Attached At The Hip

As you read last night, I'm in a serious mode of reflection, self evaluation, and hopefully change. I'm going to blog more. I'm going to read more. I'm going to study my bible more and try to teach more. All for the point of engaging myself in this thing called life more than I have been recently.

However, I am not able to do that right now. Currently, I am sitting at our dining room table. My daughter is sitting as close as she can to me on the chair beside me. She's wrapped around my arm being silly and watching me type. Not necessarily because she wants my attention right now. No, she's here wanting me to stop what I am doing so she can have my ipad to play on. Now she's looking up at me with her cute puppy dog eyes saying, "Please, may I play with your ipad?"

It is a battle of wills. I will win this battle. Yes I will.

Interestingly, she is reading along as I type. She had the nerve to tell me that something I said in the first paragraph was incorrect, or at least it seemed incorrect to her. She's just like her mother.

Now she is growling at me and told me I have lots of "white" hairs in my sideburn. Does she not know that I could send her to her room to play with her non-electronic toys until it is bedtime? Luckily, her mother is editing pictures and videos from the previous 3 years of Lowman life. Every time a movie plays, she's off to watch the current selection. Don't worry, she'll be back. Here she comes now.

As I sit here and write, I wondner how much this back and for tussle models our relationship with the Father. We sit close and engage him and he thoroughly enjoys it. He wants us to be patient and wait for Him, to engage with him. Yet, we get caught up in other things as we wait. We end up focusing on all that is not perfect and question Him about it. Or, we are so focused the shopping list of things we have brought to Him that we miss the deeper things he wants us to see, feel, and explore.

As I sit her trying to ignore her batting eyes and mischevious giggles, I wonder how God puts up with us sometimes? How has he not given up on us when we don't get it . . . when we don't stop to listen, engage, and think. Lucky for us he loves us beyond measure and that his patience and tenacity for us is incomprehensible.

May I have immeasurable love, patience, and tenacity for this little girl. May I be able to model for her what is important to life and what is not.

99 Percent

I really would like to say I have an excuse for not blogging.  I don't.  Well.  That's not exactly true.  I've been busy the last month or so.  I spent two weeks at Michiana Christian Service Camp helping lead the two Sr. High Discipleship weeks there.  I also spent some time in Ohio seeing my family.  I also installed a new garage door opener in the sweltering heat.

Nonetheless, I've had things to write.  I simply haven't written them.  I hope that is going to change. . . 

I use the Flipboard app on my ipad.  It puts news, RSS feeds, Facebook, Twitter, and other mindless stuff in one place for me to read every other day or so.  One of the websites that I have found in the process of exploring this app is The 99 Percent.  It is a great site - you should check it out.

There was a recent article was called On showing up, changing your life, and limited goals.  One suggestion that was made to writers was to write every day.  Even it if is only 100 or 200 words, write.  Keep the mind and the creativity flowing.  When I read that section of the article, I thought of this place and how infrequently I post.  I thought about all the grand ideas of things I have allowed to pop into my head, roll around for awhile, and then shelved in the "someday" section of my cerebral Wunderlist.  I thought of all the things I could and should be doing, thinking, saying, writing, blogging, reading, and on and on and on and on . . . but for whatever reason I am not.

Things need to change. . .