life as best as i remember it…

Disclaimer: I wrote this post on an iPhone. Please excuse any errors you might find.

This weekend is Jenna and my TEN year reunion at Cedarville. In… Um.. Celebration I guess of this momentous occation I figured that I might recap the past 10 years in 10 bullet points. (After all, I need to be prepared in case anyone asks, right?)

1999: Jenna and I were married in Princeton, New Jersey at the most elegant wedding that we’ve ever attended. I also had my first (and last) teaching job where I realized that I’m just not cut out for 7-3 life that requires homework not only for my students but myself too!

2000: Jenna and I made one of the hardest decisions in our marriage and desided to move out to Grand Rapids, MI where I enrolled in seminary. I’m pretty sure that we moved never thinking that we’d fall in love with this place and stay.

2001: We decided (perhaps impulsively) to buy our first home in the Alger Heights neighborhood in Grand Rapids. a little known fact is that we did this without telling our parents that we were even looking! (I said this was rather impulsive, didn’t I?) I was in school.

2002: We lived the life of D.I.N.K.s and traveled all over from Cape Cod to the Dominican Republic to Chicago to New Jersey and Oklahoma as well. I was still in school.

2003: Liam was born on a snowy day in May. (Yes, you read that correctly.) And yes, I was still in school! But there was hope as I began working at Ada Bible Church in the family ministries department… Little did I know that this is where I’d stay.

2004: I surprised myself and my entire family when I competed in an adventure race with a good friend. God also decided to give a surprise. A BIG surprise: Ellison was born in November. We also moved closer to the church where I was now full time. The stress of it all was stressful, but God sustained us through it all.

2005: Most of this year is a blur. And I took a year off from school.

2006: I took a trip to remote villages in Tanzania. I read Donald Miller’s Searching for God Knows What. Both combined changed my life. I couldn’t live the way I was living. Addison came into our lives. And I finished seminary!!

2007: Jenna and I travel sans kids to Mully Children’s Family in Kenya. We came home completely impacted for the poor and disinfranchised. I knew that setting our sights on expanding our family would stretch us radically. We began settlng our house in order and settled into the crazy life of three kids!

2008: This was a great year for us. God gave us a new found clarity. We were loving life after making some significant changes (mostly mine but that’s a story for another day!) Finally we wouldn’t have a baby who came as a complete surprise! We began the process for Taye to join our family.

2009: We went to Ethiopia to get Taye. God is shaping us everyday. The adoption process taught us so much about ourselves. Mainly throughout the past year, God reminded us that we are richly blessed with more than we could ever hope or imagine (4 kids and a great job at a growing church: WHAT?!)

Reading this back over I see that this post took a serious turn along the way. Sorry about that. Well, maybe not. Ten years ago I never thought I’d be where I am today. The ups and downs and ins and outs have brought me here. Sometimes those moments were laugh out loud funny, while others would make you cry your eyes out. But that is the journey of faith to which we’re called. I wouldn’t take back a minute lived – OK, yes, maybe I would. But all of that brought me here. And I really like here.