TheLionRampant.net

…is still pretty little. Here are his 9-month stats:
Weight: 16 lbs 12 oz (3rd percentile)
Length/Height: 27 3/4 in (25th percentile)
Head circumference 50th percentile

So we will keep feeding him as much cheese, avocado and banana as he likes as he’s obviously not keeping too much of it on his bones. Ezra is a happy boy who is quite active, loves to smile and laugh, loves to move around (crawling and some pulling up on to furniture now), and loves to make a mess with his food. He also really likes door stoppers, cords and laughing when he crawls from the carpet to the tile.

After three days, our online home has returned. Anyone looking for a web hosting package is advised to avoid 1and1.com.

If anyone’s still interested in joining my online book club (and hasn’t done so), please leave a comment in the comments section. Our first selection is Zadie Smith’s White Teeth and we’ll be starting to read this weekend! The link to the book club is here.

Dear Reader(s):

Might you be kind enough to recommend a blog or two that you particularly enjoy? My blogroll (in my bookmarks section, not on our sidebar) seems to have grown a bit stale. I’d be happy to read anything that’s particularly interesting in most any category. So if Joe Schmoe has a blog that simply updates us on him and his family — and I don’t know Joe Schmoe — please do not recommend his blog; if, however, he blogs about things that cater to a wider audience (the arts, family, religion, philosophy, etc), then by all means, please pass it on.

Thank you kindly.
The Management at TheLionRampant.net

I’ve found a few sentences of our support letter oddly helpful and apropos now:

Would you pray that God would use whatever it takes to make us dependent upon Him so that the church we plant would not bear our own name but His? And would you consider supporting us financially either with a one-time gift or a pledge for monthly support in your own act of trust that as you give in faith, God will provide all your needs as well? Thus, confessing our doubt, we still believe; wanting life to be easily understandable, we know it’s not that simple; and desiring to hold on to our plans, we instead put our faith in Christ.

I guess I just didn’t think that all of that “stepping to the edge” stuff would happen now. I guess I had wanted a year to plan for that. Ah well, life isn’t that simple.

Today is day #37 of only being able to get 5 consecutive hours of sleep. Ezra sleeps longer, but I can’t seem to. Anyway, in my middle-of-the-night waking, I found again Makoto Fugimura’s blog. May I direct your attention there? Each post has much to ponder: on art, living in the city, the need for empathy (what I’ve talked about as “sympathetic imagination”) and what it means to be for our culture. Beautiful. And as we are walking a path that is so unclear, my temptation is to retreat inward, becoming narrowly myopic, and Fujimura’s blog has helped to lift me out of myself. Go have a read.

0 for 4. All 4 church planting apprenticeships we’ve considered (2 in CA, 1 in Oregon, and 1 in WA) have fallen through due to one thing or another. This means we both don’t have a job and we’re moving out of our apartment at the end of the month to I-don’t-know-where. It feels like we have absolutely no prospects and neither of us has much emotional energy to work at finding something else only to be let down due to circumstances beyond us.

I guess this is the process where God draws us to himself because we have literally nothing to fall back on to. As our last possibility came crashing down we considered our options:
1. Maybe we weren’t called to church planting;
2. Maybe Bryce wasn’t called to the ministry and should get a job at Starbucks;
3. Maybe we should just go plant a church and skip this apprenticeship thing;
4. Maybe this process has shown us some valuable things about church, church planting, presbytery relationships, etc and eventually we’ll find a fit;
5. Maybe we should sell all our possessions and move to London.
Honestly, I don’t think it’s #1 or #2. Bryce has been affirmed in his call to preach by other pastors and those in his congregation and I don’t think it’s #1 as there have been a number of very generous offers of financial support because people believe God will work through Bryce’s ministry and ultimately that helps affirm his/our call. And as much as we’d like it to be #5, I don’t think we’ll be moving out of the country anytime soon.

So, we’re trying not to plan — like we like to and because we can’t. We’re trying not to be despondent. Bryce has talked to a guy from the denomination’s Assessment Center as he’s well connected and knows of potential apprenticeships and other possibilities. Who knows where we’ll end up. Honestly, I don’t have a problem with moving wherever we felt God was clearly leading us, if that’s China, Africa or Arkansas. The hard thing now is feeling afloat, without clear direction and not knowing where that place is. We don’t have too many security blankets left to hold on to.

If you pray, please pray for us.

It’s my Dad’s birthday today! Thanks Dad for your love and support and all your corny jokes through the years!