Allow me to introduce myself

Hey, it's Ross. You know, the guy that used to blog here.

Sorry for the long absence. I have no excuse, other than the fact that I've been working, mainly writing songs. Despite what you may think from reading my brilliance and wit on this page, I don't make any money when I blog, at least not directly. Songwriting pays the bills. So when I am faced with limited time, and choices have to be made about how to spend it, songwriting always wins.

Hence, my absence.

I have a couple of upcoming shows, and I hope to post about those this week. Either way, I wanted you to see this. It's a video of me and Sam (my 6-year-old son) playing music together. This video marks the first time he's ever actually played with me at a gig. I've been hesitant to put him on stage, especially when leading worship. I have lots of reasons for my hesitation. First of all, putting children on stage and trying to make them into stars seems to be a highly dangerous game, even when it's highly profitable. Second, I -- rightfully, I think -- take worship leading pretty seriously. I don't want to turn it into a gimic or a talent show. Putting your child on stage with you could probably do that.

On and on.

The point is that I haven't been eager to do this kind of thing.

However, I had the pleasure of doing a children's camp this summer, and since many of the kids at the camp were Sam's age, I figured it was a good time to give it a go. I did worship every day and night for the kids, but Sam just joined me for one session. Baby steps and all.

Anyway, here tis, below. Enjoy. There's nothing fancy, but he does a fantastic job of keeping time and he doesn't show off. Those of you who are musicians will notice how adeptly he handles the interesting time aspects of the pre-chorus of this tune. Lots of drummers try too hard to do something cool with it, when it often works just as well just to play right thru it. I was proud of him for (well, lots of things, but specifically for) keeping his head in the game, so to speak, thru the difficult parts.

No monkeys were harmed or humiliated in the making of this movie

More worship thoughts and kids’ CD news coming soon.

In the meantime, I wanted to tell you about a conversation that happened in our house a couple of days ago.

The boys were watching a movie, and it was taking longer than Staci and I had hoped. Bedtime was looming nearer, but we really didn’t want to deal with the chaos of turning off the movie before it was done.

So the brief conversation went like this:
Staci: “Is that movie almost over?”
Me: “I’m not sure. Let me check." I go look at the screen for a few seconds.
Me: “I think it’s close to the end.”
Staci: “How close?”
Me: “Well, a monkey is driving an ice cream truck, and there’s also some small explosions. If that’s not the climax of the story, then this is the best movie ever made.”

There are only two kinds of people who willingly watch movies like this: children and weed-smokers. Weed-smoking monkeys, like the one above, would love it.

Bonus points if you can name the movie.

Boo Hoo

I don't really know how to set this up without sounding preachy, so I'll just jump right into it. Below is a conversation I had with Sam, my 5-year-old son, yesterday.

The backstory is that, for reasons indiscernible to an imagination-choked grown-up like me, Sam loves to play in my car. I have a 1995 Toyota 4Runner that is on it's last legs. It runs, but only barely. However, it has a sunroof and a tailgate and it's messed-up enough that I don't care if he plays in it. So he does. Yesterday we were sitting on the tailgate messing with a busted-up plastic toolkit that he had found under one of the seats. It was missing some stuff, and wasn't that great to start with, so I said he could have it, which thrilled him to no end. But some of the plastic was coming off, and Sam decided that all of the plastic needed to come off (he likes things consistent and tidy, like his mommy). Only he wasn't strong enough to break the plastic off, so he asked me to do it.

The resulting conversation ended in Daddy trying to hide the fact that he was crying his eyes out right there on the tailgate.

Behold the great blessing of children:

Sam: Daddy, can you break this? Cause you’re the strongest.

Me: Sure. Someday you’ll be stronger than me, buddy. Did you know that?

Sam: What? When?

Me: When I get old. We’ll both be grown-ups at the same time, only you’ll be a young grown-up and I’ll be an old grown-up, and you’ll be stronger than me.

Sam: Oh.

Me: And someday you probably won’t want to play with me anymore.

Sam: Huh? Why?

Me: Well, when kids get older, sometimes they don’t want to play with their parents.

Sam: That’s not nice.

Me: I know, but it’s just the way it is.

Sam: I’ll play with you forever. Until you die. And then when I die and go to heaven, I’ll still play with you forever.

I'm not sure what I said after that, but I know it was all choked up and weepy.

Also, this is Sam on top of the car. Yeah, the Kings be some strict parents.

Staci

Today is my wife's birthday. I'll post more on that later, but in the meantime, go here and wish here a happy birthday in the comments.

And people actually came to see me.

I did a show for Woodcreek Church in Richardson last Wednesday. It was a blast!

It wasn't even in a house. It was in a big church building. There was a cover charge! I'm serious. They charged people $5. About 200 very kind, very optimistic folks paid money and sat thru about 80 minutes of my songs and -- of course -- my ranting/preaching/joking.

The band was amazing. I mean it was top-notch. Michael Steele was on drums, as usual. Josh Taylor of Clairmont and Com Church was on electric. The legendary Brady Redwine made his "comeback" on various keyboards and organs. And JP Mendez, bass player to the stars, laid down the low end. It was nice.


Also, these girls opened up. Usually, anyone who gets stuck opening up for me is pretty terrible. I mean, I'm like, nobody, so if you open up for me, well, just make sure you know how to whip up a tall non-fat something-or-other, because the prospects for fame ain't great on the Ross King World Tour Opening Act Stage. I owe it to you to tell you this. You'll thank me later. I mean, literally, you'll thank me. You'll be like "thanks for coming to Starbuck's."

Here's a pic of said talented females:


Anyway these girls (can I say "girls"?) were fantastic. I'm serious. I told them after it was over that they were like Colbie Caillat meets Natalie Merchant and they get saved and start an acoustic duo. It was that good. You should all go to their myspace and send them messages telling them to let me produce their next record.

So in summary, the show kicked booty. Great crowd. They laughed at my jokes (which only made me tell more jokes, cuz I get all drunk on the power and approval). They clapped after my songs (and occasionally -- gasp! -- during them). Nobody threw anything. Only a few people left in the middle of the show (and of course I mocked them). I'm telling you, it was enough to make a man want to hit the road again.

Well, maybe not...



All pics were taken by Jon Lilley, a cool dude on the staff of Woodcreek Church. Except the ones of my baby. He should be so lucky.

Concerts? Really? You're still doing that?

Of course I am. What a silly question. For example, here is the info on two upcoming concerts:

-- Wednesday Nov 5 (7 days from now), I'll be playing at Woodcreek Church in Richardson, TX. It's a full band show, which I haven't really done in nearly a year. Should be really exciting. DFW area people, come on out.

-- Friday Dec 5, I'm doing a show in Houston. Details coming soon.

Also, just because I'm proud, below is a recent pic of baby Naomi. I mean, are you kidding me?

I know I do this a lot...

... but sometimes my wife just says it better.

The word you're searching for is Yippee!

While we're waiting...

... on a baby, you can go here and be sucked in by the magical wonder of it all.

Also, in case you feel like saying the Kings have it rough with their whole infertility/adoption thing, you can be reminded that my in-laws take us on awesome vacations.

So we've got that going for us, which is nice.

Update

In response to what feels like a bajillion emails from nice people who just want to know what's up, here is the latest on our current adoption situation. Thanks for all the prayers and kind words. We'll post more when we know more.

Learning to love her

“In order for me to get what I want, someone else has to go through the hardest experience of their life.”

My wife said that to me tonight. We were on our way to the movie. With the new adoption situation, we figured we ought to get a date while we still can. So we took the boys to my parents’ house and went out to eat and to a movie.

While we were at the restaurant, Staci actually talked to the woman who very recently gave birth to the baby that will probably be our daughter.

See how weird that sounded? I promise I tried to find an easier way to say that so that it actually communicated the truth, but I just couldn’t.

People talk about adoption being hard. I suppose when they say that it’s “hard,” they’re talking about all of the crazy stuff that adoptive parents go through: the infertility, the “my kids don’t look like me,” the financial expense, the mountain of paperwork and formality and hoop-jumping, the various difficulties of bonding with a child that you didn’t give birth to, the numerous and weird conversations that are necessary. Etc.

All of it.

People sometimes say that it’s hard. But if you want to know that truth, it’s not really that hard. Losing a child to a tragic death is hard. Cancer (and cancer treatment) is hard. Being left by your spouse and then raising your kids by yourself is hard. Losing a limb. Living in the poorest, AIDS-stricken parts of Africa. Serving a prison sentence and knowing that, even after you get out, you’re still going to be an “ex-con” even though you feel like you’ve changed.

All that stuff sounds pretty hard.

But adoption? It’s not really that hard. I mean, it’s all relative, really.

The odd thing is that, for us, it’s actually kind of normal. We’ve gotten pretty good at knowing what to expect and how to process it all and how to find a balance between hoping/planning for a baby and guarding your heart in case it all falls through. We’re actually okay at all that. It’s not like it’s a walk in the park, but it’s not too bad.

Everybody has their “normal,” and that’s ours.

So when we got word, a little over a month ago, that a birth-mother had chosen us and that she’d be having a baby by the end of October (meaning we’d be having a baby by the end of October), Staci and I just sort of looked at each other with teary eyes and said “here we go again.”

So it’s with great confusion and sobriety that I say to you (many of you who have followed our adoption stories) that this time – this “here we go again” to hopefully adopt a baby – feels hard.

I know, I know. I just took several paragraphs to tell you that it’s not hard. I’m aware of the flip-floppiness.

Why go to all that trouble to tell you one thing, only to tell you the opposite thing immediately after?

I guess it’s because every adoption is different. I really don’t want to go into too many details, out of respect for the birth-mothers with whom we’ve interacted and known, but I can say that, each time we do this (we’ve actually done it 5 times, even though two of the times didn’t “produce” another member of the King family), I’ve grown in my love and understanding for what it takes to “give up” your baby.

Did you see Juno? If you haven’t, you really should. It’s a great movie on lots of levels, but as a study/story of adoption, it’s an absolute masterpiece. I don’t even think that’s an overstatement.

Anyway, there’s this heart-wrenching scene in the movie where Juno, a teenage girl planning to place her still-in-the-womb baby for adoption, realizes something that isn’t very pleasant about the adopting family, and she pulls her car to the side of the road and weeps. All the emotion of what she’s about to do – and the unexpectedly flawed folks she’s about to do it with –just slams into her and she’s simply unable to handle it all. So she cries. And if you’re watching the movie, you probably cry too.

The perspective that the scene reveals is, in a word, eye-opening. There’s a whole pile of blog posts that could be mined from the 90 seconds or so that I’m referring to. But mainly, for me, it just raised questions. Questions that, as I first saw the scene (I had already adopted 2 children and almost-but-not-quite adopted 2 others), I sort of couldn’t believe I had never truly, honestly, thoroughly asked:

Who is this being who can carry a child in her womb and then give it to someone else?
After doing all the heavy lifting, why in the world is she going to hand over the pay-off?
Can we possibly understand her?
And how can we ever love her?

Pretty good questions.

And the reason why this adoption – normal as it is – feels so hard is that I still don’t have the answers to those questions.

In the absence of the answers, I suppose it comes to down to this:

Somewhere tonight, not that far from where I sit, there is a sweet, precious baby girl. She was born yesterday. She has spent the last several hours in the arms of her mother. Her mother. Right now, I’m not her daddy. Right now, Staci is not her mommy. But if things go as we hope and plan, she will be our daughter very soon. And if that happens, we will look back on this night – this night when I sat on my couch and wrote about stuff that was nobody’s business – and we will say, “even then, we were her mommy and her daddy, and she was our daughter.”

(See, even when adoption isn’t all that hard, it’s still weird.)

And, somewhere tonight, a sweet, precious woman is holding a baby that is absolutely her daughter, and she is trying to prepare to let go. Maybe she’s trying not to glance at that picture of that couple that has offered to be the parents of the baby that was, then, still in her womb. That couple that met her a few weeks ago and, with expectant eyes and awkward words, told her that they loved her and loved her baby, even though they had no real reason to. Maybe she’s trying not to glance at that picture because right now, if only for a little while, this is her time; time that she’ll never get back and that she’ll never forget and that she’ll never regret.

It’s their time; mommy, worn out from the labor of labor, and baby, overwhelmed by the world all bright and noisy and new. And maybe mommy’s looking into the expectant little eyes of her baby and, with awkward words, trying to say – more for herself than for the baby, really – that this thing she has to do is the best thing. This way is the best way to show love to the tiny, fragile gift that God has been growing in her womb and is now in her arms.

And that’s hard. That’s actually hard.

“In order for me to get what I want, someone else has to go through the hardest experience of their life.”

If anyone could identify with this, I suppose it would be God.

So here we are, with teary eyes, looking to Him and saying “here we go again.” As always, He’s coming along.

Dark

Many of you know, from reading my hot lady's blog, that my son Sam turned 5 last week. In celebration of said occasion, I decided to let him watch Star Wars (Episode 4, which will always just be Star Wars to me) for the first time. Staci and I weren't sure about this decision, as it represented Sam's first foray into semi-mature cinematic viewing. We are admittedly pretty protective of his little brain and heart (because, you know, God has commanded us to be so), but many of his friends from church had already seen it, and he has been getting interested in the toys and the folklore and what-not, and I just figured that, worst case scenario, I'd turn it off in the middle and at least he'd finally know which one was Obi-Wan and which one was Han, etc.

He got a little scared at one point, and we paused the movie for about 10 minutes, during which time we refilled our popcorn and had a quick light-saber fight.

Anyway, after the movie was over, he was pretty geeked up. He went to bed talking about all the characters and generally wanting more of everything.

This brings me to the point of this post. Sam is absolutely convinced that grown-up, evil Anakin is actually named Dark Vader. And you know what? The more I think about it, he may be right. I mean, the dude is totally dark. From an esoteric perspective, he totally sends out a dark vibe. His past and history? Dark. Which side of the force does he lean into? Dark. Color of his threads, head to toe? Dark. Color of the skin of the iconic actor dude who does his voice? Dark.

So here's my theory: Lucas originally named this guy Dark Vader. But that was too simplistic, so he thought he ought to change it. Only he had too much other crap to think about, like putting light bulbs in the skulls of those little robot-smuggling dwarves, or trying to figure out how to work Billy Dee Williams into the sequel, or choreographing the fight moves between the alien chess pieces on the Millenium Falcon. Stuff like that was in his brain, plus he was already working on the nuances of the Jar Jar character. That had to take him like, I don't know, 25 years to perfect that.

So he tells his personal assistant to get a pen and paper and help him brainstorm a less-obvious name for Dark AzmaBreether (which was the originaloriginal name), and he spent so much time coming up with "Vader" (short for "invader," because he was, like, always invading stuff and what have you) that he was just too darn tired of thinking and his personal assistant, Garth, finally says, what about "Garth Invader? I like how that sounds." And Lucas is like, "no that's ridiculous. Besides, we got rid of the 'in' part like 10 minutes ago. Weren't you by the catering table when i decided this?It's just 'Vader' now. You know what? You're fired, Garth."

But then right after Garth leaves, Lucas is like "that kid was kind of onto something, cuz I could combine 'Garth' and 'Dark' and I'd have a totally sweet name for this guy."

Only problem was that 'Gark Vader' was aleady copyrighted by somebody at Universal. So they switched it and got 'Darth Vader.'

And we haven't even begun to talk about Chewie Tobacca and Yoga.

I'll let my wife give you the news

Hey baby.

My job...

... rules sometimes.

For example, see my wife's latest post about our recent "work" trip to the beach.

Various

I've had some great shows lately that I haven't had a chance to post about.

About a month ago (yeah, I'm kind of behind), I did two shows in San Antonio. Big thanks to my pals Darrell Smith and AJ Navarro, who played along with me at both shows. And thanks to New Heights Church, for hosting, helping, etc.

And last Wednesday, Michael Steele joined me for a really fun show at Royer's Cafe in Round Top, TX. Royer's is -- literally -- a world-famous restaurant with fantastic food. It was a very fun and blessed evening. Big thanks to Matt Chauvin and Tara (Royer) Steele for putting the event together. Also, I was blessed that evening to meet Jim Arruebarrena, who claims to be a long-time fan. Jim is battling (and beating!) cancer, so we swapped stories and praised God for victory, miracles, and the Body of Christ. Go read about Jim -- and write him an encouraging note -- on his Caring Bridge site.

Speaking of people kicking cancer in the shins and making it wear a baby doll dress while everybody points fingers and laughs, my brother is about ONE WEEK away from being done with his chemo and radiation. To put it mildly, he is miserable -- physically, emotionally, and otherwise -- and eager to be done. Here's what I'm asking. Everybody who reads this and has a heart (that's nearly all of you, I think) needs to go here and write him a "press on" kind of note. Or write a prayer that you -- and everybody who reads it -- can be praying together as my brother finishes well. This is a relatively easy thing that you can do that will be a huge blessing to someone in need. Everybody is always looking for opportunities like that. I'm handing you one.

Finally, I have a house show this weekend in New Boston, TX. If anyone is interested, let me know.

Still taking that break

Too busy to blog. I know it's hard to imagine, but I swear it's true. However, my wife blogged here about our super-awesome vacation to Tahoe, so if you're really dying (and I know you are) for some scoop on the King family, go read about it.

More later...

Taking a break

Lots of stuff going on right now. I'll blog about it as soon as I can. Too busy to blog about it now. But I promise to have one of my best stories ever when I finally get a chance to write about this.

Staci and I are headed to Austin for the weekend, to be with her family, and then we're leaving on Monday for a trip to Lake Tahoe, to celebrate 10 years of marriage. Time flies when you're married to a foxy lady.

I've got a crazy, busy summer ahead. I'll report back soon.

The moron in the mirror

I’m 36 years old, and from time to time, I still get a big nasty zit on my face (how’s that for an opening line?). Sometimes even 2 or 3 at once. My wife gets them too. When it happens to either of us, we always make some bitter joke about being in our 30’s and breaking out like we’re in our teens. We stand in front of the bathroom mirror and moan like our lives are over. We try to think of all the upcoming social engagements that are destined for ruin and ridicule unless God, in His divine goodness, intervenes and eradicates all manner of blemish from our faces.

When it’s me, I usually think something like “why can’t I just have a nice, attractive, pimple-free face? Is that too much to ask?”

For the past 4 days, I’ve been staying with my brother who, as most of you know, is in the beginning stages of highly aggressive cancer treatment. One of the side effects of the treatment is something called an “acne rash.” Lots of the terms that we’ve been running into during this time have been cryptic and foreign-sounding. Not that one, huh? Everybody knows what that is.

The rash covers his entire upper body. On just his face and neck alone, Ken probably has, I don’t know, 500 pimple-like marks. And – sorry to be graphic, but I want you to get this – we’re not talking about just red bumps. We’re talking white-on-red bumps. Depending on your zit-doctrine, these are the kind just begging to be squeezed.

All over his face. Hundreds.

In addition to being horribly itchy and painful, it looks, well, you can guess how it looks.

This stuff is so out-of-control that Ken’s face is swollen-looking. He has difficulty turning his head because the skin on his face and neck are pulled snare-drum tight from all the rash bumps.

Ken told me that he avoids mirrors now. He said, “I used to look in the mirror all the time, but not anymore.”

The other night, he and I went to the movies and, afterward, to pick up some take-out at PF Chang’s. People stared at him. I don’t know how much he noticed, but I noticed it every single time. I wanted to punch them all in the face. Repeatedly. I was thinking I could even the facial playing field with a couple of good bruises and a crooked nose. Maybe some of those nasty-looking yellow bruises with some crooked stitches running across them. Who’s funny-lookin’ now?

Hey, he’s my brother. What do you expect?

But then I thought about all the times I’ve stared at strange-looking people. I don’t even want to get into this, because I might reveal that I’m the meanest, cruelest person in the known world. But let’s just say I’ve done my share of name-calling and joke-making. And even when I miraculously kept my mouth shut, I thought things. Things that seemed witty and just-being-honest at the time.

Shame on me.

That doesn’t even begin to sum it up, but it’s a start. Shame on me.

And here’s something else. I’ve decided that, at least for a week or so, I’m going to quit looking in the mirror so much. I’m not all that great-looking, but I sure care about my appearance a lot. I check to see how fat I look in certain clothes. I stretch out my neck to make it look like I’ve got a better jaw-line. I suck in my gut. I check my hairline and thank God for whatever gene-combination keeps me from going bald. Then I curse Him for the same genes that give me a big nose and a funny-looking smile.

Yeah, I do a lot of mirror-looking. You probably do too, but that’s not my business. Right now, I’m concerned about the vanity-gauge in me. I’m looking to recalibrate that sucker, if for no other reason than – in some ridiculously tiny way – to understand my brother. One part suffers… like that.

So, less mirrors. At least for a while.

Again, it’s small, but I just feel compelled to do something. When you know that you need to change and you don’t do anything to help make that happen, well, let’s all be honest. That’s not just “neutral.” There is no neutral.

So if you see me out some time soon, and I look a little unkempt; if my hair isn’t right or my clothes seem wrinkled or my shaving-job looks off, you’ll know why.

And before you judge me, take a look in the mirror. Or don’t.Whatever. I think you know what I mean.

A rare moment of joke-free honesty

Staci and I have been doing something for, I don’t know, the last year or so, that has changed our lives and our marriage. There’s a good chance that it’s changed more than that, but I really don’t know for sure.

Here’s what we’ve been doing. Any time that we’re together (and often when we’re not, but I’ll explain that later), if one of us says “we really need to be praying for/about…” we just pray right then. If we’re at home, we just sit down right where we are (if the kids are around we drag them into it) and pray for a few minutes. If we’re in public, we find some way to do it with minimum obviousness and “show.”

I know this isn’t any huge thing. Lots of you probably live your lives like this, but it’s new for us. We’ve always prayed together. Every couple handles this kind of thing differently, I know. But we’ve never had excessive feelings of weirdness or discomfort with it. I pray pretty much the same way I talk, and so does Staci (only Staci sometimes prays with a kind of intuition and intensity that’s a little bit mystical), so it’s all pretty much the same as having a conversation, only The King of The Universe is in on it.

The new part is that we have a “let’s do this right now” kind of thing going. And, for some reason, it’s just made our prayers feel more real and more connected to who we are and who God is.

I’m not saying it’s easy to explain. I’m not about to give you a method to a better life or anything. I’m just telling you that we’ve changed the way we’ve been praying, and it’s been significant for us. It is what it is.

But it has changed us. It’s pretty much obliterated that whole “I’ll be praying for you” problem, which I assume you’re familiar with. You know, where you don’t really end up praying for the people who are counting on your prayers.

That’s over. Sometimes the whole thing is comical, because someone will tell me something that they want me to pray for, and I’ll say, “let’s just pray now.” I don’t do it to be “edgy” or shock-jock or odd-for-God or whatever (at least not most of the time). It just makes the most sense to me to take care of it right then. But of course you can imagine that some people are a little thrown off by it.

Hey, I’m a little thrown off by it. Sometimes the “let’s pray right now” line just flies out of my mouth before I really process it. Sometimes I am feeling a little full of my spiritual self – thinking how blessed this person is to be getting advice from a smart guy like me –and I realize that I’ve just invited someone to pray with me (for them) and I don’t even know what to pray for.

There’s a little bit of reckless idiot still hiding out in my corners and cracks.

Anyway…

As far as I can tell in searching my own heart, I don’t think I’m bringing this up to say how super-awesome my/our prayer life is. Even if I was trying to say that, it wouldn’t be the truth. We pray for stuff when we think of it, but sometimes we’re too busy or too selfish or too cynical to think of it. Sometimes we only think of stuff that is helpful or life-giving for us, completely forgetting about the needs of others. Usually Staci isn’t guilty of any of those things, but even she’s a human. A super-hot human with really good hair, but a human no less.

No, I’m writing this for a couple of other reasons. First, I’ve run into a lot of people lately who feel like they just don’t know how to pray.

I know this feeling. I've had it many times. Like maybe somebody showed it to me at some point, but I forgot to write it down, and now when I have to do it without the help of an experienced pray-expert, I just freeze up and clam up and stumble along until I finally say “oh forget it, God you know what I want.”

Or -- for better or for worse -- I just turn my praying into a fill-in-the-blanks test, inserting every cliché I can think of until my prayer sounds like the half-hearted, prepared statement of a high school football coach speaking to the reporter of the local rag after a game that everybody knew they were going to win anyway.

Lots of people pray like that. I pray like that. For many of us, this is prayer-as-usual. If we even pray at all, we pray without passion. We apply more purpose and sweat and effort to blogging or voting for American Idol or trying to figure out Lost than we do to praying.

Lord, have mercy.

Hey, this is me, too. I’m the chief of sinners.

So that’s the first reason I’m writing this: to remind us that praying is just something you have to practice and repeat if you want to “master” it; that praying is something you have to make yourself do so that you’ll actually be doing something eternal and right amidst all that is temporal and silly (and that's a lot).

Second, I’m writing this because I want to tell you about a few things that I’ve been praying about today.

Here’s a big one. Lots of you have already heard about this, so I won’t try to act like it’s my exclusive scoop. The more I think about it, I’m pretty sure this is the worst family scenario I can reasonably imagine. Aside from all the obvious stuff that everybody knows about the patriarch of this family, here’s something else you should know: these people are on a mission to save orphans, and they use their own actual, personal money to make it happen. Moreover, they started an organization that helps others do it too. They gave my family $2000 when we adopted Jude. We didn’t have the money to adopt Jude. Then we did. Because of them (and some other generous folks who would rather not be linked to). So pray for it. Right now. They need it.

The other one is nothing new. My brother is in a miserable state right now. You can read more about it all here. You can even look at pictures that show you the awful rash that covers most of his body. The rash is exacerbated by heat, so he can’t really go outside much at all, because it’s summer in Birmingham. Also, he’s nauseous and weak and lonely. And he signs off every one of his blogs with “God is good.” I’m telling you, this guy is a hero. And so is his wife, who is limping around on bad feet (long story) to keep everything together in their life. Pray for them. Right now. They need it.

Oh, and in case that’s not enough to get you on your knees or whatever, you can go global with your praying. Myanmar is facing a tragedy of unimaginable proportions. And Rwanda is totally screwed up. I could continue, but then it might sound like I don’t have any faith.

Sometimes I don’t. But that’s why I pray. I don’t just pray because I have faith. I pray because I need faith.

And in those times, the Lord reminds me that He does stuff like keeping this kid alive when no one said it was possible (lots of folks prayed for this one, and I have to believe that it mattered). He reminds me that He brought us these little guys even though we can’t make babies the normal way (though not for a lack of blessed procreative activity). He reminds me that I have more friends than people should be allowed to have; that I have a career and a house and a wife that really loves me.

I wish my faith wasn’t so tied to results, but there you go. I’m a mess.

If I sound preachy, forgive me. This is the stuff that’s all over me today, and the only way to get it off is to throw it on you.

Cancer

It's been a tough couple of days around here.

My brother Ken, the only person I've ever met who is almost as funny as I am, has cancer. We don't know a lot yet. We're not even sure exactly where the cancer is hiding at this point. But we aren't scared. My brother is one of God's kids. Cancer isn't. So just that right there gives my brother a serious advantage in the fight. When cancer feels alone or tired or weak, who can it call to for help? Nobody. Cancer is on its own in its evil mission to ruin people's lives. Ken, on the other hand, is not on his own. Not even close. The one and only Almighty God, Lord of the Universe and Undefeated Champ in All Battles Everywhere Forever, is Ken's ever-present help and stronghold. He will overcome and cancer will lose and be humiliated. Let's all agree on that and tell God that we believe it.

Go here to read the story, as it develops. Go here to read more about his family.

I'll continue blogging about normal stuff, because there's no point in doing otherwise.

Prayers, please

I have a post about this weekend's shows that is about 90% finished, but I can't get to it just yet. I found out today that my older brother, Ken, is facing some pretty significant health problems (possibly of the life-threatening variety). Until I talk with him a little more, I'd rather not share more info than necessary, but suffice it to say that his wife and 3 boys want their husband/daddy to be healthy, and Ken is having a tough time dealing with a lot of confusing and overwhelming data. My folks are visiting them right now, to be with their oldest son in his difficult time. You can pray for them too. If there's anything tougher than suffering, it's watching your children -- no matter how "grown up" they are -- suffer. More info when/if I can share it. Until then, you can pray for these folks if you have the time.

I'll have the show recaps in day or two.