Grieving Caleb

Grieving is a terribly confusing thing. I don't know why this is coming up a year and a half later but it is along with all this other stuff. My feelings are so jumbled I don't know where to start. One thing I know is that I have a lot of unresolved anger towards "the system". Which kind of sucks because the system is a nameless, faceless thing that has no emotion and certainly no remorse.
For nine years of our lives with Caleb the system was there for us with Caleb, we are honestly so lucky how we live in a province that has so much support for those with a disability or a disabled child. But I was not prepared for how we would get treated once Caleb was no longer with us. It was like a band aid getting ripped off in one stroke, taking the hair and scab with it. I was nice to have those agencies to support us, the thing about support though is that when you have somebody rely on it the removal needs to be gradual. Sarah and I have talked about how we felt like Caleb looked after our family and I think that this is why we felt like that.
This last week Sarah brought home Caleb's wheel chair and had it in our living room. She never told me that she did this and I came home from work and there is was, it actually scared me to the point of having a small anxiety attack. I was stunned for a short amount of time and asked her why. Honestly I was angry, not so much at Sarah from bringing it home but for the rush of emotions and memories that flooded in. The kids see it like a toy and they have all taken turns sitting in Caleb's chair, it scares me to see them in the chair, especially if they sit still like Caleb did.

Where have I been?

Good question, I don't know myself. Currently I find myself in a crisis of faith and I don't know what to do about it. I don't know exactly what has changed, I know there are issues that I have relating to Caleb's death that I have not dealt with but the more I search myself the more I find ugliness in my life that I really don't want to deal with. I'm tired.
One of reason things have come to a head verus staying hidden in the recesses of my mind have to do with taking on the task of leadership in our church. For most of my adult life I wanted somebody to have faith in me, to trust me in a leadership role. I am more than willing to admit that I had some very ugly motives that even I didn't recognize at the time but thankfully I had good leaders that saw through my facade and encouraged me to grow more before taking on that responsibility. Then I finally got to a place in life where I really didn't care anymore about leadership and realized the responsibility and spiritual maturity it required. And it was then that I was asked to lead a small group with Sarah. Well I have done my best at putting on the strong leader face these last couple months, and now I find my brittle mask crumbling before me. All of a sudden I feel bare, because all of my covering up has pushed my problems to the surface. Not unlike the plumber who keeps patching the water line each time it leaks, before long there is no longer a pipe, only a bunch of patches in a row that will eventually fail and flood.
Am I depressed? Well I guess so, I have gotten hear by my own decisions. I am obviously going to be stepping back from leadership, Sarah has decided that she has enough fuel in the tank to lead herself.
I don't want this to sound like a pity party for myself, I am just standing back and looking at my life and being honest with myself. There is much more that will eventually come out, just can't find the words.

Prince Caspian - May 16!!

Sorry, had to remove the trailer, it was really annoying how it would play every time I loaded the page.

Family Update

Hi all, I thought I should give you a little update as to what has been going on in our home as I am not blogging much these days.

Well as you can imagine the period from October 27^th to November 1^st was not a lot of fun. We went to Caleb’s grave site and remembered him as we shivered in the cold. Afterwards we went to Saskatoon Asian and spent some time as a family. This period of time was very difficult on our marriage, we were not coming together in our grief but rather coming against each other. We are taking joy in the fact that we are past all the firsts, the first Christmas, birthday, anniversary of his death and funeral. Hopefully the next year will be easier.

We haven’t had time to celebrate our anniversary yet (11 years) but we will hopefully take some time in the coming weeks.

Last night Sarah surprised me with a birthday party. I still can’t believe she pulled it off without me expecting a thing, I was sure that I would have suspected something. She invited all my guy friends and Chris (my brother-in-law) snuck in my house and setup several computers and networked them together. Needless to say we had a great “Christian” time of fellowship and blowing each other up until the wee hours of the morning. I am still recovering.

I started a new job at the end of September. I am commercial installer, installing cable, internet and phone services. As you can imagine going from a computer technician to a cable installer has been a bit of a culture shock for me but I love every minute of it. I found that with computers there were so many times I could get a computer working, but I didn’t really feel like a fixed the problem. With my new job there is no grey areas, either the signal is there and it is working, or it isn’t. With my string of perfectionism this is a really good fit. They have an unbelievable benefits package and I get every TV service (including HD), internet and phone for $100\month. This really helps our bottom line. Also my hours are 8am-4:30pm Monday to Friday, I have not have hours like those for a while.

Sarah is home schooling like crazy this year. We have both seen major growth in her and her ability to organize and keep focused. And the proof is in the pudding as the kids are always excited to tell me about what they learned during the day when I come home.

Noah is in Tae Kwon Do this year and is really enjoying it, it seems to be a better fit for him than soccer. He would play computer games and game boy all day if we let him, so we are trying to find the positives in that and get him into some educational software. Noah blows us away with his home schooling, he is so smart, and the weird thing is, is that his favourite subject is math! Hard to believe he is my son :)

Isaiah’s extracurricular activity this year is an arts and crafts class. This is totally up her alley as she spends much time at home coloring, painting, cutting, gluing and leaving a mess wherever she goes. She is still in ballet as well and is now in her second year.

Sarah enrolled Faith in a 2 year old dance class called “Move to Music”, this was put on by our community association at a local school. Faith loves it, but after the second class the teacher quit. So Sarah picked up the slack and started leading the class. It has kind of become a family project as I am the DJ and the kids assist Sarah in helping the kids. There are anywhere from 2-6 kids per week. Faith’s vocabulary expands every day and can now communicate most of what she wants. She still surprises us with some of the words that she incorporates in her sentences.

Elishah is growing like crazy, she is almost 9 months old, wow where does time go. Sarah is in the process of weaning her which means we are now into baby food and bottles. Elishah is crawling and pulling herself up on furniture. She can go from a crawl to sitting and turn around using that method.

Sarah and I have started leading a care group (which we call a life group), we have 3 other couples and one single girl. This has been stretching for us to say the least, and the timing of it with Caleb’s anniversary made it that much more difficult. It is obvious that God has called us into a time of stretching our faith and teaching us about leadership. I feel that once we get our bearings about us we will see the blessing.

Psalm 23 - Very Cute!

Get Perpendicular!

Here is a great animation on an innovation in new hard drives, even if you don't understand its great for a chuckle.

Get Perpendicular

Six Habits of Spiritually Happy Men

Patrick Morley http://www.maninthemirror.org/

I've been meeting with men for over three decades. Many of those men exude a contagious joy and contentment. Their lives are peaceable, orderly, and recommend Christ. They’re downright happy!

Most of these happy men exercise six spiritual habits that keep them "abiding in Christ." These six habits are not litmus tests that you can use to judge a man’s walk with Christ. That would be extremely dangerous. These habits do nothing to improve a man’s record with Jesus. They are, however, indicators or “clues” of a deeper commitment to live by faith and make a difference in the world.

Habit #1: Spiritually happy men read the Bible regularly.
Habit #2: Spiritually happy men pray with their wives.
Habit #3: Spiritually happy men are in a small group.
Habit #4: Spiritually happy men are active in a church.
Habit #5: Spiritually happy men tithe.
Habit #6: Spiritually happy men are serving the Lord.

Full article

Family Pictures

Wise Words

The more secrets you take to the grave,
the sooner you will get there.

Joe W

The Swamps of Sadness

I have not been in a very good mindset for the last while. Little by little I have allowed my faith to be chipped away. As I faltered, my feet started getting more and more caught up in the bog of depression and weighing me down.

Remember on "The Never Ending Story", the Swamps of Sadness? What a great illustration.

Depressions goal is to kill you, first it starts with your mind, your spirit, then your body.

But praise God for he is faithful, here are the events of tonight:

I came home sick from work as I had been having problems with my stomach the previous night and it was now really getting to me. I came home to an empty house and as I relaxed in a nice hot tub I realized how depressed I really was, so I started praying. After a while I got out and decided to turn on some worship music and read God's word. As I prayed and worshiped my stomach pains all of a sudden stopped, wow!

God then gave me a vision of a church and people worshiping, I felt that this was his leading so I hopped on my bike and started riding. Well I didn't know where I was going so I decided to head over to my friend Darcy's house, I though he might have a piece of the puzzle. Well I got to his house and nobody was home, hmmm, I wonder if I heard right. So I decided to bike downtown. Well there is a lot of construction around his house right now and all the detours lead me towards the river, but even those paths were blocked as well. Disappointed, I decided to ride home starting to regret riding all the way over hear for nothing.

As I pondered what direction I was going to take home I heard music, and as I looked a little closer that was a stage setup by the skateboard park. Turns out that a church was doing an outreach down there and giving a little concert. So I went over and listened for a while and met some great people. I love it when He shows himself like that when we take those first steps of obedience.

Peace out

Amazing!

A Classic!

Danielson

We were coming home from the farm on Sunday night and we saw a sign for a provincial park called "Danielson". Well we just had to turn around to take a picture of the sign because this is also the nickname we call my nephew, you remember the "Karate Kid" right? Mr. Miyagi "Wax on, wax off, Danielson......."

Oh well, if you don't your just too young.

Faith vs Vaseline - The Movie

A Terrible Accident

Before

After


Although I doubt anything is permanent, the temporary disfigurement may cause some social problems.

Vaseline Open Final Score: Bed = 0 Faith = 1

+A 2yr old supposed to be sleeping in Mom & Dads bed
+A full jar of Vaseline for Mom's cracked feet
+Too much curiosity
_____________________________________________
=A normally cute face covered with the for mentioned Vaseline
=A now empty Vaseline jar

Official Body Count
-Fitted sheet
-Pillow case
-Bed skirt
-2 Quilts ( 1 with sentimental value)
-A 2yr old, if she ever does that again

I'm a whole new guy with a whole new vibe.
Changed inside-more flame in the fire.
Can't stop,won't stop praying for desire.
Like the bunny on the screen feels so energized.
Old shell gone without a trace,new face.
No more shortness of breath,new pace.
Live life now without the taste of fear.
Double Dutch now let the smoke clear.

Rate Your Doctor

Very interesting website, every doctor I searched for was there.

RateMDs.com

Weekend

Just me and the 3 oldest kids this weekend as Sarah is off on our Church ladies retreat.
We started off the morning with me sleeping in and missing Isaiah's ballet and crepes.
It is currently 2pm and I am in a wet towel just having gotten out of the shower and procrastinating on starting my day. The house is alright so far, almost got it cleaned the day before Sarah left and I have been able to maintain it.

Time to get my but in gear.

Technology, GRRRR!

Almost finished The Search For Spiritual Family - Part 3, but I decided to start playing around with a Hauppauge TV tuner card that I acquired so I could start using the puter as a PVR and got a little distracted.

Yes that it right, we got cable. We took the plunge and switched all our services to Shaw, including telephone, bye bye Sasktel. Basic cable was part of the package.

I hate channel surfing, and whenever I watch TV that seems to be all I do. The solution? PVR! (Personal Video Recorder - basically turn your PC into a VCR, for the lay people). Well I managed to get the cable piped in, but getting the interactive menu downloaded so I could search for programs was a pain in the you know what. But eventually I even got that working.

Okay now for part two, because I do not plan on watching TV on my puter, I need to somehow get it to the TV\DVD player. Only option is to burn it to DVD.

Disk 1 - 5 kids shows, the process completes flawlessly. Put it in DVD player, interactive menus show up with content (very cool). First program works great, but the next four get glitchier and glitchier until they won't even play, grrrr.

Disk 2 - CSI and a couple episodes of Fresh Prince of Bel-Air. Disk fails during burning process (after 30 minutes of preparation time).

Disk 3 - Same content, but burning them in the raw div x format as my DVD player can read div x. Works great, but can't fast forward through the commercials without it skipping back to the beginning of the file. Too frustrating, turned it off and went to paint the bathroom, literally.

Once I get my big screen plasma, all my problems will be solved as I can hook up the computer directly to it and just play off the HD without the frustration of burning DVD's.This is an artists rendering of what I am hoping for