So how was my Father’s Day? It’s become a pretty mixed day for me. Overall it was brilliant and I was truly spoiled by my amazing family but there were those moments that I thought about how I miss my own dad who passed away several years back. I often wish he was still around to share my life.

I also thought about a good friend of mine who passed away a year ago, just before Father’s Day 2009. I miss him terribly but I know that his children would have been feeling that pain a whole lot more yesterday as they thought about a wonderful dad who’s gone way too soon.

I suppose that those mixed feelings should serve as a reminder for all of us to make the most of the time we have today and to ensure we don’t just wait for days like birthdays, Mother’s Day, Father’s Day and the like to tell the people close to us that we love them.

Related posts:

1. Mother’s Day 2010
2. Fathers Day 2008
3. Fathers Day

Making it to the meeting point meant that I had to jump out of bed as soon as the alarm went off, which dopesn’t always come easy for me. I’d already made sure that everything was ready last night so that I wouldn’t be wandering the house half asleep looking for gloves or shoes.

There were eight of us cycling from Cyclebuzz in Canning Vale into Perth for coffee and raisin toast at Sassy’s beside the Swan River. I just went for a coffee but I’m assured that the raisin toast there is the best you’ll find.

It was an early and rather chilly start but it was worth it. A little extra cycling in the morning has me feeling more energised throughout the day and I was reminded once again just how much better coffee tastes when you’re drinking it surrounded by good people.

Related posts:

1. One more reason
2. Early start
3. Early morning cycling

On Saturday night the 11th of September they’ll be joined by The Idea of North and The Australian Army Band Perth for an incredible evening of entertainment at the Perth Concert Hall titled Too Darn Hot.

This morning on radio I spoke to Helen Bolton about the concert and Perth Harmony Chorus. I was also joined in the studio by ten ladies that are part of the chorus who gave listeners a live sample of their work.

You can hear our chat and some of their performance by clicking the play button on the audio player at the bottom of this post.

Related posts:

1. Soweto Gospel Choir in Perth
2. Tina Arena coming to Perth
3. An almost perfect Perth weekend

What we believe is vitally important but belief alone isn’t enough. We must move beyond belief to a living faith. That’s what I’m hoping to explore at Beyond Belief in the coming weeks and months. I’ll look at belief and how that impacts our daily lives. I’ll write posts on a range of faith issues and hopefully, I’ll be able to share some of my own Christian faith journey in a deeper way.

Since November 2003 I’ve been writing posts here at RodneyOlsen.net that reflect a range of interests from my observations on life, to faith issues, family, cycling, my work in the media and much more. That won’t change.

I’m not a fan of segmenting our lives and putting areas of life into boxes and so I’ll still be talking about all those things, including my Christian faith here at my main blog. The reason I’ve decided to create Beyond Belief is that there are times I want to speak more deeply about Christian issues and I don’t think that RodneyOlsen.net is always the place to do that.

Some posts at Beyond Belief will also appear at RodneyOlsen.net, in fact I’ve exported dozens of posts to Beyond Belief which will remain at both sites. That means that even though Beyond Belief has just launched, there’s already almost 200 posts there in the archives that you can browse.

As well as the posts that this blog will share with Beyond Belief, my desire is to write many faith posts that will only be found there such as the post Creating Fake Christians which explores a recent article focussing on the faith journey of American teenagers.

I’m looking forward to developing Beyond Belief and hope that you’ll join me in the journey.

Related posts:

1. One year ago today ….
2. Christian Bloggers?
3. Thank you for reading

Pauline and I went to school last night. We attended a meeting where we were told about Emily’s options for courses in Year 10 next year. Within the next few days we must decide, together with Emily, what courses she will study next year. Those courses will then become the platform to launch her into Years 11 and 12, her final school years. We need to make decisions this week that will imapct her journey through university or whatever career she will move into.

Emily’s a very capable young lady and there are many directions that she could take and she’d excell in them all but now’s the time to start narrowing the options.

The odd thing is that it really wasn’t that long ago that school meetings were more about what crayons to choose. It seems like such a short time ago that we were getting her ready for her first days of kindy and then pre-school.

We were warned about how quickly the time passes and so we have tried to make the most of every moment. We’ve seen her develop her own interests and personality, all the while charming most of the people she has met along the way.

Now, at the age of 14, Emily is moving into yet another stage of life. Many fear their young ones entering the teenage years and to be honest we don’t know what waits around the corner, but I can honestly say I’m not all that worried. I know my daughter and I know the God who holds her safely in his arms. I’m just standing on the sidelines watching God pouring his amazing creativity into developing the young woman we have the privilege of sharing with him.

Where’s the little girl that we loved so much? She’s growing into a beautiful young woman that we love more today than we ever thought possible.

Related posts:

1. Are you cherishing the moments?
2. I'm not scared
3. Let's Party