Blogging every day in June: and other things i haven't done

There's two things you immediately notice when you walk into my dad's office. On one wall he must have about thirty or forty fishing rods, dating back to about his teenage years...i don't think he's ever thrown one away. On another wall there is shelf after shelf of A 4 diary books. These are his fishing diaries. One of the earliest memories i have is of my dad on a sunday night writing up his weeks fishing from his notebook to his diary. If you want to know where he was and what he caught on March 18th 1983, he'll be able to tell you without much trouble. Thats cool to me.

Inspired by this i thought i'd try to write at least something every day in the month before i got married. Since, in some ways at least, having something online is safer than having it on paper (harder to lose) it seemed like a great idea. Except then...well it didn't happen did it! But thats ok. Sometimes you've got it, sometimes you don't. But on the Sunday before i get married on Friday, two days before the arrival of as many English people to set foot in North Carolina since it was, well, English, it seemed good to at least record something. Maybe i'll be bitten by the bug this week. Maybe my list of to dos is already growing the other side of town at wedding HQ.

Am i excited? Yes. Will i be more excited when Canon in D starts and i know Rachel's making her way down the aisle behind me? Goodness me, but a million times yes. I'm getting butterflies just thinking about it. Am i stressed about everything thats got to happen between now and then? A little bit. But not really.

A couple of unconnected things. Losing to Holland in the T20 World Cup is about as irrelevant to this summer's cricket as it can get. There's one main event in 2009, The Ashes are the only thing that matter. This whole summer so far has been ridiculous. If beating the West Indies was like training for a marathon by walking the dog, this is like training for a marathon by carrying a heavy tray of drinks up a flight of stairs. There's too much cricket. If Twenty20 is the way forward then we ought to get rid of the 50 over game completely. Play more Twenty20 to fill the gap if you want, double headers, four games in five days, whatever. In Major League Baseball each of the thirty teams play 140 (!) regular season games and no one complains. The four and five day version of the game is more important, but i can't see Twenty20 going away.

I've been reading 'Sealed with an oath' the NSBT on covenant. It's real good. It starts off talking about why there was no covenant with Adam (because creation supersedes covenant, because covenant serves God's creative purpose of international blessing rather than the other way around) and then goes on to talk about the covenants with Noah, Abraham, Israel and David before two chapters on the New Covenant. It's really helping me to read the Bible as one book, and anything that does that is worth the admission...

Researching wedding music

I don't think this version of Canon in D will make the final cut!

My fake suprise birthday day

Today i was kidnapped for my birthday. Rachel picked me up from work early this morning and we headed to Raleigh to the North Carolina museum of art. We had a great time, it was nice to just be near stuff that was older than post world war II. I discovered a love for 19th century American art, but not so much for medieval European art...too much gold leaf, not enough perspective. I could stare at ancient Greek art all day.

Then we headed to Southpointe Mall in Durham, and headed to Barnes and Noble. While Rachel drank a girly coffee and ate my slice of cheesecake i headed off to be depressed by the Christianity section. I hid some of the bad books behind good books...there weren't enough good books to go round, obviously, but at least Joel Osteen's smile is now hidden behind some tastefully covered copies of Piper's 'Taste and See.' They didn't have any Carson anywhere...isn't that awful? I managed to pick up 'How then shall we live' and 'the weight of glory' though, so it wasn't a total write off.

Then to the Angus Barn, a steak restaurant par excellence in Raleigh. And there, at a table hidden around a corner was my Dad...my actual dad! I had no idea! It was amazing. As split second moments go it was one of the best of my life...i cried a bit and then we sat down to an evening of paternal stories and high end steak...perfect!

The Compost Pile

One of the reasons i so enjoy reading good books is that i love the pictures authors can paint with words. I love being drawn into an illustration or story. Ever since i read 'Far from the madding crowd' for GCSE English, i've thought words were great.

Rachel and i are reading Piper's 'momentary marriage' together, as a sort of pre wedding prep primer. Each week we try and get some time together where we can be alone and discuss what we've read this week, where we disagree, and why i'm right (i jest). This coming sunday we're headed down to Bonner Point, where our reception we be, to look out over the Pamlico River and talk about chapter four, 'Forgiving and Forebearing.' It will be the highlight of the weekend. 

What links those two paragraphs is how Piper finishes chapter four, and what i'll read to Rachel as we start talking on Sunday:

Picture your marriage as a grassy field. You enter it at the beginning full of hope and joy. You look out into the future and you see beautiful flowers and trees and rolling hills. And that beauty is what you see in each other. Your relationship is the field and flowers and the rolling hills. But before long, you begin to step in cow pies. Some seasons of your marriage they may seem to be everywhere. Late at night they are especially prevalent. These are the sins and flaws and idiosyncrasies and weaknesses and annoying habits in you and your spouse. You try to forgive them and endure them with grace.

But they have a way of dominating the relationship. It may not even be true, but it feels like that’s all there is—cow pies. I think the combination of forbearance and forgiveness leads to the creation of a compost pile. And here you begin to shovel the cow pies. You both look at each other and simply admit that there are a lot of cow pies. But you say to each other: You know, there is more to this relationship than cow pies. And we are losing sight of that because we keep focusing on these cow pies. Let’s throw them all in the compost pile. When we have to, we will go there and smell it and feel bad and deal with it the best we can. And then, we are going to walk away from that pile and set our eyes on the rest of field. We will pick some favorite paths and hills that we know are not strewn with cow pies. And we will be thankful for the part of field that is sweet.

Our hands may be dirty. And our backs make ache from all the shoveling. But one thing we know: We will not pitch our tent by the compost pile. We will only go there when we must. This is the gift of grace that we will give each other again and again and again—because we are chosen and holy and loved.

Numbers

Over the weekend i started reading the book of Numbers, which is good, because there are a lot of numbers in my life at the moment.

10: working days left in RFC office
10: days until my US Visa interview
19: days until i leave Reading again
31: days until i see Rachel again
18:9-19:28: The last Bible study i'll lead with Tim
367: Days until i get married

And yet i must focus with all my might on the words of Clyde Kilby and: 'try to live well just now, because the only time that exists is just now'

this is the woman i'm marrying

A couple of weeks agao i bought Rachel 'Marriage to a Difficult Man', a biography of Jonathan Edwards's wife, Sarah, partly as a joke due to the title, but also because i figured that if Sarah managed to be Jonathan's wife and raise 13 believing children she must be doing something right.

Imagine my surprise when this quote popped into my inbox from Rachel, saying it summed us up very nicely!

"... Edward(s) was totally unlike the girl who fatefully caught his eye. She was a vibrant brunette, with erect posture and burnished manners. She was skillfull at small talk; he had no talent for it at all."