morning

i love God in the morning. i love coffee in the morning. i love seeing the sun rise in the morning. i love waking up to the most beautiful woman ever in the morning. i love driving in the morning. i love camp fires in the morning... i love mornings!

starbucks

today is my last day of starbucks. i am both happy and sad. over the last 5 months i have become good friends with my co-workers and i will be sad not to be working with them anymore. starbucks was also one of the first and only places that were hiring when angela and i moved out here to spokane last august. we were able to get a lot of hours and very good benefits (medical, dental and even vision).

things i am not sad about:

1) waking up at 4:30am to open the store. 2) handling outraged customers over a bad latte. 3)wearing a headset. 5) etc...

I am very thankful for the Lord providing for angela and i with our jobs at starbucks, and i am also very thankful for my new job at pmc mortgage. God truely cares about us and He will always provide for us. sometimes we need to quiet our hearts in order to hear His leading.

dad

so i miss my father. a lot! a lot, a lot! often times i wonder what it would be like if he hadn't passed away of cancer. in between those times i am honored to carry on his legacy. like a man with one arm my family has done well to compensate for the lack of our "dad limb", but the pains of rehabilitating are still very present. today i am focused on it like a splinter in the bottom of a marathoner's foot. not just on the pain but on the process of curing this pain. i have put all my energy into trusting God even when there are times that i can only offer him half of a mustard seed. so instead of moving a mountain i am still able to move a hill, which is better than nothing.

God has placed a lot of good men in my life to pick up where my father left off. however, there are times when i want to refuse their mentoring. i think that its not as valid or that they really don't know me, but whose fault is that (mine)... i valued so much the words of my father every time I went back to college, "i'm proud of you." (he used to say this while he was hugging me good bye. lol, this usually brought mom to tears of joy. but as dad and i turned to leave we both knew there was a tear in our eyes as well.) spending time with the men God has placed in my life is vital to my survival as a man. i need it just like i need even more time with my heavenly Father.

i don't deserve the grace and mercy God gives me. He has been so good to my family. i wish i was better at thanking Him, or at living for Him every second of my life. but i am human. i am still in a world of sin and that weighs down on me. i long to be in heaven worshiping God, but how dare i not value the life God gave me on this earth. He has implored me and all of us to spread His love to the ends of the earth.

i know my father is in heaven, and with that feeling and peace in my heart i can run this race for God. the splinter in my foot is nothing compared to what sacrifice Jesus made for me. thank you Lord for loving me, and caring about me.

thoughts

so yesterday i was thinking about my blog... or lack there of. i leaned over to ang and said, "i think i'm going to put an end to this blog thing." as i sit and read other blogs of my family and friends i realize, i like other their blogs. i like that i get to read their thoughts and or catch up on the latest of whats going on in their life.

from the start i never knew what to do with my blog. i don't even journal that much. but the more i thought about blogging and journaling, the more i realized i need it. it is through journaling that my thought are realigned with God's. i've noticed in the last few months that the more i keep stuff in my own head the more distorted my htoughts get. mark cryderman gave a sermon and said it best, "no more stinkin thinkin."

plus, journaling is a discipline. and since ang and i are not in karate anymore, because of finances, i am needing some more discipline. all this to hopefully say, im back.

the list

here are a few of the important guys in my life. no particular order. just wanted to say thanks.

dad

glenn teal

mark cryderman

jesse hunter

steve gerali

alex teal

dan chance

tom chance

ivan weatherby

etc....

the list could go on but i wanted to highlight a few. thanks again for all you have invested in me. i hope and pray that i have and will continue to invest all i can back.

to all the other guys reading this, what does your list look like? could there be a few more or a few less? we all need someone cheering us on in life. please share your list and give credit where it is due.

break through

so i did it... i broke the streak of not running. i realize that the marathon from two years ago still had its power on me but i defeated it today. i went for a run, and to my surprise it felt good. it was only 2.5 miles but i did it in good time and i didn't hurt anything. i'll be back up to 26.2 miles in no time.

water cube

i found my new favorite work of art. they call it the water cube. this new aquatic center for the 2008 olympics is a masterpiece. the honeycomb building covers 17 acres without the need for a central support beam. amazing! the middle of each honeycomb is a thin plastic pillow filled with air that ways 1% less than glass, insulates better than glass... and the list goes on.