• Recently Written

  • Baby Lo - Quick Photo Shoot
  • Rhythm and Passion
  • Absence Makes the Heart Grow Fonder?
  • A Fathers Blessing (Psalm 16)
  • Friday is for Forgiveness
  • Friday is for New Technology & Photos
  • Phriday is for Photos
  • These Are The Days
  • 20/20 Vision?
  • Bittersweet

• Categories

  • Blogs Worth Cheking Out
  • Gospel
  • Life
  • Memorial Service
  • Owen Update
  • Pastoring
  • Preaching
  • Theology
  • Uncategorized

• Archives

  • August 2009
  • August 2007
  • July 2007
  • June 2007
  • May 2007
  • April 2007
  • March 2007
  • February 2007
  • January 2007

• Blogroll

  • Acts29
  • Adrian Warnock
  • Andrew Jones
  • Bill Streger
  • Bob Franquiz
  • Bob Hyatt
  • Church Marketing Sucks
  • Daniel Cruver
  • David Fairchild
  • Desiring God
  • Drew Goodmanson
  • Joe Thorn
  • John Armstrong
  • Joshua Harris
  • Justin Taylor
  • Kevin Cawley
  • Malcolm Gladwell
  • Mark Lauterbach
  • Mark Moore
  • Michael Foster
  • Monergism
  • Raymond Goodlett
  • Resurgence
  • Ryan Burns
  • Sovereign Grace
  • Steve Mccoy

• Admin

  • Login
  • Wordpress
  • XHTML

  Search

So, as the last days of 2006 approached, Erin and I decided to take some time to pray and think about what we wanted to accomplish in 2007 and what things in our life we wanted to work on…and we decided to pick 2 words that would define our year. It was a great exercise […]

I’ve been gone for a month or two…have you missed me?

Jude -
May the LORD be your counselor all the days of your life.
Even in the night, may the LORD instruct your heart.
May you always set the LORD before you.
May the Lord always be at your right hand, so that you will never be shaken.
May your heart be glad, your tongue rejoice, and your body rest […]

If there is anyone who is still bothering to check this blog, please forgive me for my absence. I have thought of you many times and prayed for some of you by name. Many people have let me now through email or comments that the sharing of our struggle has brought them much consolation and […]

Nags Head
Originally uploaded by cultivatethesoul
There’s nothing like a early morning dip in the icy ocean…a quick nap outside with the warm salt water air…and then a jelly sandwich to kick off a good day at the beach.
Here is a forgotten photo from Nags Head.
(give it a click for a better view)

As we pass the 1 month mark of Owens birth, death, and burial…questions remain, hurts remain, memories remain, and hopes remain deferred. What are we to make of all this? Pious platitudes seem quite hollow, even if they are constructed upon eternal truth. My heart craves real, honest reality…real hope…real change, I don’t want to […]

I came across this in my reading today:
Difficulty does this, it changes your perspective. In ways that are subtle and not so subtle, it alters the way you see your world. Perhaps it causes you to look at your world through the lens of fear and dread. Or maybe it makes you look at life […]

I suspect that for decades, there will be days of the year that we celebrate and days that we mourn.
It’s hard to do both in the same day. Like Mother’s Day, we’ll always celebrate God’s gift to Erin in motherhood and remember the time she did get to share with Owen, though it was only […]

On Mondays, I had been posting blessings that I was giving my sons every night…but for a series of weeks I stopped posting them. No real reason, forgetfulness maybe. But it is a habit that I wish to continue again. But, before I post this weeks blessing for Jude, I want to share with you […]

Bracelet 1Originally uploaded by cultivatethesoul.
Davids servants asked him, “what is this thing that you have done? You fasted and wept for this child while he was alive; but when the child died,you arose and ate food.” David said, “while the child was still alive, I fasted and wept, for I said, ‘who knows whether the […]

The glory of a young man is his strength, right?
A while ago I talked about being the daddy of a dude, well….my son has again proved himself “dude” worthy. Let me explain.
Monday night we arrived in Nags Head around 8 p.m. We were waiting for the other families to get to the house, so we […]

Sunday afternoon, a good friend asked us to join his family and 5 other families in the OBX for a few days. It is a major blessing. We needed this and didn’t even know it, I’m so glad that God used them to help us.
Good friends, good weather, good conversation…this is the family of God.
I’ll […]

Enough time has passed since we held the memorial service for Owen…not enough time to dry up every tear, but enough time to make remembering and now sharing the evening possible.
It was a beautiful night. There were moments when God’s goodness was as thick as the air in August. For those of you who could […]

I’m so sorry to all of you who had your donations to Children of the Nations returned. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, we had a misprint in the obituary that ran in the paper. We asked people to send a donation to COTC c/o Harvest Renewal Church. The problem was we put […]

This Saturday, April 28th, at 7:00 we will be having a memorial service for Owen. It will be held at Hatcher Memorial Baptist Church. They have been so kind to our church over the years in moments when our facilities downtown were not adequate…and in Christ, they are family.
I’ll post more soon. Thank you for […]

Me. My. I.
As a pastor and a father it is easy to get focused on things being “others centered�. I am always asking myself, “how do I communicate these riches in Christ in a way that people will see them and cherish them?� “How do I get my son to see the value other people?�
It’s […]

I know this is Robert’s posting ground, but he welcomed my intrusion. There is much I’d like to say that feels worthy of sharing, but the most pressing thing I wish to communicate to each of you is our deepest and sincerest gratitude.
We know many of you ached for some way to help alleviate the […]

Friday morning Erin and I learned that our doctors would like for her to deliver Owen on Tuesday, April 24th.
That came as quite a shock! We were uncomfortably prepared for an early May delivery…a good 3-4 weeks away. But the team at MCV has decided that the best medical chance for Owen is a delivery […]

In case you were wondering, a whiffle ball will leave a decent little mark on your skin…or at least the facial skin of a 23 month old.
It was time for the glorious tradition of a boy’s first plastic baseball bat and whiffle ball. It’s a day no father can forget…the triumph, the glory, the bruises […]

In recent years storms, especially hurricanes, have made headline news. I lived through a hurricane years ago (hurricane Hugo) that destroyed the Carolinas and my hometown of Charlotte. I experienced several massive tropical storms while living in Miami and the Florida Keys. Most recently, we survived Gaston, which left most of Richmond, including our car, […]

— keep looking »