Groovy Sputum

New Photo Gallery

I added a new page to Groovy Sputum that has pictures from each day of construction. I will try to update these each night depending on how much the house has changed.

View the gallery here.

And Now For Something Completely Different

Yeah…we broke ground today! The driveway and hole are finished and we may be able to have the forms and footers finished tomorrow (weather permitting). It is storming right now, so we’ll see what the walls look like in the AM.

2007

In our quest for a new direction in life, we wanted to be open to where God was leading but we also wanted to allow Him to speak through circumstances.  In other words, we put our house up for sale with the idea that if God wanted us to stay, the house wouldn’t sell.  I truly believe that God can and does do things like that.  One of my favorite quotes in life is from a former pastor in Lynchburg.  He would say, “Where God guides, He provides.” Rather than re-write the story of how we sold our home and bought land, you can click here and read that post. In short, we did sell and a few days later found what I think is the perfect place for us.

Since we didn’t have a house yet, we moved in with my Mom temporarily. We started attending a church near where we wold build and God began to lay on my heart the desire to build it on a cash basis (no mortgage). You can read about that more here.

I forgot to mention that our 5th child was born in May of 2006 and by August of 2007, #6 had arrived. We officially had to buy a 12 passenger van. I call it Moby.

There were a few athletic things that happened this year, too. I had purchased a road bike back in 2005 and had been getting pretty serious about riding when I heard that Mark Schultz the singer was riding across the US. I had the opportunity to ride 100 miles with him as he came through Ohio in June. Pretty cool. You can read more and see a video here.

I also competed in a few triathlons. I hate to see my running times diminish and I am not able to put the needed time in to running fast anymore, so now I have the excuse that I am running after a swim and a bike to blame my sorry slow 5k times on.  The tris I did were local YMCA ones.  I finished 2nd in both.  Big whoopty do.

So, that should bring my long lost Facebook friends up to speed with the highlights of my life the last decade. At this point, we are expecting child #7 in September and our house is currently under construction. If all goes well, we will move in this fall sometime.

Now you know! And knowing is half the battle!

2006

By default, I found myself the leader of our little church plant in January of 2006.  Many of us felt that, although we had lost our pastor and were also loosing members, we should not fold up quite yet.  I for one have seen God do great things after great loss, defeat, or weakness, and I wanted to see if He would raise up this church after such a time.  I felt that God would either bring a pastor with a heart for church planting to us or He would move us on to other things.  By July, we realized that God had the later planned for us.  We officially held our last service in July and we became homeless (churchwise, anyway).

There are many times that I can look back on my life and know that God has specifically lead me to certain places: Liberty, for one, and the church plant in Marion for another.  It is a strange to have that which God has so clearly lead you to taken away so quickly.  I guess you could say that I questioned God, but not necessarily in the bad, write-a-book-about-not-questioning-God type of way.  I honestly just wanted to know what direction He wanted us to go.  We were willing to leave the Columbus area and move to a place where the biggest thing is a nasty bologna sandwich in order to plant a church.  Now, with that gone, we wondered if God wanted us to stay or move to a completely different place. I find it difficult to wait for direction when I am in a place I don’t want to be anymore.

I had grown a lot in the area of leading worship while with the church plant and so we decided to see if God wanted me to do that full time.  There were a few churches that we interview for, but in the end, it just wasn’t meant to be.

So, we decided to take a sabbatical if you will and attend a church where we could just rest and heal a bit.  We started going to Rome Community Church in September.  My dad had pastored there for 15 years and I would say it was the church I grew up in.  I know just about everyone and feel comfortable there.  We just wanted a place that we could rest.

There were many unsettling things going on at my school in 2006 as well.  The teacher’s union was renegotiating our salary in February and March and since I was not a union member, things got a bit weird.  Let’s just say that union membership has it’s privileges and one of those privileges is being a nice person to other union members.  Did I mention I wasn’t a member?  Yeah, things got weird.

Needless to say, I began looking for a different job and decided to go to work for a virtual school. It’s a new model of education and allows me to work from home on my laptop. Oh, and there is no union! I started in the fall of 2006 and are still teaching from home. It nice, although the morning commute can be a drag.

We continued to search for what God had for us and I wish I could say that He answered, but that would be a lie. We pretty much just ended the year still searching for His direction.

Next up: 2007. For sale by owner and the promise land.

2005

The church plant began to struggle in 2005. For whatever reason, some of the people we thought were core members and committed to the new church began to pull away. We lost a few families early in the year and our numbers were down through the summer. Looking back on it a few years removed, I see that it was part of the bigger picture, but at the time I really struggled to see why God would have us plant a church only to see it die.

I did learn a lot about people’s motives when attending a church through this, though. There are many people who God brings to a ministry and they all have different spiritual needs, gifts, and desires. Some people have a sincere desire to serve and use their gifts to serve the Lord. Others are looking for a place to push their own agenda and gain power and influence. Others simply want to be spoon fed and consume the latest thing. It seems that a new church plant will attract some of each category. My father had enough experience and wisdom to know this in advance and he had a vision to disciple those coming with less than pure intentions and move them to a place where they were using their gifts to serve the body rather than play politics or consume. There was only so much that we could do, however, and we saw some people leave the church when challenged rather than mature in their faith.

Although the church was struggling, none of us were prepared for what happened November 5th.

It was a typical fall day. The Buckeyes were playing in Columbus and it was the first day of pheasant season. The weather was unusually nice and I went out for a morning spin on my bike. I remember seeing a pheasant in a field as I neared Waldo and I pulled over to watch him for a bit. I thought of all the times dad and I had hunted together and wondered if I could convince him to get out with me in the next few weeks. When I got back, I called dad to ask if he wanted to go with me and my two year old son to the Skull Session in Columbus. It started at 1:00 and we could get down there and get back in time to see the game on tv. He told me he would enjoy it, but that he needed to work on his sermon for Sunday and he would have to take a rain check this time.

I headed off to Columbus around 11:00 and enjoyed the band practice with my son (his first one!) and as I was driving home, mom called. She asked where I was and I could sense that something was not right. I told her I was headed home and she asked me to come to her house as soon as possible. At this point, I knew something was wrong so I pushed her to tell me. She hemmed and hawed a bit, but finally she just said it. “I think your daddy is dead.”

I remember the shock but I also remember not feeling the way I thought I would feel. In movies people always freak out, loose control of their cars, and go into a seizure when they are told things like this, but that didn’t happen to me. Obviously, I was sad, shocked, and stunned, but I distinctly remember keeping my wits and remaining calm. I immediately called Valerie and told her and I stopped in Waldo to drop off my son and then headed to mom’s.

As I pulled up, my sister was just pulling in from shopping and was going to get the mail (she lives next door to my mom). I rolled down my window and asked her if she had spoken with mom yet (I could tell from her chipperness that she hadn’t) and told her to get to mom’s right away. I pulled in mom’s driveway and we all kind of met in the front yard. I already knew, of course, but when mom told Leigh Ann that dad was gone, she didn’t quite understand. I think she though that he had gone to the store, but then mom clarified and it sank in. That was a tough moment, let me tell you.

Mom needed to go to the hospital to sign some papers and I decided to take her. A strange thing happened when we go there because the Chaplin on call met us when we arrived and tried to counsel us a bit. Let’s just say he was a pastor of a church that emphasizes works rather than faith. He asked us some questions and our responses were probably not what he was used to hearing. Obviously we were sad and surprised by the death, but we were not sad for dad. We were grateful that he was with the Lord and just kind of jealous that we couldn’t be there, too. I am sure that he was used to dealing with the freaking out, loosing control, seizure folks who didn’t have a hope in a true, living God. We could tell from his responses that he hadn’t seen this kind of thing before.

I don’t mean to ramble so much, but I am kind of writing for my own sake at this point.

It was determined that dad had a massive heart failure. As best as we can tell, he had finished his sermon, taken off his glasses, and leaned back in his chair to take a cat nap. His “to do” list had sermon crossed off and watching the OSU football game was the next thing on the list. Mom found him in his office chair when she returned from shopping. We think it was quick because there was no indication that he tired to get out of his chair or even reach for the phone which was right beside him. We like to think that he just went to sleep and woke up in heaven. Obviously we don’t know for sure, but we like to think that.

The next week was a fury of funeral arrangements, difficult phone calls, and planning the memorial service. The funeral was for family only as we desired to have as many people as possible at the memorial service scheduled for Saturday morning. May people did attend and I heard from many that it was one of the best memorial services they had ever been to. It was a nice mix of worship, remembering, saying good by, and the gospel.

Up Next: 2006. The search for a new direction in life.

2004

Hope Community Church officially launch in late fall of 2003 and for the next two years, we pretty much focused on getting it up and running.  My job was primarily to be the worship leader.  I pretty much got this job because I was the only one who could play modern worship songs on a guitar.  I learned a lot and I enjoyed finding new songs to teach to the church.  I also applied my sound tech skills to design and run the portable sound/video system for Hope.  Oh, we were an Evangelical Free Church, by the way.

Hope started small and didn’t experience the growth that we had anticipated.  We had about 40 people by the end of 2004 and were trying to prepare for further growth.  We went through “A Purpose Driven Life” and had a very good children’s ministry started as well as a discipleship program designed to train up leaders in the church body.  We tried to target young families and felt like the family was our niche in the Marion area.  It was hard work and discouraging at times, but the joy of serving the Lord and knowing that we were doing what He wanted in this church plant well outweighed the negatives.

I also inherited the head track and cross country job at my new school in 2004.  The teams were small and had not experienced much success in the last decade or so, and I was determined to change that.  I started a distance camp in in July called Camp Elijah.  I named it that for a variety of reasons.  First, the story of Elijah outrunning the king’s chariot after he defeated the prophets of Baal on Mt. Carmel has always impressed me.  Secondly, the new school I taught at was called Elgin, and that is fairly close to Elijah, right?  I only had about 10 people that first year at camp, but it was good.  I was able to show the kids what was needed to be successful in running.  One of the reasons they weren’t very good was because they didn’t have anyone showing them how to train.  They wanted to take June and July off and then run 30 miles a week starting in August and expected to run fast times.  Sorry.  Ain’t going to happen.  Ok, maybe it would for Bob Kennedy or German Fernandez, but not for the masses.  We went from being the perennial last place team in our conference to a middle of the pack team (5th out of 10 teams).  Not bad for the first year, I guess.

Child #4 was also born in August and we officially had to upgrade to a Windstar. For a while, we actually had 3 car seats in the back of our Taurus. Talk about a tight fit!

Up Next: 2005.  A struggling church and a father’s passing.

2003

We had our first son in April and as soon as we saw him, we knew that something was not right.  He had a small protrusion at the base of his spine.  It looked like the end of your little finger sticking out of his back.  The skin was sealed and he didn’t seem to have any other abnormalities, but the next few days of X-rays and CT scans revealed that he had Spina Bifida.  He had a mild form of SB which means his spinal cord was longer than it should be and his last vertebra had a gap in it. The protrusion that we saw was actually the end of his spinal cord poking through his spinal column. The doctor at Children’s Hospital in Columbus suggested surgery as soon as he was able. So, at 6 weeks of age, our son had open spine surgery. He seemed to have felling and movement in his lower legs and that was a good sign that he may not have any nerve damage, but only time would tell. He came out of surgery fine and recovered well. By 10 months of age, he was walking. Amazing. The child that we worry may never be able to walk is the one that walks the earliest. God is good.

My mom and dad had moved to Marion, Ohio, to take care of my grandparents in 2001 and by 2003, my father felt the Lord leading him to plant a church here. He pitched the idea to Valerie and I and we felt the desire to help, but we were in Columbus. We began to pray that God would provide a job and home near Marion so that we could be a part of the church plant.

Over spring break, we were in Marion visiting my folks an decided to drive through a little village called Waldo, just a few miles south of Marion. We didn’t know if there were any homes for sale, but Waldo was on the way home anyway, so why not just drive through and look. We immediately saw a sign in front of a small house there and as we pulled in, the owner did as well. He took us through and we decided to come back with my realtor cousin Sara. A few days latter we decided to make a bid and see what happened. Well, they accepted the bid without even a counter offer. So we had our home. A week or so later I discovered that a local school near Marion was hiring a science teacher. The same school also needed a track coach, so, they hired me in May.

Some would call it luck, others circumstantial, but I like to think that God provided a home and job for us so that we could help dad plant a church.

Up Next: 2004. Church stuff and #4.

2002

Our second daughter was born on my birthday in 2002.  How cool is that?  We seriously considered naming her Lucy Erin (my middle name is Aaron), but thought it might be a bit too much.  I continued to coach track and cross country, but didn’t race at all.  The “dream team” were seniors that fall and they (as well as the girls team) were hungry to go out with a bang.  They definitely did as both the boys and girls teams won the state championship in November.

I took a few classes at Ohio State toward my masters degree in 2002, but that fall, the tuition reimbursement agreement that my school district had with OSU ended.  So, I looked around and found that The University of Findlay had a program that was both affordable and convenient.  I started taking classes there in education & technology.

Up Next: 2003.  Where’s Waldo, a new church, an a spcial little boy.

2001

Little did I know when I went to teach at Hilliard that they had one of the best up and coming distance teams in the state. I was an assistant coach in the spring and my job was to train with a group of boys who called themselves the “dream team”. This group contained future Liberty runner Christian Nichols and they would go on to win the high school 4xmile at the 2003 high school national meet. But I am jumping ahead of myself.

The “dream team” were only sophomores and although they were talented, I was determined not to let a bunch of high schoolers beat me in practice. It was good for me to be around competitive runners again and I really enjoyed getting in shape. Obviously the training was good because I set an 800 meter pr that spring in a workout/TT and I ran a mile pr in May. Sure, it was a road race, but I’ll take a pr whenever I can get one.

In addition to my track training responsibilities, I began to do regular long runs of 15-16 miles. By the end of July, I had decided that I would try my hand at a Marathon. I built up my long run to 20 miles and did that only twice. I really paid for my skimping on the long training runs in the last 5 miles of the race. I went through 20 miles in 2:05.10 (2:44 pace) but ended the race in 2:52.50. Yikes! That’s dropping from averaging 6:15 per mile to 7:40 per mile. I found out that “The Wall” really does exist. I was walking through aid stations the last few miles and felt pains in places I never knew I had. I couldn’t do stairs for two weeks.

My training with the boys not only helped me, I like to think that I pushed them as well. They placed 3rd in the state in cross country that fall and the Hilliard girls team did even better…state runners up.

I think I did some other things this year (like AWANA & VBS at church) but running & coaching definitely dominated my time.

Up Next: 2002. Number two and a change of plans.

2000

The first school I taught at also needed a track coach, so, sort of by default, I got the job. The former coach had been there forever and had an old school style, that is, all the uniforms were nylon mesh. Yeah. That was the first change I made there. I had great assistant coaches at Lexington and had a lot of fun. We had some success, but it was more of a learning experience for me and rebuilding experience for the team.

Sometime in June I received a call from my wife’s high school principal in Hilliard, Ohio. Apparently I had applied there the previous year in my job search and they now needed a chemistry teacher and wondered if I was interested. I wasn’t looking to move, but when I found out that this district offered free tuition to Ohio State, I began to be interested. In education, the only real raise you can get is by earning another degree and the fact that the bill was going to be picked up by someone else sealed the deal.

So, in July we moved to Plain City, a little hick community just outside of Columbus. Man, I hated that place. Don’t even get me started. I began to teach chemistry and began the graduate school application process.

Oh, did I mention that Valerie was pregnant this year? Yeah, we had our first little girl in September of 2000.

I also started running again and ran my first races in over three years. Not real great, I must say. I ran a 5 miler in May off of about 3 weeks training and followed that up with a mile race a few weeks later. Don’t ever do that when you have been sedentary for nearly 3 years. By August I was in shape enough to run a respectable 5k.

Up Next: 2001. Pretty much just running stuff.