remote.

i sit down on the sofa. it is a moment i have waited over 13 hours for. the moment that comes a few nights a week when smaller versions of myself are in bed and i am on the sofa waiting for mr. mr. to sit down.

sometimes i turn on the tv. then sometimes i read. sometimes i compute. 

if i turn on the tv it goes to an innocuous sitcom, hgtv or maybe the news. but really, i'm all about waiting for the sofa and the man.

but then it happens.

i glance away, i ponder the arrangement of the candles on the table, or consider taking off my shoes. and in that blink the tv goes bad.

i mean really bad.

mr. mr. has remotely changed my comedy for something with aliens. or spies. or alien spies. one minute it's kelsey grammar, the next it's a 4 headed green thing with one eye and a desperate need for a 12 step program for anger management.

this choice of his is not bad. not good. not frustrating. not surprising.

it is consistent.

some nights the sum total of our differences boils down to steve carell vs. richard dreyfus. 

i can live with that.

it's a contest.

did you read the story about my mom and her cell phone? 

well, we have a New Winner in the category of, "Playing Tricks on Myself with my Cell Phone".

a couple days ago a friend, whom we will refer to as Shania (hey, if' I'm going to rename her, I'm going BIG), Shania called me.

Shania was driving to the cellular provider of her choice in order to have her Sim card switched over to a new phone. As she's talking to me, I hear her panic. She says, "Oh great. Where's my old cell phone? I have to have it to switch the information...." 

Long pause.

Do you see where this is going?

Yep. Shania realizes she is talking to me. On her old cell phone. While looking all around her front seat. For her old cell phone. Which is in her hand.

Who needs friends to play practical jokes on you when you can play them on yourself?

accountability partner hall of fame.

yesterday's post regarded the ridiculous gift from the Lord of moving an entire family to be with our family.

today, i would officially like to nominate peter jundt and his scary smart wife, heidi, into the accountability partners hall of fame. 

to move across the country to hold us accountable speaks of 2 things:

1. the jundt's depth of character, faithfulness and devotion

2. our depravity and need for accountability

how we see God's hand in this:

1. as we struggled for months to hear God's voice in this move, they sat for months with us and prayed

2. on the same day that john accepted the job here, peter lost his job there

3. heidi and i made a crazy 2.5 day trip down here to find a home for us

4. they were 'available' to help us move and spend 2 weeks with us here

5. heidi took isaac skateboarding while down here. she spoke to another mom at the park. and then the network began: one mom gave peter's resume to 3 contractors, who passed it on to 10 more firms and eventually peter got an interview, a call, another interview, and a new job

6. and the Lord was obvious. this one offer after 5 months of searching, eclipsed whatever else was out there.

7. in august i was bored. heidi and i took peter's computer and entered random 'things to do' on his calendar. including: buy a boat, make struedel, run for president and move to atlanta. we chose the random date of november 10 for 'move to atlanta'

peter's official start date has just been confirmed as november 10

when we entered it into his calendar he didn't even have an interview here

we are amazed

decades from now our children will look back at God's faithfulness and timing. their faith, like ours, will be stronger, deeper, richer because of this significant and profound moving of His hand in the lives of our 2 families.

they're coming.

seriously.

our friends, peter, heidi and their son isaac, have been a part of our life for years. even back when john had a comb and reason to use it, they were in our lives. 

we have walked thru the roughest seasons this earthly life can offer us. almost all of those seasons fall under the category of "losses". loss of family, loss of jobs, loss of passion, loss of nfl teams, etc. 

when the Lord called us to Atlanta, they helped us move. drove across the country and for 2 weeks unpacked, fixed, repaired, prayed, improvised and bridged a gap between what we knew and where we had landed.

and now the Lord is moving them here. to be with us.

WHO DOES THAT?

i continue to lose my thoughts in the middle of such unmerited, lavish favor from the Lord. He knew the most traumatic and brutal part of this move would be the separation from His people. we lost those who were comfortable, familiar, forgiving, hilarious, spontaneous, sensitive, and involved.

and then He sent them to us. 

WHO DOES THAT?

my mom.

when my mom first got her cell phone, she insisted it didn't work... because she couldn't hear a dial tone. seriously. an entire week of her insisting she couldn't get the thing to turn on.

last week she sat on her front porch, picked up her cell phone and saw that she had 1 missed call. It was her friend Judy. So she pressed "Judy". Now my mom is not 'fleet of foot' these days, so when she sits, she likes to stay sitting. Just as she had dialed Judy, she heard her land-line ringing inside the house.

So she went in to answer it and closed her cell phone on the way in. By the time she got to the land-line it had stopped ringing.

Do you see where this is going?

She picked up her cell phone again, and called Judy. And again her land-line rang.

She closed her cell phone and the land line stopped ringing.

Then she remembered. This same thing had happened to her before! Just last month! Yep. Not only had she programmed Judy's number to be her own home number, but she had done this before. 

Who needs friends when you can play practical jokes on yourself?