The Weekend update, and other thoughts

The weekend was good. Lauren and I spent most of it by ourselves, which was good because I’ve been a little overloaded with people lately.

On Friday night we spent the early part of the evening alone and ate dinner at her place, then we went over to Jeff’s for a while and watched Star Wars: Empire Kicks Ass for a while and drank some wine that I thought didn’t suck, which was a first for me and wine.

Saturday we did our shopping. We went to Sam’s, Walmart, Berean (sp?) Bookstore, and I took her out to eat at Outback (which means we’ll be going somewhere cheaper then that for Valentines Day…..maybe I’ll cook something really nice…I’ll have to work on that) then we rented Italian Job and went back to my place. We watched the movie with Rob, Squirrel and the Squirrel friend, and that was a good time. Also, I got Lauren to try this Cranberry Sam Adams stuff that I didn’t like (tastes like a strong hootch if you ask me), but I know woman like the fruity tasting stuff and she actually dug it for a while. This is a small victory for me because she has hated every sip of beer she has every tried, but now I have my way of turning her to the dark side….mwahahaha.

Sunday, we went to church. I ate a muffin, and drank my chocolate milk this time instead of just the milk, so I had a more complete breakfast then normal. Church was good. They echoed some thoughts I’ve had about the church suppressing sex, and making taboo to talk about. Even in the young adult groups where we talk about it more then the average church, it still slides under the carpet a little, but for different reasons. The young married couples don’t want to make the single people feel jealous or uncomfortable so they only talk about it if you ask them. This is OK, but all in all, I think sex is good and I don’t mind hearing about other people having sex…..except my parents….but that is just weird, so I’ll move on. I think that if anything I can learn a lot by hearing about different peoples mistakes and victories, or just to know that people enjoy their sex lives is more then the church usually will embrace. I mean I don’t want to have bad sex, or no sex all of my married life, and if it isn’t really bad or non-existent I’m probably gonna want to talk about it at least a little bit, just so people know that I’m doing alright. But we may see that change because Lauren might veto me ever talking about it, so we’ll just have to wait and see. Also this got me thinking more about the spiritual side of sex. I really think that there has to be a spiritual component of it. I have theorized in the past that sometimes…not all the time….that you reach beyond just physical ecstasy and possibly past the emotional side of it. It is like you loose all track of yourself, you forget that there are two people involved in this and reach beyond the normal high to something more spiritual…almost like a holy spirit high mixed with the normal physical high of things. I know this probably sounds like a lot of crap, and I know that it is really bad to have high expectations for my sex life early in my marriage because there is a learning curve. (can you tell I’ve had a lot of lectures from a lot of people lately….including my Dad while I was home….thats right he made sure to get a very frank sex talk in before he went under the knife) But something has always been in the back of my mind about being with the exact person that God intended you to be with, the perfect emotional, physical, and spiritual match for me. How that could make everything just a little different. So when Happy Leman (the senior pastor) said that you should invite God into your sex life…I thought “Duh, who isn’t doing that” because it has always seemed like a given for me. But at any rate I’ve railed on about my theories about sex long enough, and Lauren will probably be really mad that I’m expressing thoughts like this even though they are my own, but I’m sure she’ll figure out a way to be embarrassed by them anyway. (read this quick because I might get an email telling me to take them down soon)

After church we went out for some Taco Hell, which is always good. We had a good time chatting with the gang. It was nice to eat out with Bob and Kelley because I like talking to them from time to time and miss doing stuff with just them since they left the small group to me….I hope I get a chance to talk to Chris off and on after I pass the group to him and Dirk (I’m not worried about seeing Dirk, cuz I live with the guy). Then I went home and worked on the wedding page for a bit. I got a little to caught up in working on the “three colum” design and making it flexible. So I worked on it for a longer time then I had meant to. And I will mention now that CSS support accross browsers sucks. If you aren’t using something badass like Mozilla or some mozilla based browser like netscape or firebird then you might not be able to see the page as I intended it to look. (Note: James, it should be fine in Opera too, but I’m not sure and I can’t test that, so you’ll have to let me know) Right now the page has some info on it about the wedding and a countdown. After we get engagement pictures taken and announcements printed I’ll post those on there. Also, I’m gonna steal some fancified graphics from somewhere to throw up there at some point.

After working on the webpage I went to church and there was some amazing stuff going on there. Some people gave amazing testimonies and then there was a baptism of about 11 people at first and then 2 more came up later. The testimonies really touched me. Especially Rachael Cox’s, just because I knew her family when I was growing up, but never got to know her because they moved away before she started high school. I went to high school with two of her brothers, one of which I really looked up too for a while, and joined her Dads churches youth group (he was the methodist pastor in Gibson City while my Dad was in Melvin) when Melvin didn’t have enough high school aged kids to have one on our own. That youth group, coupled with my Sunday school class in Melvin were the only two things that interested me spiritually. And to be honest the Sunday school class was more about the intellectual side of things, theology, history, and things like that. I felt like once a year I went on a mission trip with the Gibson City youth group and had a battery recharge that lasted for a month or so before I got caught up again football and school. So it is odd how someone that I never knew well personally could touch me like that just because I had proximity relationships and started out with similar circumstances in terms of family situations. (there are actual funny stories that relate our families in other ways….like for example my Dad dated her Mom for a little while in high school, and her Dad was a youth pastor at one of my Grandfathers churches for a while….in fact I think that is where her parents met, but I’m not sure so don’t hold me to that) But all the testimonies were amazing, and things were just so cool, and they started up a second worship set for a while just because things were going so amazing all around us. Then I had to head home, so I took a friend of Laurens (Sarah) back to Mohmet and hung out with her family for a little while there. It was really cool to talk to them. They were really neat people.

Now, I’m at home, it’s Monday morning. I have a lot of stuff I need to hash out with God today, so I skipped some classes, I’m writing a little (mostly this) and I’m going to work on prepping small group and try to fast for the first time ever in my life (if you don’t count wrestling season in high school). This is my plea to my small group…please come for the next two weeks because I have some stuff planned that I want everyone there to hear and to express their thoughts about, and I want to pray for everyone before we multiply the group. By Thursday I should have some things worked out with Lauren and James in terms of the timeline for multiplying the group, and I should know what exactly we are going to discuss and some things that I know we need to pray about as a group. Also, if there are any problems that you would normally come to me and talk to me about please hold them for a week or go talk with someone else (unless it is about multiplying the group). This is just because I’ve just gone from being loaded with family stuff like heart surgeries, to being loaded with issues surrounding my starting my first ever small group from scratch and leaving my old one, to the homework starting to pile on. So I took this weekend and spent it away from people and I’m going to try to do that more this week also, and use the time that I usually spend with people to spend by myself with God and with the other leaders involved in multiplying the small group. Don’t worry, I still want to talk to all of you and spend time doing cool stuff like always, but I just need a little more me time then I had expected….I think maybe I was at home too long and it is hard to keep my stubborn Dad from doing things he isn’t supposed to before and after his surgery.

So anyway, I’m going back to figure out if I’m going to go to work or not, it is hard for me to get up and move around much because it makes me hungry, so I don’t know yet what I’m going to do. And I’m sorry this is long….I guess I had more to write then I thought…Oh well….forgive me if I clog up your LJ friends page, but I have no cutting ability. I will talk to you all later, have a good day.