Humble Boldness

  From June to December, 2016, my life changed dramatically.  In June, Pastor Andy Veith left Lighthouse to pastor a church in Fargo, ND.  He hired me.  I loved working for him.  He was the founding and lead pastor for the last 15+ years at our church.  And like that, he was gone.  The church was figuratively left in my hands to lead as the interim senior pastor.  In August our third child was born, James.  He is really the joy of my life.  I love his sweet and comical spirit.  In November I officially became the Lead Pastor at Lighthouse.  Finally, in December, on December 23, I found out I had Type 2 Diabetes.   In mid December I felt something strange going on.  I felt tired all the time.  I remember waiting at the Toyota Dealership for my car to be worked on, waiting in the large waiting room and almost falling asleep.  I've never fallen asleep in public in my entire life!  I had blurry vision....

  I love coffee.  I blame my brother and my son, Mitchell.  I can remember my first cup of coffee.  I was working on a project at Peace Lutheran Church in Lombard, IL, building something outside with some other men. Maybe I was in high school.  Some of the men wanted some coffee so I took some too.  It tasted awful.  But I felt like a man that day.  And in my head I knew, men drink coffee.   I don't think I drank another cup of coffee until I was 25, at least not real coffee.  I drank a lot of soda, mostly Coke and Code Red Mountain Dew as a kid, so I had the caffeine intake already going on.  But when my son Mitchell was born in 2011 I felt the need for coffee.  It wasn't about being a man, but it was more about wanting to feel awake after being up with him all night.  Mitchell was a fussy baby and we were new parents.  Oh what I would have done differently if knew what I knew now!  But with being a youth minis...

  When my dad retired he received 3 pieces of advice: have an inside hobby, an outside hobby, and one that can cross pollinate. He tried out a number of different activities: cooking, baking, music... but finally landed on golf, photography, and birding.   I have always struggled with hobbies and downtime. Vacation is hard for me. Long periods of unstructured nothingness literally drive me crazy. And sometimes I feel like I should be doing more! I feel guilty for taking breaks and downtime. Part of the perfectionist/workaholic in me.   A couple of years ago I began a journey to develop more hobbies.  I’m a pastor so my job is mostly with my head and my heart. I also work on my computer a lot. So hobbies that required a lot of emotion, thinking, and a computer were out. I tried to continue in music (I play acoustic and electric guitar, bass, mandolin, and banjo) but with young kids that became really hard. At first jigsaw puzzles were too difficult with young kids ...

  I have a new morning routine.  I have always wanted to be a morning person, but the combination of my depression, medicine I take that makes me tired, and darkness kept me in bed longer than I'm ashamed to admit.  But as of late that's all changed.   Every morning I can, I get up around 5:15am, sometimes earlier.  I make my way down to the basement where my mini library awaits me.  I turn on two overhead lights, my light therapy lamp, and a desk lamp.  And I start my coffee.   Really, my process starts the night before with coffee.  I like good, freshly ground coffee.  The night before I grind some good coffee beans and take all my supplies down to the basement.  Then, in the morning I make my fresh pour over coffee.  I use a Bodum pour over coffee maker.  It is amazing, it's a pick up me to have some fresh caffeine and good smelling coffee.   Then, I read.  For me, reading is life giving.  It gives ...