An Adventure Begins

My wife (Sayree) and have begun a great adventure in the past few months and we are now climbing some mountains in faith. now is not the time to divulge the source or destination of the adventure, but I would like to share some interesting “sights and sounds” of our adventure.

-Every great adventure begins with a dream, revelation, or spark to ignite your passion to pick up and get going. That’s what happened with a simply flabbergasting phone call this past August. The phone call that ignited the fuse to the adventure lodged in my heart. I have a wonderfully patient, ie long fuse when it comes to emotional expression/dream realization. My Sayree however does not, the mere flame of thought explodes into victorious celebration far before the journey/battle/adventure has even begun. This adventure was revving up to be one grand time, and I was looking for a sign.

-I love adventures, but I tend to be over cautious.  I like to make sure my chickens are hatching healthy before I count them. I guess what I mean to say is I like directions, not so much when I’m driving my car, but I rely heavily on direction when it comes to life’s adventure. Afterall I do have the promise of direction (Psalm 37:23, Proverbs 3:5,6) from the One who created me and takes us on our adventures.

-I NEED directions when it comes to life changing adventure, I mean don’t we all. I would never jump out of a plane, without a parachute, an instructor strapped to my back, and a guarantee that I will land safely after wetting myself. Yet neither the instructor, nor the parachute can guarantee my safe landing. The only thing for sure is that I will most likely wet myself (I’m terrified of heights, it is one of few things I am truly irrationally afraid of). So in the beginning of our adventure my wife is jumping out of the plane, and I am looking to be sure there is a parachute, an instructor, a plane, a landing spot that is clearly marked, and that The Pilot really wants me to do this.

-I know The Pilot, He’s in control, but does He really truthfully want me to jump out of a perfectly good plane cruising along at safe altitude, with little turbulence, comfy seats, refreshments, proper cabin pressure, and job security (I’m the second in command flight attendant of sorts) you get the picture yet? I had a rough go the last time The Pilot asked me to jump, but I landed in the right place at the right time, and learned the necessary skills to continue and conquer in that battle (and it was a right tough battle I might add). So I’m a little nervous, scared maybe even, but i definitely need to know if  The Pilot really wants me to jump. SO I GET THE SIGN TO GO……

-I’m talking with The Pilot every second of the day saying “I NEED to KNOW for SURE, before I get ready to jump, that You want me to jump.” It seems to me that I see a grin of sorts come on The Pilot’s face (like a “DUH” look). Nevertheless I continue to ask The Pilot for assurance. Then one day as I check my facebook, I get an advertisement “JUMP OUT OF THE PLANE TODAY.” Seriously?!? I mean You did give me that “DUH,” look. Ok then I will jump. Besides everything is still good, no turbulence in the current plane nor path of direction, so jumping won’t be so scary. That is until the path that the current plane is going gets the news that the flight staff needs to be lightened. That is in order for the destination of the head flight attendant to continue to be considered. Now wait a minute I was all good for jumping when I knew that I could come back to attending the passengers after a short feefall. So the head flight attendant tells me, “We want you to stay and help out, but you can’t fly in first class nor get any peanuts from the company anymore for now. You’re not the only flight attendant to suffer from the cutbacks, but you are the only one who won’t be getting any peanuts. But I have worked it out with an air marshall service so you can get peanuts, you just have to work full-time with them and you know help us out when on the busy days. We don’t want you to stop working with us, but we understand if you do.”  (Side note: No longer a full-time second in command “flight attendant”, now I’m a “duty air marshall” and a part-time “flight attendant”).

Now I am going to  check with The Pilot again…..

-”Pilot, how exactly am I supposed to survive the point of this jump, if I ain’t got peanuts to share with those who need peanuts and lots of them. Oh and what’s the deal with the air marshall gig, is that really what You want me to do. There are other planes and I surely have the credentials to be a head flight attendant….(pause for answer)…..”

And “duty air marshall” it is, turns out they have more perks, they have better inflight physicians coverage for me and Sayree. The fiscal hours are longer, but the work part isn’t hard at all, and I can still make sure that the youth passengers on my regular plane are fed a proper inflight meal each week. So the answer from The Pilot is “jump….” Sayree has been screaming JUMP since the phone call, I am still double checking the confirmation.

-We tell the “head flight attendant,” of the jump that we are now wanting to take and ask him to talk with The Pilot about the mission He has offered us. (I know you’re asking what is the jump/adventure, get to the point…already). The adventure is well on its way and I am now looking on the internet for how to accomplish the jump in the quickest, safest, most proper way without running out of peanuts. Sayree calls a few instructor’s and asks there going price. We decide to visit a local one who has handled a few local jumps with assistance. She waives the initial peanut quota and says she will help us, and that she will give us a call when she finds a parachute inspector for  us….one week no call…two weeks no call…i call her…no return…. So we look for a parachute inspector on our own.

-The parachute inspector Jorigan emails us right away with checklists and referral papers that we need to fill out, and sets up a time to meet with us to check our ability to make this jump. Sayree now begins to doubt and freak-out. What if we don’t get to jump, what if the landing place changes their mind about allowing us to land there. I by now have read the signs and taken the notes from The Pilot. So I calm her down until the day of our first meeting with Jorigan. We stayed up late the night before filling out paperwork and getting things in order for our in person inspection. Sayree is all nerves. Jorigan meets us in jeans and a polo, no suit, no tie, no official i’m important and you’re not type attitude that you might expect. Which from the phone calls we knew that she was cool like that. Sayree welcomes Jorigan and Jorigan settles Sayree down by pointing out that she is on our side and that she has a coffee stain on her shirt so why should Sayree be freaking out. the meeting only lasts 45 min or so, and Jorigan says ”You’re perfect for the jump! Get me the rest of the paperwork and we’ll meet again to get them to your instructor.”

-The instructor we hadn’t met yet, but Jorigan said he was one of the best instructors and had over 1000 jumps under his belt, including across state lines. So now we get ready to meet the instructor…..

-Everything up to now has been screaming at me “this jump is for you.” The destination state continues to show up in small thing in my life and continual conversations with the landing crew has reassured me that the landing is a go. Sayree is still freaking out. The thing with an early explosion of expectancy is that you get impatient, and you miss the cool signs (that may be for another story).

-So this past Friday Sayree and I get ready to go and meet with the jump instructor. We have talked on the phone and checked him out on the internet. The concern we have is the amount of peanuts that we have to come up with for such a great instructor. We get to the instructor’s office and we have the initial peanut allotment. Nerves galore. We wait, maybe for dramatic effect, or most likely because we were 30 minutes early. Now the good part of the story….

-The instructor, we’ll call him DD, comes out, but not wearing a three piece million dollar suit that most instructors may wear,  in jeans and an untucked polo shirt (WHAT, HOW COOL IS THAT). We talk about Jesus and Love, turns out DD is a flight attendant as well as a jump instructor. Something rang out in talking with DD about flying, especially Sunday and Wednesday flights. We discussed how sometimes the head flight attendant is looked at like a superstar, he/she plans the whole inflight instruction/entertainment , then shakes every passengers hand and makes sure that all the passengers come back to get some inflight instruction / entertainment each week from him/her. Not only that, but the passengers exspect to be instructed, entertained, cared for, and pacified by the flight attendant. While the flight attendant supposes that he is “called” by The Pilot to be more important than the other passengers. The passengers put the flight attendant on a pedestal because he/she has the training to be a flight attendant. All the while the flight attendant and the passengers say who can and can’t fly with them based solely on appearance, race, assumptions, etc. The point of the flight is completely missed and the plan of  The Pilot is misconstrued, all because we don’t follow the only perfect instruction to LOVE. We got deep into discussion of  The Pilot and the ultimate flight plan. Eventually we got to the discussion of our jump.

-”Jumping is not for the faint at heart,” he might as well have said. We told him about our contact with the landing crew, and what we knew of this type of jump. He informed us of all of the intricate details of the jump including the procedures to follow when jumping across state lines. not long after we left the instructor’s office, DD called concerned that someone else had decided to take our place in the jump. He wanted to make sure that the landing crew had not gone out and found other jumpers. The interesting part about this is that we needed DD to contact an instructor in the landing state in order to make everything work out perfect. the call that alerted DD was from the landing state and they had a landing zone that was interested in South Carolina jumpers too, but the landing zone had found some in state jumpers. This could have been detrimental to our jump, but turned out to be unrelated…. I think DD called it a “twilight zone” experience. However, since I look for The Pilot’s signals in all this, I noted that we needed an instructor in the landing state, and The Pilot hand picked and delivered them to our South Carolina instructor. How cool is that.

-Peanuts were going to be required and lots of them, but the government helps in certain ways and through negotiation and with further planning to follow through with the jump the peanuts will be disbursed and tallied. Oh how I wish we ran a peanut factory or grew them in our back yard. So aside from the peanut tally, and a little more paper work  for  class=”hiddenSpellError” pre=”for “>Jorigan, Sayree and I are ready jump.

-Yet another GREAT ADVENTURE in LOVE for The Pilot.

I was right, THE MOST AVERAGE TEAM IN NCAA FOOTBALL…

My Carolina Gamecocks. I know you are like, dud you already covered this. Well, I’ve been on a bit of a “prove it” kick lately so I am doing just that. According to the NCAA Record books, South Carolina has an official (adjusted for teams who actually got caught by the NCAA for cheating) record of 521-520-44 (I think the actual unadjusted record is 521-523-44) which comes out o a .50047 winning percentage. No one else is that close to 500. At 79th on the list of all time winning percentages (Michigan has the best %, followed by ND, Tex, Oh St, Ok, Alabama, Neb, So-cal, Tennessee, Penn ST to round out the top 10), the gamecocks are the closest to actual .500 than any other long standing D1 team in-the country. Rutgers is 78 and Southern Methodist is 80. The gal darn Duke Blue Devils have a better all time winning percentage at .50164. So then I am absolutely 100% right to say that I pull for the all time greatest most mediocre team in college football. The Half fighting , half getting beat up Game Cocks of South Carolina. Yeah we snatched another defeat from the jaws of victory last weekend, you’re welcome CLempson, Tennessee, Vanderbilt….. Wait till next year….. or the next

My Gamecocks (though mediocre) will win the SEC championship someday.

* Winning pecentages from http://football.stassen.com

**W-L-T records are updated through 2007

It’s been a long time…wait till next year again

 

Did you catch that I double titles this blogg. Cause yes it has been a long time, and  I am not sayinh you will have to wait till next year to hear from me, but you never know. Anyways. sorry for the lenghty unblogggin sabatical, but I’m back for a ouple days or so anyways…. now on to next year.

Gamecock football, there is nothing like it. It has:

* the greatest entrance in collefge football (ESPN)

*two time capital one Mascot of the year

*The Head Ball coach (aka old ball coach)

*an awesome Band (though they have been better)

*the greatest fans

*a pretty good facility

*lots of TV coverage

*oh and the most average Team in the country

That’s what Gamecock football has (not that D2 school in Miss or alabama), but the fighting gamecocks of  South Carolina. the school that will forever be underdogs, or underchickens. The SEC’s most even record. We (I am an alumni so i can say WE) will always find a way to go 4-4 or 3-3 in the SEC. Eternally snatching defeat from the jaws of victory. Not to mention taking the elevator up to the top of the national polls only to be shoved out the window by the bottom of the barrel teams in the entire country. That is only if we haven’t just plain decided that we like to ride the fire poll and send our fans into a frenzy or chicken curse this and chicken curse that. We play like the team we are playing. Take or example LSU, we held them to the fewest points of anyone up to that point in the season. they even had to result to trickeration to beat us (stupid rule by the way if your frickin knee is down, you’re down). The there was Miss State where did those Gamecocks come from, on the way to our first ever SEC title…. Then we uped our game against a really freaky good (it’s definately a fluke) Kentucky team (who have btw remembered that they are a basketball school at least since they got spanked by FLA). then we played UNC. The tarheels, yet another basketball school, and they molested us inthe second half of that game…. our team didn’t even come out of the locker room until the tennesee game two weeks later. Cause Vanderbilt only scored 17 points 17 points, the band scores 17 points, the cheerleaders can score 17 points, the old lady with no teeth that has had season tickets since 1896 can score 17 points, and they kicked us in our (Shortened mascot name here). Then we played TN. coulda shoulda woulda….. wait till next year…. cause Arkan kicked our sas. Florida will most likely chomp our fans right out of williams brice…. and yeah orange overated way overated chumps will have finger licking chicken the saturday after thanksgiving. So we’re 6-6, pretty good record for the nations most average college football team. Head ball coach, just in case you haven’t learned it yet our football motto is wait till next year. so here I go again, waiting till next year.

My gamecocks will be SEC champs…. someday.

The Saddest Celebration part 2

Last night Miss Farley passed on. She was the 3rd person that I have watched die this year. About an hour before she passed the family asked those of us at the house that wanted to to come and sing some of Maw Maw Farley’s favorite hymns. We did and tears flowed from everyone.

I felt humility and honor all in the same moment, as Jerry asked me to lead the hymns. Some of them older and burried deep within my chidhood memories, but they justseemed to come from Heaven. I couldn’t literally see angels or even Jesus enter the room, but I did notice that Maw Maw Farley’s lips were moving, and not just to breathe like before. I believe she was singing right along with us, as those angels that had encamped around her for the long 92 year journey of her life, began to pack their gear in order to take MawMaw Farley home. I think Jesus stood up as he welcomed not one but two great women saints home on the same day. Billy Graham’s wife died yesterday too, but she couldn’t hold a candle to the lady that I knew here in Gaffney.  

Maw Maw Loved everybody. She even chose pall bearers that weren’t the regualr church folk, but peole that she prayed for everyday everyday everday of her life. We’re gonna miss you maw maw. Now I need Jesus to give me the right words to honor her tomorrow at the funeral. So if you read this and you are a pray-er. Pray for me as I honor one of the greatest prayer warriors that I have ever known.

Family night tonight 6-8 Blakely Funeral home

Funeral tomorrow at Elm Street CoG 11:00 am.

I’ll blogg if I can tomorrow….

Wii is among us

Sayree and I just went and bought it. The day after wii bought a used Wii at Gamestop, wii found 4 brand new ones at Wal-Mart here in Gaffney. Oh well wii saved about 30 bucks so all is well on that front. Meanwhile I have a sore right arm and side from “working out” with the Wii. It is too addicting, and I have only bought one game for the thing. All my exercise comes from the game(s) that came with the thing. Anyway I am actually exercising and loving it. I think the Wii is kinda like brocolli with cheese on it….. you know you don’t like brocolli but you love the cheese so they even out. Except in this case you love the video games, but you don’t neccesarily like exercise…. so I guess it’s more like cheese with brocolli on it. Whatever, it is fun and I am working up a good sweat everyday in my fun time, so all is well. Now if they make a rowing game, then I might be able to work out more of my problem areas, but until then I’ll stick to bowling, boxing, golf, tennis, and baseball… oh and cow riding, pool, pingpong, vogue, air hockey, match maker, skeet shooting, tanks, and fishing. Oh yeah Sarah loves it too. Wii have alot of fun together.

update on Miss Farley: critical care is there…. she is VERY close to Home.

the Saddest Celebration…..part 1

Hospice just called the family in, there are only a few more breaths left in this life for the prayer warrior known as “Maw Maw, Gramma, Miss, Sister” Farley. The last thing she said to me was “I know you are doing a good job, because those kids of yours (the youth group) came by and visited the sick, and I know how precious their time is. I love you and your beautiful wife, and I always pray for you. Thank you for taking your precious time to come and see me, it does me good and give my soul strength…..” that’s a little paraphrased…. then she went on to praise the lord for a few minutes. Tears filled my eyes as the following thought crossed my mind at 4:45am this morning “This lady is probably praying for you as she is passing on into eternity….”

Most people prolly think that when you get to Heaven and you see Jesus that the shouting will commence. I think that is true, but I think that when Maw Maw Farley gets to Heaven, she is going to sit down with her Jesus and tell him about a struggling young youth pastor named Stephen, and about 400 other people that she prayed for everyday. She’s just gonna remind Jesus about the ones who love Him, and ask Him to please have the others get to know Him. How do I know this, because, she loves people. The pastor said Sunday “I’ve heard a few people say If I could only have half of what Amy Farley had…. I don’t want half, I want a double portion.” All i have to say is that is if only half the people in this world, heck if just one or two more peole in this world had the love for people that Maw Maw Farley does, the world would be really different. The great thing is that she had a choice to love like that, and that means that I have the same choice, cause we serve the same God. Yoda said ”Try not, do or do not. There is no try.” So I guess I will Do to make that choice everyday, cause I want a double portion too.

Jesus is asking one of His best friends and sisters to come home for good today. I’m sad….. but what a celebration. 93 years of early life and now an eternity with Jesus. We;re gonna miss you. Don’t forget to tell Jesus about me everyday in Heaven. I love you Maw Maw Farley, But God LOVES YOU MOST.

Still waiting to hear from the family…….. 11:15 am

My friends…I have friends…yay me

My best budd in the galaxy FINALLY made his way back to Gaffney and spent the night Sunday night. We had the usual fun. Stayed up way too late for aging youths, and just hung out. You gotta know D’art and Kellie and the gang (Dahson, Kadison and Emmason) to really understand my elation at their hanging out with me and my beautiful WIFE (SAYREE). Anyeays it has been a long while since we last hurrahed. As a matter of fact it was D’art’s birthday. 

D’art introduced me to my newest and probably most irresistable temptations the Wii. So instead of the traditional Rook game between the MEN and the wives (Win record: Men 25 -wives 2 or 3 maybe), we Wii-ed late into the night. I hafve to admit it is addicting. I am sitting here debating on if I should go and buy the used one at Gamestop right now. I prolly will and then again aI might not….. I have much internal struggling to go before I make a final decision. Anyways…. that is my non-interesting ramble for today.

I will blogg later…. because we are planning what will be the saddest Celebration in our church’s 75+ history. Miss Farley is on the last mile toward home…… as I dais I will blogg later…. maybe I can put together a few words in between the tears.

Mediocrity: the choice of a new generation

Got to love mediocrity, don’t ya. I mean you don;t even have to try to be moderate, or mediocre. You can just cruise along in life letting choices make themselves. Letting the ball pass by time after time unless it just happens to hit you or your bat.

I attended graduation at the 4A Big 16 back to back state champions football school in Cherokee county last night. Out of nearly 400 graduates there were only 20 honor grads, and less than half had a B average and qualified to get the free money for at least trying scholarship that SC offers (the hope scholarship, you know tha  lottery money one…HAHAHAHAHAHAHA sorry that always cracks me up). The rest just got out of school, halellujah, to go into a world that has nothing for them. I mean the jobs for those who love mediocrity are being farmed out to illegal aliens. And NOBODY wants to work asking would you like fries with that. My youth group kids were BRAGGIN to each other that they made 56, 46, 22, and other Fs on their final exams…of course only if they could sluff it off to…”at least I passed.” Is life pass or fail? I’m confused what happened to the American spirit…. Be the BEST

the army Be ALL that you can be, the navy “you and the navy FULL speed ahead, The marines “The few the PROUD,” the air force “AIM HIGH.” All of those things scream try hard and do the best. I would hate to know that our military guys are out in the field just ho humming around, firing into the dark hoping to hit something. What is happening to the GREATEST nation on earth. I’ll tell you what mediocrity.

The sad part mediocrity is that it gets you somewhere now-a-days. If you show up then you pass. If you don’t you might still pass, unless you fail, and then who cares. Mediocrity in the skills of life will take you far if you can hit a ball, catch a pass, swim fast, run fast, or beat the living crap out of somebody. CAuse that is showing something about the human beast. The animal that is supreme to all other animals. People forgot that the real reason that we are supreme to all other animals is not because of brute strenght or sheer atheleticism, it is because we have the ability to think and reason.  

Put a dog outside… if it is cold he will get in his dog house or find shelter, if it is hot he will pant, if he is hungery he will eat his own poo, if he is thirsty he will drink poison as long as it is wet. Put a non-infant human outside if it is cold he will build a shelter and create heat through fire , if it is hot he will invent and air moving machine,….etc We are supreme not because we just are, we are wupreme because we want to be and we have the ability to want to be…. because we were created to create and made to be dominant.

Yet somehow we slump to mediocrity.  We just make it thtough another day, hunker down in the face of the slightest storm, and let the ball go by. Life is a one time deal. It should be the best. I lived the best life that I could because I tried to do the best at everything I did. Not, I lived hmm that was nice. Mediocrity does not even allow us to stay at the level that we have made it to in life. Becaue once you reach the point where you don’t crave  to do your best, you sink towards the worst.

If you climb a mountain to it’s highest point and stay there for the rest of your life, you will have gone backwards from the moment that you arrives at the pinacle. Things that remain still, though they are strong, they begin to erode.  The thing is the mountain of life, ends at the gates of Heaven. Yet we get so far in our life and we thknk, I like it here I will stay a while. The climbing was fun, but now I think this will be my legacy, I have made it here. Unfotunatley your life becomes stagnant, and beins to drift back to where you came from, the troubles arise that have been conquored, sicknesses take hold from when you had been healed before, your fight is weak beacuse you no longer train to fight the greater enemies. You sink into the miry clay and erode to tyour former until you are nomore. Yet you still may make it to the gates of heaven, you will not be able to say climb on my friends and family, because your legacy said this is a nice place to stay, and we will just keep getting by. God wants the BEST  you. you should want the BEST you.

So i’ve changed my mind on something:

Don’t just let the ball hit the bat, knock the POOP out of the ball and run as if you’re being chased by a ravenous lion.

In other words: SWING at it  SWING With everything you got.

Flamingo Season is upon us

Well it’s finally a summer month, so we can stop complaining about the heat. Oh you don’t complain about the heat. Well I do. I like winter, fall, and the first of spring. My air conditioner runs 11 1/16 months of the year.

We are 35 days out from our FirePower retreat with the youths of the church. I have decided to read the entire Bible through in the month of June, and we start flocking or flamingoing yards today in a feeble attemp to make our retreat budget. So far we have raised almost $800 in flocking insurance policies. We only have $1900 to go. So if you get a flock of plastic flamingos in your yard, anty up and we’ll come a runnin’. Well not muc of importance here today, my head still hurts….. maybe i need a transplant.

PS: let the ball hit the bat, not the other way around

Stephen’s Crick

It was not an Anurism…. my brain is not bleeding.  It was and is a friggin’ (if you can say friggin’. If D’art can say piss, I can say friggin.) crick in my neck, very close to skull but a crick just the same.

I did find out a few great things this weekend. #1 Codeine by any name is still codeine IE any prescription that is a narcotic… if you are alergic to codeine then you are most likely allergic to those as well ( I am not a doctor, so don’t blast me if you know more than I do). 

#2 You can actually puke until ther eis nothing else to puke… dry heave is not fun….. first time for me, hopefully i won’t get to experience this please ever again.

#3 A crick in the neck can be a real pain in the Putikiss. I got two shots Saturday, for a friggin’ crick in the neck.

#4 Being sick sucks, but it happens….. so deal with it. And do NOT go to any doctors in a certain county in SC………. cause you brain may be bleeding and you not even know it.

Well… that’s all that my bloddy crick will let me type today, but i am alive and almost well…….

Let the ball hit the bat, not the other way around.