You have no idea.

And I’ll admit, it did feel nice to know that she’d rather go with me than without me but I can’t wait to hear how much she enjoyed it without me.  There is something special about experiencing things together as a couple, the memories that you make. But there is something equally as special as making memories by yourself and sharing the story with your spouse.

I can’t wait for her to come back and tell me the stories, show me the pictures, and relay the emotions she felt. It will be so cool to watch her as she recaps it for me. To watch her eyes, her smile, the color of her cheeks.

There is just something inherently special about watching the person you love recount stories that impacted them so greatly. I cherish the thought that in 13 days I will have the opportunity to have my wife tell me, in her own unique way, just what her time in Ethiopia was like.  And while my time here in Gardner, KS won’t be nearly as exciting, I know that she’ll want to know every detail of what I did while she was gone.

So until then I’ll wait.  I’ll get work done, I’ll hang out with friends, I’ll play guitar, and I’ll write. But I can’t wait to sit down across the table from her and hear her tell her stories. It’ll be like I was there with her…but better.

It’s one thing to be a kid and dream of the future, with no regard for the things adults have to worry about (bills, insurance, housing, and all the other lame stuff we deal with). It’s another thing to be an adult, who pays his bills, and is sick of it.

By ‘it’, I don’t mean being an adult, because let’s be honest, I don’t really have a choice at this point. I’m 26, I’ve got adult expectations and responsibilities. I’ve got a mortgage, utilities to pay, a stupid cable bill, and internet that always seems to be down. Such is life, right?

Well, I’m beginning to think there is more to it than that.  I’m beginning to think that my crazy, pie in the sky dreams might actually be attainable. Don’t worry, I don’t think I’m going to become famous or rich, but I do think I’m going to help make a difference.  And making a difference is really all I want to do.

Think back on your life, those people who stick out, the one’s you remember, it’s because they made a difference, right?. In their own unique way, they changed something in you, challenged what you knew, and/or made you think from a different perspective. This is the sort of impact that I want to have on other people.

I want to be an agent of change in the lives of the people I come into contact with. I want to challenge them to love more truly, to live more deeply, and to dream more ridiculously. That’s right, it’s time to take off the ‘reasonable’ goggles and put on our glasses of ‘whimsy’.  What have you always wanted to do but have thought that it wasn’t the ‘wise’ thing to do?

I always wanted to be a racecar driver.  Formula One, to be exact. Rally Driver was always a good fall back to that. It’s the high speed, the counter-intuitiveness of going into a corner faster than your brain says is possible, just to make the physics work. If you go too slow,  what your brain says is safe, you’ll crash…not enough downforce. But if you go faster that what your brain says is safe, you’ll actually be safer. There has got to be a life lesson in there, somewhere.

All that to say, racecar driving has yet to pan out for me, and I’m still holding out hope that I get to do a few laps at some point in my life, but I still want to chase my dreams. I think you should too.

It’s a shame how many of us just get in line and do what we’re told. Screw that.

We aren’t here to fulfill someone else’s vision of who we are, we’re here to be us. And who we are is exactly who God wants us to be…and if that sounds vague, well tough.  I’m not defined by my name, my family history, or my job. I’m a unique creation of the God of the universe who looks at me and says, I love that dude so much that I did something about it, I sent my Son to die for him.

That, my friends, is why the unknown is a lot less scary to me: I know who is in charge. God is good and I can trust him. No matter what doubts I have or shortcomings I feel, I know that God is who he says he is and because of that I know who he says that I am…and knowing that makes the unknown exciting.

Today is a good day.

It’s not very often I take advantage of days like these. I’m either too ‘busy’ or I’m too lazy to enjoy them. I know, I know, too lazy to lay in a hammock!? Sounds ridiculous, right? But lazy people are really good at making excuses so they don’t have to change.

I’ve been learning lately how lazy I used to be and how tempting it is to fall back into that lifestyle. Netflix still calls my name like the muses calling ships to shore. Now, don’t get me wrong, I still watch Netflix, I just watch a lot less of it.

Before my internship with WP Daily, which is now over, I’m not really sure what I did with my evenings and weekends, nothing of consequence anyways. Now I come home from work at FBC and I’ve got a desire to do some serious work on the two startups I’m working on, Anomaly AVL and Status Quo Rebels.

I’m the brand manager for Anomaly and I’m busy trying to build a brand from the ground up. It’s incredibly exciting. We’ve just established our core team and we’re moving forward with pace, doing our best to build a strong foundation for the future without spreading ourselves too thin. Patience and quality, that’s the goal!

Status Quo Rebels is a project I got invited to by a new friend, James Dalman. It’s our take on a ‘lifestyle company’, if we’ve got to throw a label on it. It’s still in brainstorming mode, but we’re launching the site very soon and I’m eager to share our vision with the world at large.

So, I know this hasn’t been a typical post but it’s such a nice day out and I’m feeling really positive about the future that I thought I’d share what’s going on right now in my life.

I hope you take some time to find your ‘hammock time’ this week and reflect on all that is going on in your life, whether good, bad, exciting, or not. It’s important for us to take some time out here and there and just reflect on what God is doing.

Be good and God bless!

I had the privilege to play this song with some friends at a small show this past Friday night.  We had a good time and we love this song a lot. Hope it encourages you today.