My mom and I got home Monday afternoon from our week long trip to southern Idaho. Unfortunately, I accidentally left my body clock in the hotel room in Boise. The trip though was so good, catching up with friends and family I haven’t seen in over six years was so much fun and seeing my grandpa again was worth the trip itself.
Another awesome part of the trip was getting to go to the football game at Bronco Stadium on Saturday.
I can’t remember the last bronco game I was at before this one. But being there on Saturday was so much fun. I love bronco football and to be there in that atmosphere with the tailgaters, all of the blue and orange, the band, and almost 34,000 people screaming and cheering was so much fun. I actually teared up at one point.
As good as going to the football game was, Saturday got even better with meeting up with friends I had in junior high at Chili’s after the game to catch up and hang out. And then heading to my brother and sister-in-law’s house and visiting with them.
My mom and I got into Boise on Tuesday at about 5:30 local time, we got our rental car, found a hotel, and immediately headed out to meet some family from the Boise area for dinner. It was such a surreal feeling to be back in Boise for me. I called Boise home for two thirds of my life and I was amazed at how unfamiliar I felt with everything. Familiar had now become foreign. After an amazing dinner of laughter and catching up with family, we headed back to our hotel and called it a night.
Early Wednesday, we slept in a little bit before going to breakfast and then hitting the road to Pocatello about 210 miles east of Boise.
I had forgotten how flat the drive between Boise and Pocatello is. I guess when you live in Alaska, you actually forget that not all places are mountainous. It’s all agricultural and livestock area.
Now the primary reason for this trip was to visit my grandpa before heading to Australia. He’s ninety-two and I haven’t seen him in two or three years. It was great getting to see and visit with him while we were in Pocatello.
We’re back in Boise now. Spent most of today driving with stops between Pocatello and Boise to visit some people we haven’t seen in years.
Tomorrow is breakfast with my brother and sister in law, a little bit of shopping, and then the Boise State game. This trip has already been so good for me that I can’t really even put into words yet what it all has meant for me.
This was the last song of Unite 2009, Marvelous Light by Charlie Hall. It was such a great night all around. Also, it was my birthday, so Jeff had everyone sing me happy birthday.
Today is my twenty-first birthday. As I was thinking about it and how this is a “milestone” birthday, I remembered how, for me, each “milestone” birthday has a had a distinct feel to it either before, on, or after.
I never thought I’d actually turn ten and make it to double digits.
Thirteen seemed like a myth, “Me? A teenager”.
Sixteen was intimidating, I could now drive by myself and, in a sense, take my own life into my hands.
The first two months after turning eighteen were the hardest months I’ve gone through.
And today I turn twenty-one. I’m officially “an adult”.
And this is probably, no, definitely the most ready I’ve ever been for a “milestone” birthday. That’s because I am a completely different person than I was three years ago. Over the last three years, I have been stretched, pulled, pushed, and loved by God and those he has placed around me into the person I am today.
Thanks to everyone who has had a role in shaping me into who I am.
Two weeks ago, I started a Bible reading plan right now that takes you through the entire Bible, Genesis to Revelation, in 90 days. It’s ambitious to say the least. Anyway, I was in Numbers and came across a cool thing I wanted to share.
In the story of Balaam, which most people familiar with the story know it because of his talking donkey, there was a really cool verse that I came upon during his blessings over Israel. Numbers 23:21 says:
“No misfortune is seen in Jacob,
no misery observed in Israel.
The LORD their God is with them;
the shout of the King is among them.
The shout of the King is among them. That’s an awesome line to put into a song (dibs!). But it’s also more than that. What is the “shout of the King”? My guess, and feel to correct me if I’m way off base here, is that the shout of the King is the worship of the people. Through songs, feasts, celebrations, and offerings, the people worshiped God, and they worshiped him LOUD. It was the shout of the King, not the whisper, not the hum, but the shout of the King that was among Israel.
When we join together and unite our voices in praise, the shout of the King is among us. When a people are united, their enemies scatter. When the Body of Christ is united in praise, our enemies scatter.
Let hope rise,
And darkness tremble
In Your holy light,
And every eye will see
Jesus, our God,
Great and mighty to be praised. – With Everything, Hillsong
As you can no doubt tell if you’re reading this on the site, (rss subscribers click here), things look way different around here. I’m running a new WordPress theme that is more blog-like and it’s what I’ll be using on here for the foreseeable future. Now, there are also some changes also to where things are located that I’d like to go over..
My blog roll is now located in the sidebar instead of a separate page. Both categories, Homies, and LinkLove are still used, they’re just now located in the sidebar.
I’ve trimmed down the amount of static pages and the links to those can be found in the header.
Each post has two nifty little icons in the upper right corner. The one that looks like a little window will minimize the post so all you see is the title and date, while the icon with two arrows will make the content area take up the whole page and get rid of the sidebars. Go ahead, try them out… cool huh?
I’ll probably be tweaking this a little bit more over the next few days and weeks until I get everything just right. Things actually look a lot like they did when I first started this blog a year ago, so it’s kind of neat for me to have a “throwback” theme of sorts.
What do you think of the new look? Like it? Hate it? Anything it needs?
subscribe for rss updates
Entries (RSS)