard. The irony is that it's a super EASY rapid to run. You only goal really is to keep a left angle on your boat to punch the very left of the hole and keep paddling all the way left out at the bottom.

From the top river left eddy, you can't see the drop in your boat because it's such a steep drop. All you can really see are some distant trees on the left bank and the start of the next rapid some 50 yards downstream. So my friends Ben and Wes told me, "You see that poplar tree on the left bank that's leaning to the left? All you want to do is aim for that. The drop is easy, consequences severe if missed. Just keep you boat aimed to that tree."

Focus!!! Don't look at the hole at the very top. Enjoy the roostertail on the way down but don't let it throw you or distract you. The keeper hydraulic at the bottom will beckon to you. Don't let it hold you attention. Don't let it intimidate you and get you off your line. Just keep paddling toward your goal. Don't let anything else eat you attention from that goal and purpose! Aim for the tree and keep paddling!

Bridal Veil more than alot of rapids epitomizes this idea of focus. There really is only ONE GOAL with Bridal Veil. STAY LEFT!!! Alot of rapids can be broken down into multiple moves with multiple lines and different steps in getting to the bottom. Boof the pourover, hit the eddy, peel out and ferry past the wave train, drive right and boof again! Not Bridal Veil! Drive left... That's it!

With so many things that seem to get complicated and take the simplicity out of everything, I really appreciate the lesson of Bridal Veil. Now let's look ahead at church.

Church and Focus

Several different teaching elements lately have converged in my life to teach me about focus. The book "Simple Church" by Rainer and Geiger, some teaching by Andy Stanley, and some good conversations with Craig Gentry have come together with thinking about Bridal Veil to drive the point home.

On Wednesday night, Summit has one job! Make disciples! Too vague? OK. Let's focus this statement into something managable for everybody. Here is what we have: Community Groups meeting with leaders on the second and third Wednesday nights of the month. The other night two nights of the month we will generally have a speaker focused on whatever teaching element we are going through.

Here's our focus! It's the focus of the speakers, the focus of the worship band, the focus of our student leaders involved in the program, and the focus of our Community Group leaders. To involve the students in the community groups in an open honest discussion about spiritual things and how they relate to their life. That's the tree we are aiming for! That's the bottom of Bridal Veil for us: To involve the students in the community groups in an open and honest discussion about spiritual things and how they relate to their life.

So, CG leaders, we've done our training, we've gone over to some degree the teaching focus for the semester. But my question to you is this: Do you know the tree your aiming for? Is anything else pulling your line from that path on Wednesday nights? Are there other great things we could be doing on Wednesday nights? How about serving other? What about mentoring of younger students by older students? How about digging into some memorization techniques of the Bible? All great things. But they are not our focus on Wednesday nights in Summit. Those will take us off line and maybe into the keeper hydraulic. Those are not our tree.

Our tree, your tree, the tree we' are aiming for on Wednesday nights that will get us to the bottom of the rapid is to involve students in the community groups in an open and honest discussion about spiritual things and how they relate to their life.

"Compromise" is on the plate for January. Let's have some incredible Community Groups!

Dennis

Christmas and Germs

Yep that's right germs! Parker's nose has been running like a freight train (no fever though)... Mac on the other hand spiked a 103 on the thermometer... Deidre and I both have the runny nose, stuffy headed goodness... and Emma-Claire has staph (scary word) on the inside of her leg where her diaper has rubbed against it. Suffice it to say that Doctor Kahn felt horrible for us and sent us home to eat ice cream.

She told Deidre and I to drink plenty of fluids, gave us some cream to fight the infection on Emma-Claire's leg which was already diminishing anyway, tested Mac for strep and the flu (negative on both, so just give him tylenol and let it run it's course), and try to keep Parker happy... Wow what a Christmas! I am looking forward to going to the Christmas dinner at church tonight with Parker though!

We did get our kid's Christmas pictures done!

www.thesummityouth.org

Check out what Trey Greer has put together for Summit Youth. I'm so glad God let's Trey use what he knows to serve us. For those of you that missed it in the title, that's www.thesummityouth.org There's a link to the right on this blog. Be sure and put it in your favorites as well and check back often.

Dennis

High Water at Amicalola

Emma-Claire finally was sleeping on Thursday and Deidre told me to leave the house for a while and let her sleep. Knowing that it had been raining like cats and dogs, I took the short trip over to Amicalola Creek. Looking at the online gauge it looked like it topped out early that morning around 1.7 (pretty respectable). I knew at that level the playspot above the bridge would have some great waves to surf behind the main hydraulic. Below are some pictures from earlier in the summer at about the same level. The first one is me surfing in the hydraulic. Above about 1.3 the cant eddy into it... you have to start above the rapid and run it backwards and catch the surf on the fly (very worth it) because the eddy that would give service to this feature gets pushed downstream. The other picture is actually the better reason to go there when it hits above 1.5 on the online gauge. There are two to three beautiful glassy waves with perfect troughs that develop behind the main hole. And the eddy that usually feeds the main hole gives PERFECT accessibility to these waves. These waves, to varying degrees, are unbelievable surfing up to about 2.5???































On the trip with my brother-in-law Chris, we decided that if rain was consistent and this watershed could actually hold onto some water instead of spiking like it does in this drought, this could be one of the best playspots in North Georgia. I mean these are actual WAVES and not just surging hydraulics... and I had always rather surf something glassy than foamy. Let's see what weather patterns do over the next few years and we'll see if we could be right.



































I really had some fun surfing on Thursday! The other thing that was really fun on Thursday was paddling down to "Edge of the World". Between 1.2 (maybe) and 2.???? this double drop, (or triple drop, depending on how you count) is class IV. The highest I've run it was maybe 1.3. So I wanted to check it out and see what was going on.

I was BLOWN AWAY when I paddled past the bridge gauge though. When I put on a couple of hours earlier, it read 1.7. Now the river had flashed to 2.3 in just an hour and a half! I quickly did a little math in my head:

Creek Boat = at home in my garage
smaller playboat that surfs awesome, but has issues in bigger water = under me
Edge of the World at 2.3 = if ran today with no paddling partners, would likely eat my lunch!

I still wanted to check it out at this level and decide when I got down there though. So I headed downstream. Here are some pictures of "Edge" at about 1.8-2.0 to give you some perspective.
This picture above shows the classic line for the first drop.





















What I usually do is drop in clean headed river left over the pourover in the left of the picture. Your goal is to hit the far river left eddy right above this undercut (wow that's a little scary, going under there couldn't be fun). Now take a look below at the boat breaker rock covered up with water....




















This is right below the undercut rock. You can see the bottom of the undercut in the upper right of the picture above. So from the river left eddy you need to ferry from river left, above the undercut, above the boat breaker drop, all the way river right to...

...the last drop (that I don't have a picture of). It is to the far river right of what you see above. At normal levels it's a beautiful 4 foot drop over a rock shelf. At 2-2.3 it is what made me walk away without running it on Thursday. The hydraulic that it was creating was MASSIVE. It was literally pulling water back into itself from a good 7-9 feet away from the drop. I couldn't see the far right side of the drop, but I thought that if it looked anywhere as mean as this side of the drop, I'd have some work to do to claw my way out if i got stuck in there. Again, playboat.... big hole... not happening. I kept telling myself that if I had my creekboat... or if I had some reliable partners for some safety... or if... if... if... Maybe when it rains again, we'll see.

Dennis

To Parents and Students of Summit and Food for Thought

Blown away is an understatement for what happened to me last week! Yep I'm talking about the birth of Emma-Claire, but that's not all. I was astounded at Parker (my 16 month old)!!! What I witnessed of him brought something crystal clear to my mind that I've taught fairly recently in Summit.

I went to the hospital with D and Saturday night she had Emma-Claire via C-Section. It was awesome and exhausting and amazing.Monday night Deidre's mom came to stay with her in the hospital while I went to get Mac and Parker and stay with them at home Monday night. Michael to me looked the same as he did Saturday morning when we left him with some friends. What hit me like a ton of bricks was when I picked Parker up from my mom and dad's. I promise you I left a baby boy at their house. He was a baby! I had watched him grow up for the past 16 months and I know what he looked like when I dropped him off.

I was unbelievably shocked when I picked him though. He was not a baby anymore, but all of sudden with new eyes and a new perspective of looking at 7lb. 6oz. Emma Claire, I picked up this little boy that seemed huge and growing and looking more and more like Michael than a baby. It was even more surreal when I got both the boys home! Mac and Parker were playing on the floor together wrestling around and chasing each other down the hall. The week before when Mac was playing him, it was a big brother and a BABY BOY that were playing. But now out of nowhere, when they were playing together, it looked like Mac and a BIG BOY playing together.

Now I know that in the course of 3 days, Parker didn't automatically turn into this little man. I realize that I had just spent a couple of days with an honest to goodness baby and that because of that my perception of how big Parker actually is changed. He had already been that big, but because I had seen him everyday growing, I hadn't noticed him changing. He still was a baby boy to me.

Alot of you guys are like Parker. You have been in the process of growing up spiritually. And growing into mature disciples doesn't happen in three days. It's a process! Where were you in your walk with Christ 16 months ago? Where are you know? Are you growing? Parent's are you helping your students to get in the PROCESS of growing into disciples for Jesus?

Dennis

The Tinsley Two Add One

What a tremendous few days! We began on Saturday around 11am with D's induction. She labored all day but eventually because of Emma-Claire's heart rate during contractions Dr. Middleton made the decision to proceed with a C-Section. This was around 9pm that night!

For the next hour things were a flurry of activity. Deidre adjusted to the news pretty well and prepared herself. She is amazing woman! Things in or L and D room went from 0 to 60 in just a few minutes. All of a sudden there were ten or so techs, doctors and nurses running around preparing Deidre and me to go into the operating room. I was given a set of scrubs to throw on and shuffled behind Deidre's bed on the way to the OR. Yes she was awake for the surgery and yes I was in there and watched the whole thing... IT WAS AWESOME!















I sat next to Deidre and talked to her while they began the C-Sec. About halfway through, Louis, the guy giving D the drugs, leaned down and said, "Stand up Dennis, you don't want to miss this." I actually got to see them take Emma-Claire out... It was one the coolest things I ever saw. We have some pictures of every bit of it, but in an attempt to keep this kid friendly, here's the next picture.




























At 10:14pm Emma-Claire was born and joined the ranks of the three Tinsley musketeers. (Deidre has already started calling her the princess, but this is my blog... so for know she's a musketeers)















...and Mac and Park as the original two!















Speaking of Mac, he came to visit his little sister today.















They are telling us that D and Emma-Claire will probably go home Wednesday. To tell you the truth, I don't know if I can wait that long. I can't wait to get these girls home and have us all together under one roof. The Tinsley men and the two princesses!

Emma-Claire Tinsley

Emma-Claire was born last night via c-section. Deidre is recovering and I'm getting there. She's 7lbs 6 oz. and here she is.

When D feels like pictures... I'll show some others!

Some Northside Pictures

How bout some pictures?

Here is a "before"



















Us Waiting












Wow that's a really high bed

Waiting

I remember seeing a PBS cartoon a few years ago about a kid that found a ball of yarn. This was a magic ball of yarn that when the kid pulled some of the string from the ball, it would take him to a future part of his life. In other words, this kid would never have to wait for anything. If he found himself in July and wanting his Christmas presents now, all he had to do was pull the string and he would jump ahead to Christmas.

The thing is, he always found himself wanting to jump ahead in his life to see what would happen next. He wanted to be older so he could drive, he'd pull the string. He wanted to jump ahead to when he was married to his high school sweetheart, he'd pull the string. He wanted his kids to be out of diapers, he'd pull the string. It wasn't long before he found himself as an old man wondering where his life had gone. In a matter of moments, his entire life had passed, and he had missed it. He was an old man with grown kids, a wife that had passed away and trying his best to wind the string back onto the ball only to find that he couldn't go back.

Deidre and I have been waiting for what seems like ages for her pregnancy to come to fruition. Well here we are in B4 at Northside Forsyth waiting. I have a feeling it will all be over pretty quickly and I find myself wanting to soak up every bit of it. More later with maybe some pictures.