What's my hobby?

Apparently it's weddings. Some friends of mine were apparently talking about what they do as hobbies and such. Things on the side, ya know? Well somehow my name came up; as in: "Well you like to play intramural sports, Chad goes to weddings."

Well this past weekend that was fairly true, as Friday night I went camping for Kevin McIntyre's bachelor party. It was a great time filled with a lot of laughs.

Saturday then was the nuptials of Joe Arnold and Katie Hudson, and it was filled with just about everyone I knew it seemed like. This was definitely a fun wedding, and possibly one of the tops. The food was great, the hanging out was awesome, the dancing was good times. The afterparty at the Varsity Club was fantastic. (The best part of that may have been the friend who last night asked me if I was there when I was sitting two seats away from this person at the VC and we had lots of conversation...)

Sunday was a great day, filled with more times of greatness with people. Went to church and lunch with Kacie and I always love spending time with her. Then Brad and I hung out, definitely one of my best friends. After that I went straight to a team meeting that saw our team together for the first time all summer. We got some great plans in place for this coming fall semester that I am very very excited about. Campaigners then on Sunday evening was incredible; just with the kids that have been consistently coming and sharing and taking part, as well as the fun times just hanging out after and before. I love these kids and this high school.

Monday, it was my birthday. Eh. I'm 27 now. Eh. It's all about how old I feel in the heart, right? If that's the case, I'm still 22. Boo yah. Anyways, I got dinner with just about every person that I care deeply about that still lives in Columbus at Champp's. It really made me thankful for the blessings of friendship and fellowship that God has given me here in Columbus.

What are you thankful for today?

Throwback wrap-up...

I must apologize, a couple weeks ago I left you all with a post that was excited about a glorious return to Lake Cumberland. Well it indeed was glorious, starting with a fantastic car ride of hilarity that itself began with Jacob chugging a beer when we picked the girls up and thinking that he could drink it while riding in the car. Hilarious. (for the record, he didn't drink in the car and I drove the whole way) Just know that the car trip was fun to say the least.

The rest of the weekend consisted of dance parties, Jenga, the lake, and some crazy things happening. The most ridiculous thing though is probably the simple fact that I very nearly capsized our pontoon boat with everyone on it about ten minutes into our time on the lake. Apparently we failed to realize that the left pontoon was sitting lower in the water than the right. One can logically assume that the only thing that would cause that would be some water in there. Now that we've established that, has anyone ever captained a pontoon boat out there? It's basically the easiest and most boring boat to drive that has ever been invented. It's really easy to steer and stop. Except for this one. This one decided to not stop like a normal pontoon boat, but rather one that decided to stop moving like a drunken cow. When I say that, I mean that all the water in the pontoon (or pontoons, who knows?) rushed to the front of the boat and caused the front foot and a half the whole thing to dip down violently under the water. The girls screamed and rushed to the back of the boat, Rob and Jacob did Lord knows what but I think they quickly looked to the skies to see if they could leap onto the back of a passing hawk. Justin and I calmly fixed the situation by speeding back up. Yup...speed is always the answer.

The rest of the weekend was much fun and hanging out. Many fun games were played, hilarious quotes were had, and I reminisced a pretty good amount about my times as a kid. The people that I was at the lake with are incredible people and I love them all very much. Great friends indeed. It felt right to be back on Lake Cumberland again, and probably gave me the appropriate mindset to start to evaluate moving options in my life.

With that being said, I'm beginning to get some proper perspective and takes on this past weekend as well. I know I said this a couple days ago, but quite soon expect at least a recap.

Road outside Columbus...

Well, I have returned from my 4 1/2 day excursion to North Carolina (come on and raise up) and there are all sorts of things to be said. It was a great trip to be sure, and one that I won't soon forget. If you remember, it was a fact finding mission to the two cities of Charlotte and Raleigh in order to determine how viable moving to either place would be.

Going into the weekend, what I knew was that Young Life was great in either place and that the people in either city were incredible. What I didn't know was the spiritual climate of either place, as well as what exactly the city was like itself. Both things I was able to determine fairly well during my trip.

Now I must apologize initially, I don't have the time to fully breakdown the trip in this post. However that will come quite soon, I promise. Know though, that it was an amazing trip and that at the very least questions were answered and some decisions were potentially made. Sorry to leave you with a teaser, but that's how it's gonna be as I continue to pray and work through these decisions.

Side note: our softball team won tonight to move to 6-3 with a 5 game winning streak. There's one game left before the playoffs and we should be in right now, but I'm not 100% sure...

Side note: I hate the Geico caveman commercials. They started out great, but are really annoying now. The Gecko can stay though...

We will now break for a short intermission, the rest of your trip will commence shortly.

So this is just a flurry of activity, is it not? Are you all able to keep up with all my posting? Seriously though, I can't believe I'm posting this much, but hey...I've got a lot to say right now and a lot I've been thinking about and I want to get it all down on paper.

Well, I guess it's not really paper. Whatever.

I gotta be honest, I just spent the last 15 minutes not writing in this entry but rather looking for some poignant lyrics from the Pat McGee Band to post on here. I guess I wanted to sound artsy and also relative, since I just saw him in concert tonight for free on the top of a small building in uptown Charlotte. It was pretty cool, especially since I've always wanted to see him in concert. This was super great though, because it was with great friends, it was free, and I was about 25 feet away from the stage. Cool beans.

So I'll keep this brief because I have to get to sleep so I can wake up early in order to drive to Raleigh. My time here in Charlotte has been incredible, granted most of the time has been spent in Uptown and Lake Norman, which if you've never been here are two really great areas. However, I have discovered that this is a really great place. A few months ago for whatever reason, I would've sworn up and down that I would never have moved here. Now, I can see it happening quite easily. As my friend Jordy says...the bug bit me.

I'm off to Raleigh tomorrow morning to get there in time for Church At The Triangle service at 1030. We shall see how God moves in Raleigh as well. I'm excited to see the Spruills, my boy Robby Callis, and hopefully Dave "The Silent Coyote" "Mother f*ck*ng" "It's his world, we're just living in it" Reed.

That would be nice. Yeah.

"Well I guess we'll just see what we'll see, won't we?"

Ok, well I didn't exactly get more of a chance to digest things but a great friend of mine (who I know is one of the very few readers I have of this thing) has mentioned multiple times a very poignant suggestions that was also hinted at in Experiencing God.

He said that what if God's will for us is just to fall in love with Him and to experience Him however we can by committing ourselves fully to Him in everything we do. Then whatever we do will be to His glory because we are ultimately doing life for Him and not for ourselves. So therefore where we do life didn't really matter as long as we were everyday giving ourselves over to the Lord and striving to glorify Him in whatever we did.

An interesting thought isn't it? The other one that comes from Experiencing God in Chapter 3, is that all we need to do is to learn His voice well enough that we are content in living day to day following His lead. That we need to get to a point of dependency and living faith upon our Creator that we depend on Him moment to moment and don't have to ask the questions of "where do you want me for the next couple years", "what sort of things do you want me doing", "why don't you tell me where i'm going".

Both are quite interesting concepts and I like them. I don't know if I can live them and if I believe them though yet. At least not the first, and I probably feel more conflicted on the second than anything.

We shall see...

I'm thinking of staying an extra day in Charlotte to go to the free Pat McGee Band concert with all my friends down here, then heading to Raleigh on Sunday morning in time for church and then leaving for Columbus on Monday morning.

We shall see...

Take your shoes off...

Here's just a quick update from my travels so far...

I left Columbus around noon-thirty yesterday and zipped on down to Charlotte. I mean really I drove, but it was absolutely one of the easiest drives of me life. A sign? Haha...not sure about that. However, it was great when I finally made it and the drive was just gorgeous.

When I did get it, Ashley and I went out to dinner at this great uptown place called Nix's. Incredible burgers, and a ton of them. Uptown is really cool place, filled with a bunch of great restaurants and bars, lots of great places to hang out, and was a really clean place as well. Quite unlike many downtowns in Ohio. After that we headed down to the National White Water Center, where we train Olympians to win boatloads of medals (get it?) where on Thursday nights they turn it into a place to be for anyone. There's live music, a restaurant, bar, families go, there's lots of dogs which is kinda weird...and all of this adds up to phenomenal people watching opportunities. Today Ashley had tennis practice at Hopewell HS and I decided to go with her. Despite my waking up early, getting ready, eating breakfast and having a cup of coffee...I apparently still did not wake up enough, to remember my shoes. I realized this when we were half way to the school, when I looked down and noticed my socks in front of me and no shoes to speak of. Weeellllllll...I decided to play without my shoes then. And let me tell you, I am good at tennis. Tennis All Star and MVP are actually on my resume; if you go back to the ages of 6-8 at Sycamore Creek Country Club. Whoops. It was great fun though and I didn't embarrass myself nearly as much as I expected. Yay for that! I did however begin to develop a bit of a blister on my right big toe.

Then we drove around and took a bit of a tour of sweet, gigantic homes that are on Lake Norman, went to the town of Davidson to see Ashley's YL office. Now I just got done watching some Fight Club and Scrubs, while Ashley did one of the things she does best: nap. Hah. We're trying to figure out what we do the rest of the night. What I do know is that we'll be making a second trip to the airport at some point. I'll let ya know how all that turns out...

In my preparations for this trip, my good friend Jordy Sparks warned me that the bug may bite while I was down here. Well as I drove into town and drove over Lake Norman, the bug began buzzing around my head. Coming into the weekend, Charlotte was usually the lowest city on the list. While it had a bevy of my great friends down here, including great brothers in Neil, Jack, and Jordy, and my sister in college Julia, and great friend in Jaclyn who always speaks truth to me, and one of the most incredible women I know in Ashley...I wanted to know about the city itself. So far it has yet to disappoint. I asked the Lord that coming out of the weekend that I would have clarification on things, and that perhaps one of the two places would be eliminated. So far it's definitely not Charlotte. Surprisingly, Orlando has started to fade significantly in my mind. Columbus has continued to fade. Blacksburg continues to recruit me.

I've been reading some really great things in Experiencing God that I would love to share, because it directly applies to what I'm going through right now. I need a bit more time to digest it though and sift through things that I'm reading. So you can read about that later tonight if you'd like.

Also, there's two wicked stoned people on Cash Cab right now and they are just crazy looking. Why don't things like that ever happen to me? Not the stoning, the Cash Cab-ing.