June 2010 — Page 2

BIG SHOES TO FILL

I have some big shoes to fill. It’s the ones my kids have for me. Here’s what they’ve written about in school this year. I’m both blessed and scared to death. I love that they feel this way, but oh boy…. those are some BIG shoes and some BIG eyes they have looking my way. Oh by the grace of God go I.

HERE’S WHAT TYLER WROTE IN HIS 4TH GRADE WRITING CLASS:

“Dad’s Rock”

My dad is my hero. He is an intelligent man. He went back to school to get his Masters degree. He is very tall. He has brown eyes and blackish brownish hair. I love him very much.

My dad loves me very much. I know it. I don’t have to ask him. At night he gives me hugs and kisses. When I’m scared he snuggles with me. Like one time we were watching Lord of the Rings and I was scared, but my dad was there to snuggle with me. After the movie was over he tucked me into my bed and gave me hugs and kisses. My dad is always there when I’m scared.

My dad is a very caring man. he goes to work to get paid so he can feed me. And he only gets 2 1/2 days off at the most. He pays for some stuff like bed, clothes, and a roof over my head when I sleep. If I ask my dad to take me somewhere, he always takes me. He takes me so many places he even takes me to Yosemite. He takes me to all my soccer games. For the past two years I haven’t missed one single game. he will take me anywhere if I ask.

My hero is my dad. He loves me, takes me places, and even cares for me. Isn’t he a great dad?

HERE’S WHAT TJ WROTE FOR HIS 7TH GRADE ENGLISH CLASS NARRATIVE:

“My Dad”

My Dad is a very special person. He is a high school pastor at my church. He is also a good carpenter. Knowing how to work with wood is a cool part of having my Dad in my family. One year for my birthday my Dad gave me a room remodel. It was one of the best birthday presents I have ever gotten.

When I was turning ten, my parents gave me the present of a new room. So my Dad set to work, with my help, to make me a new room. We took all the stuff out of my room, and then went to Home Depot to get all the materials. We picked for my room to be green, light blue, and orange stripes. So, my whole family came in and helped us paint. Then we built a loft for me to sleep in. We built a desk underneath it and constructed a new, smaller closet under the loft as well. When it was all finished it was so cool to think that this was my awesome room.

My Dad is very special to me because he likes to help me and to build me things that make my life really fun. Him building me the loft was a way of him showing how happy he was that I was who I was. It was an awesome way to get a new room. Without my Dad my life, I think, would be really boring.

HELL YES

So… today I posted on twitter and facebook this status update. “wanna guess what i have until Tuesday am to finish?” with a link to this pic:

To which a friend of mine, danny bowers, sent me a “direct message” via twitter. Now, if you’re not familiar with this lingo, it means Danny sent me like a private 140 character text message of sorts that can’t be seen by everyone who follows my twitter account.

His “private” Direct Message to me read this “snazzy shirt your sporting in that pic! I’m wielding a hammer & crowbar tomorrow for 8 hrs wanna come join for $20p/h instead of seminary??”

Now, so far, so good. This was a no brainer though for me. I immediately would choose a hammer and a crowbar over my 15 page greek paper in a second. So, I sent him a quick reply of “hell yes :)!”

Or so I thought.

What I actually did was reply to the text message I got from twitter, saying that I had a direct message from danny. However, when you reply to the text that twitter sends, it doesn’t send a “direct message” back just to danny, it sends a public twitter. My twitter then auto-publishes to my facebook status. So, in a matter of nano seconds…

If you’re still with me:

I posted a pic
Danny messaged me privately
I accidentally replied publicly
it auto posted to twitter and facebook, very publicly

I then tried to quickly undo this since my facebook is read by parents in my ministry and stuff and while I won’t say I don’t say “hell yes” on occasion, I don’t usually type it for the world to read as often as they like and certainly not as the only 2 words in my status update.

Immediately, it got a reply from Nicholai saying “wow, serious stuff there” and my wife replied “wow” and another pastor on our team laughing at me said “I LOVE this” and my fiasco.

So I tried to delete it and limit the damage and the explaining I’d have to do. But I couldn’t cuz I was away from my computer and only using my cell phone to post things and I couldn’t figure out how to delete it for the life of me.

By the time I finally figured out how to delete the stupid thing, 10 people had already commented on facebook and I was laughing really hard at my silly story. In the end, I actually deleted it on accident once I finally was told how to do it via my phone.

Funny day. Just goes to show, what you do publicly, is completely public. Ha ha. Be careful when you say “Hell Yes!”