This was a crazy weekend. My parents were in town for a visit (a lot of fun, but the usual stress on my wife having the in-laws stay the weekend – nothing bad, just the normal stress – perceived or real). We had some fun plans for Friday night and then my older daughter got sick, so we modified the plans a bit. However, on top of that, my friend Sean Meade was in town for ENCORE, an event by Stuck In The Middle, Sean’s ministry. Anyway, I was on the docket to do a seminar for volunteers on Saturday afternoon (not hard – he asked me to do the same gig on small groups I did for YS in the fall). So far, nothing too out of the ordinary. Enter the weird phone call on Friday morning. Sean calls me at 9:00 am and says, “dude, Jason (main stage speaker for Friday night) had outpatient surgery yesterday and can’t come for the weekend, can you speak at TONIGHT’s general session?” Holy Cow! Now, it’s important to note that after speaking to junior high students for sixteen years, this is not real hard, but 650 kids who are paying to be at a conference and are expecting someone really good and really funny adds a bit more stress to the deal. Well, after about 90 minutes of preparation (remember my parents are here and we had a bunch of plans for the day already), I got up and did the opening session for Sean. You’ll have to ask them how it went – I thought it was pretty good – but I’m a bit bias.
On a sad note, but another factor in our weekend, a great lady in our church (and also our small group) passed away Wednesday after a ten-year bought with cancer. The services were this weekend adding yet one more item to the plate (again, not lamenting the services, but rather the irony of “when it rains, it pours”).
Last night as my wife and I were lying in bed (for the hour I was there before my six year old got up and I had to move to the living room floor with him up half the night), we were commenting on how full we feel like our schedule is on my sabbatical. I guess, for some dumb reason, we thought our lives would slow down for these weeks. What were we thinking – we have four kids who are involved in stuff.
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