Tuesday evening update

My mission is to be asleep before midnight tonight (a worthy goal, you must agree), so this will be quick.
Tallahassee rocked completely...I'd forgotten what it felt like to wake up after 11 am and spend half a say watching reruns, and it was everything I had hoped it would be...I'm actually getting a little misty as I think about it now. Moving on...
My little sister is getting married this Saturday, which still gives me pause, because it feels like yesterday we were 12...I could write a whole long post reflecting on how nice it would be if I were getting married this Saturday, too, but I think my energies are better spent enjoying the journey :)

Uh-oh. 11:59. I must fulfill my vow! I'll finish this later. Peace!

Fun in Tallahassee

Hooray for vacations! It's day one in a much-needed spring break in Tallahassee with my friend Jaime and his brothers. Why Tallahassee, you ask? Well, it's familiar enough that I know the place, but foreign enough that I don't have to worry about being tempted to work while I'm here. It also helps that I get to spend time with one of the funnest group of guys I've ever hung out with.
We're on hiatus & trying to figure out what to do next, so we started messing with everyoe's favorite mac program, photo booth. Here are some of our favorite results:





















I'll post pics of Something Interesting if it happens.
Peace!

Peep dis!

...So if you know anyone in the area who needs lessons, let me know...:)

This moment

I'm the kind of person who tends to get really annoyed inside whenever I hear the words, "just wait until you're older, then you're going to _____," especially if the blank in question involves some kind of negative downturn my character or a feeling about some issue is supposed to take in x number of years.
I sense a lot of this in discussions I've had about marriage, as well as in my own personal observations of where certain couples I've met are in their relationships. I do have to be honest and add the caveat that the latter probably results more from my tendency to over-analyze everything rather than any overt displays on their part.
Still, I sometimes look at the lives of people around me and I think to myself, is this what they envisioned and hoped for themselves when they pictured this stage of their life from my shoes?
Sometimes I think they would answer a yes, or even a maybe, but a lot of times, I think the answer would be no, and this makes me a little sad.

Aaron and I had a pretty long discussion about marriage and sex tonight, and I found myself at one point lamenting at the impression I get that for a lot of guys who are married, sex becomes something that divides rather than unifies. I get the sense that we as a culture have boiled the whole thing down to pretty much just a physical release that we barter and perform for and in the process lose the wonder and the phenomenal mystery that comes with the idea of two people becoming one. The wonder and mystery part is something that I'm glad is very scriptural, because I feel it deep in my core that what Stephanie and I are building together and working towards is a holy thing. Having a deep conviction is a whole lot more fun when it's built on something solid.
As I look around, though, it's a bit saddening to see how cheapened and jaded this idea has become. I'm no researcher, and I could be 100% wrong about the state of marital unity in that area in our culture, but regardless of what the numbers were, the important thing for me was the conviction I feel from my core about this area of our relationship, and that is this: I do not under any circumstances want to lose the wonder and the preciousness and the sheer mystery of what oneness means both now as a single engaged person and what it will mean as a married person.
Now, before I start getting weird comments, no, Steph and I are not experimenting in this area, nor do we intend to. For my part, I'm still getting used to the idea that we can even talk about sex now (see, I even hesitated to write that last sentence), and it'll probably be a long while before I stop getting all nervous and fidgety when the topic comes up.

Anyway, all that to say this: I don't want to wake up next to Stephanie fifteen or twenty years down the road and realize that somewhere along the line I allowed myself to lose the wonder of what it means to be on the journey with another person. Aaron put it right tonight when he said "it's easy to start well. Anyone can do that. Not many can finish well."

Right now, in this moment, I know the kind of relationship I will have with my wife when I'm 84 and she's 82 (on November 8th, 2066), and I want to make the kind of decisions now that will allow that to be possible.

It's cool to be able to dream big dreams and know that they're really possible. I'll have a whole other post later about how this ties into ministry, because these thoughts have been flowing in that direction, too, but for now, I just want it to be in writing that I intend to love my wife, both now and forever, in the best way possible, in the way of Christ and in his power.

Pack it up, pack it in

Hey gang,

Another fine work day has come to an end. Now begins all the other little to-dos that are right now lurking about waiting for me to get home. That being said, I figured I'd better put some type down now before I get home, because otherwise, you may not hear from me until well past Friday.

Updates, updates!

My .mac membership will automatically expire in less than 15 days if I don't cancel it. I kinda want to keep it, but $105 is way too much to pay for what for me right now is basically a neat-looking email service. I was thinking about hosting Steph and I's wedding site there whenever I got around to learning how too use iWeb, but with my recent acquisition of Dreamweaver I may just try to find somewhere that'll rent me some space on the web and pay 20 bucks to keep the page online (assuming that I find some of that elusive "free time" people keep on telling me about).
So, one day there will be a nifty little link to your right pointing you to what will surely be a "aww"-inspiring wedding page (you can groan now).
The moral of the story? After much thought, I have come to the conclusion that $105 is quite frankly an utterly ridiculous amount of money to pay for an email account, even if it is from Apple. You're better off saving your money to get an iPhone.

Next thing. I'm moving! I am currently moving out of my mom's house and into the apartment where, Lord willing, my future bride and I will make our home. Word!
And I just finished painting the kitchen and it looks flippin' awesome. Word!
And I plan on installing some more light fixtures and learning how to do crown molding and practicing basically how to show Stephanie that I'm one of those useful-around-the-house kind of guys, not one of the those other guys who hire guys (like who I will be) who are useful around the house and make the other guys (the aforementioned hire-ers) wish they were. Yeah. Rockin' stuff, I know.

All that said, I'm off to go eat some food and move more of my junk. ¡Hasta Luego!

Happy Birthday, Troy!

Hey, our lead pastor's birthday is today! How about that?

There are much funnier and more eloquent tributes to this special day here, here, and especially here, but I will add my favorite memory of when I first started working with Troy, which was that one time he was teaching during one of our "Vintage" services when he was raving about how great Cuban food was, especially those "planteens."

Shout out to all the great additions to my vocabulary I've enjoyed since joining the staff at FRC, such as "surrenderance" and "reenvisionating." Use one today!

Santos

Happy Thursday, everybody.
So far, so good; the weekend videos are coming along (stuff is rendering as I type this); Steph's got her second midterm today, which she's going to kick butt in; and Lent started yesterday, which in recent years I've started observing in my own life as a way of adding a bit more focus and intention to the days following Easter. It's really a kind of a beautiful tradition, if you're the kind of person that can separate themselves from a lot of the religious hang-ups associated with a liturgical season like Lent.
For our part, Steph and I decided to take advantage of the season on our own, putting into place a few small, but meaningful disciplines designed to point our hearts more towards Calvary than we probably otherwise would be on our own.

Last night we got to check out a really good restaurant over by A1A and the beach at the Lincoln Road Mall called Santo's along with some of her superiors from work. I think I may have had the best steak I've ever tasted, which made me glad considering the entrées were about 30 bucks a plate (yeah, it was that kind of a dinner). Obviously not a regular stop-in for a guy on a church salary, but as we drove home I couldn't help but be impressed that I'm marrying a person who can so easily blend in with so many different types of people.

Steph and I can enjoy ourselves just about anywhere, whether it's at Quizno's splitting a sub because we're short on cash, or networking with people who can actually afford to eat regularly at a place like Santo's. That's just neat to me. It says a lot about her strength of character and maturity that she gets invited to dinners like the one we enjoyed last night (and of course, I'm pretty glad that she's not embarrassed to bring me along, either).
My fiancé rocks!

Lame post

Updates are coming...I promise...
For now, some quickies. Event-wise:

-Brian was out of town, so I was in the saddle for a whole week, working my heiney off (bet you didn't know how to spell that, huh?)

-Played guitar instead of saxophone this weekend. It was pretty sweet, especially on Holy is the Lord. I was like a brown Chris Tomlin.

-Stephanie has two big hairy midterms this week, so pray for her. Not that I'm worried about it, though; I've been helping her study for the last three days and she knows her stuff.

-Had Sunday dinner with some of my family for the first time since the last time (which was a while ago).

There. That should do for the moment. Once again, many apologies for being lame.
In depth socio-political introspection coming soon.

Arrrgh

I know, it's been almost ten days since I last posted, and yes, this is just going to be one of those lame quick apology and mini-update posts, but that just goes to show you how crazy busy I've been.

However, I've got a couple of pretty render-intensive projects I'm outputting today, so I should get the chance a little later on to update you on the latests happenings. I'm looking forward to it, too, because the past few days have been really neat and full of plenty of good blog-fodder (hah! I think I made up a new phrase. You heard it here first, folks)

Have a scrumptulescent day!

Mauricio in a three-piece suit

During my travels my travels today I came across a neat little article on NPR that has had me thinking all day. Earlier this week thinkchristian.net put out a link to the Top 5 Consumer Trends for 2007, which was both pretty neat and a little alarming, as it looks like American society is going to continue moving towards the shallow and superficial...sad, but not altogether surprising.

As I was saying, though, I was listening to the NPR report in my car and thinking about that consumer report, and it suddenly occurred to me that I actually have a decent grasp of the business world. It probably sounds dumb, but I just generally don't think of myself as having any kind of a bent towards the world of commerce, and that's mainly because I associate that with Cubicle World, and the thought of spending all day in a cubicle gives me the hives; however, it's also true that most of my time now is spent at a desk in front of a screen editing video, and I don't usually whine about that (unless it's Friday and I've been editing the same video for three days straight and am ready to poke myself in the eye or something, but that probably says more about me than about my job, anyway. My job is flippin' awesome). The thing is, I think that I could grasp it. I look over Stephanie's shoulder sometimes as she's studying, and I'm sometimes shocked that it's not as scary as I used to think it should be. I got to thinking that maybe my almost subconscious misgivings about entrepreneurship had less to do with lack of ability and more to do with a faulty paradigm I might have wandered into.

Along with all of that, I also remembered how Don Miller writes in To Own a Dragon that he will try to audit classes at universities just to stay sharp, because the brain is a muscle and needs to be exercised. In kind of the same vein, reaching our God potential is part of the reason we do ministry at FRC (helping other people reach theirs is the other side of that).

All those lines of thought coalesced into one weird thought (for me) tonight as I was sitting in Kyle's dorm after my Phi Mu Alpha meeting.

"Maybe I'll go back to school after I graduate"

Yeah, I know. I'm the guy who hates sitting in classrooms. And it's true that most of my college education felt like a waste of time (especially that last two-and-a-half years), and yes, I did give one of my professors that look when he suggested that graduate school was something that would fit me, but I dunno...after tonight the thought seems a whole lot less distasteful than it did before (and Stephanie liked the idea, so if it gets future-wife approval, I guess it can't be all that bad). In any case, I've got plenty of time to pray and mull it over.

Who knows? Maybe I'll get that master's degree after all...

Video production update #2

You know, you would be amazed to know how tricky it is to find tattoo artwork that isn't grossly inappropriate for a church video...

anyway, there's my short break to give my brain a rest from being creative...back to the drawing board...

FINALLY!

At last!
I've finished it!

After three days of nearly nonstop editing, I've finally knocked out this weekend's feature tune video.

"W00t" does not even begin to describe my relief.

Brian and I put this one together with lots of blood, sweat, and tears (well, maybe just tears), so as you can imagine I am beyond pumped to see this puppy get aired, especially since for this weekend we set up a...well, you'll just have to make it out this weekend to check it out.

And now I am off to go reward myself with a Quizno's sub for my efforts.
Rock strong, kids.

It just struck me once more...

I'm getting married.

Hee, hee.


That is all.

Rumblin'

I'm down to the last here in Videoland. I've been hitting it pretty hard the last two nights; it's almost midnight now and last night I edited until about 2 o'clock...probably not the healthiest thing, but I love my job, and I really like the results of the late nights when they go up on the screen on the weekends. I won't lie to you, though; It is tiring sometimes.

When things get late and I'm by myself, my mind will oftentimes wander back over the day and inspect different moments, usually bringing to light some insight into what I should have said or how awesome it was that I did say that one thing (that latter reaction is admittedly not as frequent as I would like it to be). Tonight's pondering centers on what took place around lunchtime for me, and I'm still trying to figure it out.

I like to think of myself as a pretty level-headed, emotionally stable guy, and most of the time I think I am, but there are some things about me, certain patterns of feelings in me, that just plain distress me, and one of them is the reality that hit me once more today that I'm still wrestling with the pain of my parents' divorce. I got into a conversation with my Dad that should have been a non-issue, but seemed to be laced somewhere below with a network sub-conscious tension that really bothered me. It was one of those small phrases a person will say to you that will set off a domino of memories and suddenly, you're right back in that place that you thought you'd walked away from a long time ago, and the pain is as raw as ever.

I'm just being honest here. And not so you'll feel sorry for me, either, because that would be kind of self-serving and not all that helpful.
I'm putting it down because Brian mentioned something this afternoon that really helped me in the struggle I was going through; he reminded me that I'm not the only one who goes through this and that I wasn't a freak for still feeling the occasional ache from what was in fact a very painful experience for me.

I think there's got to be a point in the Christian life where you're able to mourn the things that hurt and to admit that it does hurt, because yeah, we know that Rescue is coming, and indeed, has already come, but our pains are a reminder that we're still walking around in bodies that are weak, and brokenness is never more than a reminder away.

I've forgiven my parents for everything, and told them so, but it still hurts sometimes, and I don't like that it does, because so many things are going so wonderfully right now and I honestly believe that God brought real good out of that difficult time. Sometimes I wish my theology could honestly include the idea that one prayer can instantly snap me out of whatever emotional murkiness I'm swimming through, but the motions of my heart remind me that it is in fact a journey, and one I'll probably be on for a long time.

So I do what I can: I wade through it, weeping when I can't hold it in anymore, singing hymns that bring comfort and reminders of my real home, and sharing it, because in doing so I learn that I'm not alone.

But it still hurts sometimes.

When peace, like a river, attendeth my way,
When sorrows like sea billows roll;
whatever my lot, thou hast taught me to say,
It is well, it is well with my soul.

One day...

I will learn how to make the window my posts show up in wider...so far I haven't found an HTML primer on the web that isn't full of technical jargon I don't understand, but I maintain my hope that one day my blog page will be a little thicker around the mid-section.

Speaking of thicker around the mid-section, I found an article the other day that describes how a guy from Philadelphia lost 9 pounds just by playing the Nintendo Wii. I thought it was pretty cool when I read it, and so I mentioned it to Stephanie, who then laughed and implied that I was a nerd for knowing this. I patiently explained to her that no, I was in fact not a nerd, that the reality was that I just happen to be overly well-informed and I was merely attempting to fulfill my God-given mandate as the Spiritual Leader in our relationship by working to expand her horizons.

This didn't quite get the results I wanted, but at least my fiancé knows her man has a sense of humor.

At the show

UPDATE: I have been recently informed that we're only in the tentative stages of finding a date, therefore August of 2008 may not in fact be our wedding date. It might be as early as next January. It's a good thing I pay attention when my fiancé speaks.

Tonight I got to experience my very first bridal show! Hooray!
Actually, it wasn't as bad as all that. I know the stereotype is of the girls with stars in her eyes planning her dream wedding while the guy stands somewhere nearby with a big headache, but honestly, I had a pretty decent time. There was free food and tasting of wedding cakes, which will brighten any long trip through a building full of people trying to sell you stuff. We both took our moms along for backup (you know how we roll), and I'm pretty sure they had more fun than we did (the phrase of the night was "ooo, you guys should definitely have that in your wedding. And pay for it yourselves.")
I think my favorite part of all, though, was that Steph and I have decided on a wedding date! Yes indeed, we have made a decision and we're stickin' to that junk. And it's so easy to remember that even I can't forget it, and that's saying something:
August 8, 2008. 080808. Isn't that great? It's so us(and I honestly didn't mean for that to rhyme. In fact, I kind of want to go back and rewrite all that, but then this sentence wouldn't make sense, so I'm just going to sigh and forge ahead...). 777 it ain't, but it sure beats September 9 of 2009.

Anyway, that's the news for now. I'm sleepy and off to bed. By the way, if you happen to come across the album Ray sings, Basie swings in Starbucks or on emusic or something, you should pick it up. It will rock your socks off.

Holy cow

Jazz music rocks my flippin' world...that is all.

The long night of editing

It's definitely way past my bedtime, but unforeseen snafus in the the ol' editing suite will do that to you. At the moment I'm waiting for the final sequence to export to the sound of machine gun fire and the random loud taunt or shout here and there as Kyle and Joey play Rainbow Six on their two Xboxes in here.

I left Steph's house a few hours ago, and by now I's sure she's fast asleep. She called me earlier just after getting off from work, tired and exhausted; she'd had a rough go of it, so we made plans to eat some dinner. I bought her Chinese and sat with her and watched a bit of the movie Dance with Me (you know, the one with Chayanne & Vanessa Williams from back in the day). I spent most of my time making sure she didn't have to get up from the couch for anything, you know, refilling cups or taking dishes to wash as the occasion warranted.

I don't mention that in order to paint myself as some kind of saint (although, according to Scripture...never mind, I'll save that discussion for another day), because living with me is a whole lot different than being engaged to me. Just ask the people in my house when I'm in a grouchy mood. No, I'm nowhere near as altruistic as all that and I know it. The reason I work hard at serving Steph isn't because I'm a selfless person, it's because I'm very selfish and acting outside of those natural tendencies helps to make me into that kind of a person.

I'm reminded at the moment of the emphasis in Scripture on acting on what we believe and not merely talking about it (James 1:22). I like the gritty, hands-on nature of that kind of a life. It's true that we're becoming the people that we're going to be for the rest of our lives, so it follows that our decisions matter, that they have a certain amount of weight to them, even in the little ones we don't think really matter. Trails are made through repetitive use, and habits are ingrained by the same, so it makes a neat kind of sense that God would use our choices to form us into the kinds of people God is looking for.

All this leads to why I try to serve & sometimes spoil Stephanie as best as I can. My understanding is that in order to have the kind of relationship we want years from now, it means learning to become the kind of person for whom serving comes naturally, and aside from prayer and time spent reading Scripture, a good chunk of laying hold of that reality means building the kinds of habits into my life that will enable me to become that kind of person. Lord knows, I won't always feel like being the selfless romantic, but hopefully it will be in those times that I'll be able to rely on those habits I've built into my life in order to be the husband I'm looking to be one day, a la Ephesians 5.

Anyway, those are my random musings for the evening. My stuff's pretty much done, so it's just as well. I am so looking forward to getting some sleep!

So yeah...

It's a Friday night, and what am I doing? I'm sitting in front of computer screen in my office, writing a blog post. And you thought I was cool.
That being said, before you start flinging around flattering adjectives like "lame" and "workaholic," just know that I have a very valid reason for puttting in all the extra work, and it's going to be soooo worth it in about a week and a half. Vague enough for you?

Anywho, I was just about to type some more, but the stuff I was waiting to copy just did, so I'm off to get back to work.
More on my occasionally interesting life to come...

Sunday Sunday Sunday!

Lessee here...it's about 12:10 AM...which means that in 7 hours and 50 minutes I'll be onstage in Hallandale, warming up the ol' saxophone and the vocal chords. Exciting stuff. I probably sounded like a complete dork when Allen, our Magnification Pastor (think: overseer of everything related to the creative arts at FRC, including but not limited to music, stage design, tech, atmosphere, etc.) called me and asked me if I wanted to play down at the Hallandale campus. My voice jumped an octave or two, but I don't care, because I've been itching to spend a Sunday or two at some of the other places where we do our weekend thing.

By the way, if any of you reading this happens to be a saxophone player who likes to help lead worship on their horn, give me a call because it's a little lonely being the only one (sad face).

In other news, my arms and chest, especially the right side, feel like a sac of of potatoes that have been dropped down several flights of stairs. Not that I'm complaining. I was warned that the first week of hitting the gym will do that to you, so I had a pretty good idea of what was coming. I've just never been so painfully aware of the location of all the muscles in my torso before, that's all (and don't poke me, either. I'll whine and nobody wants to see that).

I'm still waiting for the High Def feed to finish exporting to the Doral drive*, so I'll write some more. Steph and I had dinner at Chili's tonight, which was pretty fun. We had a good time, swapping one liners with the waitress, talking about how great it was to be engaged, and poking fun at the group of guys across from us whose seemingly sole reason for eating at Chili's that night was to check out the waitresses' butts.

At this point I'm pretty stoked as to how we're doing morally. Most of that I think comes from the fact that we spend so much time around her family. I'd say the majority of our time (I can't really think of an accurate percentage for all you numbers people, but it's probably somewhere in the high 70s or 80s) is spent at her house either directly engaged with or just in the presence of, her family.
It also helps that they're so much fun to be around. It's especially great for a guy like me, whose background is so different. Most of the time I feel so out of place among the disfunction and disconnect that marks so much of my extended family, so it's a real breath of fresh air to be among a group of people who know how to resolve issues and be at peace with one another (for the most part). Plus, they treat me like one of their own.

The time we spend with her family really has gone a long way towards fostering a really good relationship between me and them and us and them and us and each other, which in turn is helping make the whole transition towards marriage that much easier for us, I think.

We do get some alone time, though. Steph and I go out on dates at least three or four times a week, be it lunch dates or walks or coffee, that sort of thing (we don't really do movies unless it's at one of our homes), and we're really good about finding chunks of uninterrupted time when we can unpack and really discuss the deep things.

I dunno, it's a neat balance, and I don't take it for granted. I'm sure if we put ourselves in the wrong situations, we'd probably be struggling with purity a whole lot more than we do, but I think we've managed to get to a place where we're trusting that the physical side of our courtship will figure itself out okay on the other side of marriage. I hope it stays that way, because as much as there's that part of me that wants to push that line (you know what I'm talking about), the sense of peace and simple innocence that marks this deal is the one of the most amazing feelings I've ever known, and I wouldn't trade that for anything.

Anywho, enough about relational stuff. Lately I feel like a broken record. Maybe I'll try to get in a fight with Steph next week so I can talk about resolving drama in relationships or something. I dunno....I'll figure something out...anyway, for now, I'm off.

*we put Saturday night's sermon on the screens the next morning at our other campuses. In order to pull that off, somone's got to cut together the video and put it in a format the other campuses can use. That someone is Kyle and I tonight.