Hey, everybody! Long time not see! Here’s a new WFHF video: “Moving in ?#?Movember?”

P.S. It’s pronounced “Moh-vember” and it’s another name for ?#?NoShaveNovember?.

Yep. Still here.

As promised:

I know it’s been ages since my last post. But I swear I’m not dead yet.

What I am is homeless. So, that’s much better! I think I’ll go for a walk. I feel happyyyy. I feel happyyyy.

Seriously, though. Long story. We’re moving to Colorado and things are nuts. Check the next WFHF video (posted later today) for taste of the goings on.

You might have noticed we’re still in Texas.

You might not have noticed that we are trying to sell our house and move to Colorado. (If so… seriously, dude. Where have you been?!)

It’s hard to keep the house perfectly clean and neat day after day when no one has come to look at it. (OK, we did have one showing a couple of weeks ago.) It’s even harder answering the same question over and over. All those people (and there are many) who told us…

“The market is on fire!”
“You’re house is gorgeous. It’ll sell in a couple of days!”
“You won’t believe how quick it will all happen!”

…are the same people who now ask us “How’s the house?” and we just smile and say, “Still there!”

It’s easy to get down, to second guess, to give up. But the easy thing is almost never the right thing. So, every morning, I get up, I fluff the rugs and fold the towels, and I just keep swimming. “Maybe today.”

Last week was the infamous “Shark Week.” If you live outside the US, or don’t have cable TV, then you are excused from knowing how big a deal that is (or pretends to be). Weeks of advertising and hype, cross promotion, buzz. And then, for seven days, three or four droll, over-produced, sometimes gory pseudo-scientific documentaries about sharks rerun over and over. You watch one. You might watch two. Then… meh. You switch back to Doctor Who reruns and sports news about football training camp.

But that’s life. Hype. Reality. Sometimes disappointment. But always, you carry on. A fictional wise man once said:

Live every week like it’s shark week. – Tracy Jordan

And that is this week’s white board quip.

It’s a good thing I have such a great sense of humor. Seriously.

But first, this week’s white board quip:

I’m on the Zoloft to keep from killin’ ya’ll. – Mike Tyson

You know that Tammy and I have been breaking our backs to get our house ready to sell. It is currently immaculate. It’s so clean I’m afraid to walk around in it. No boogers are to be flicked in this house for the foreseeable future.

Two weeks ago, while we were deep in the midst of the renovations, our neighbor to the right decided to renovate his bathroom. Great! Good for him. Except that every night, he washed out all his tools in the gutter, up hill from our house. The street isn’t quite level and water pools in front of our drive way, which means, while we were fighting to perfect our curb appeal, our curb was peeling with grout and tile dust. Notsome!

We borrowed a power sprayer (Thanks Vaughn!) and washed the street in front of our house AND our neighbors house. That’s how bad we wanted our place to SHINE!

So, today, the house is officially on the market. It is gorgeous. Before leaving for work, I ensured that every rug was fluffed and every floor was boogerless. Then I walked out side and found this…

Why? Why are there Bobcat tractors blocking my driveway? Why are there dump trucks blocking my street?! Why is the din of jack hammers rattling my windows??!!

Today. The first day my house is actually on the market, my neighbor on the left is tearing out his driveway. WHY TODAY?!

It’s a good thing I have a great sense of humor… because unlike Mr. Tyson, I don’t have any of “the Zoloft.”

It’s been another week of sanding, painting and cleaning. But the end is in sight. All the doors have knobs again. All the light switches have covers again. It’s starting to look like a house! I’ve got one door to left to sand and paint, then the garage door trim, and we’ll be done. Stick a fork in us! Well, no. Don’t do that. Please.

Instead, enjoy this week’s white board quip:

Chaos. Panic. Disorder. My work here is done.

I’ve been hinting around and promising a full explanation of my crazy life of late. Today, I’ve finally got some breathing room so I’m going to take a crack at telling you all “the long version” of the story before my lunch break is up.

Tammy and I lived in Colorado at the turn of the last millennium. We were forced back to Texas after I was laid off twice in 2001. (Between the tech stock crash and 9/11, it was a rough year all around.) It has been a dream of ours to get back to the mountains since then.

We’ve been fortunate enough to take several vacations up there and each time, we don’t want to leave. On multiple occasions, we’ve done the whole “what if” exercise. We bend financial numbers this way and that, trying justify the hope of moving. We pray for God to provide a way. Each time, God (and the math) has had one very clear answer: No.

Part of the “no” has been my involvement (my “mission” if you will) at Glenview Church. I just couldn’t leave my mission unfinished. Tammy and I have volunteered in varying capacities with the youth group for over 10 years now. At one point, I was even on staff in an interim role. We put a lot of sweat, blood, and tears into the youth ministry (and the youth) at Glenview. They really are our “chi’ren.”

But, Glenview’s youth department is finally stable. We’ve got two excellent leaders who, while still young, are taking ownership of their ministry, growing it in new directions. It’s passed time for the training wheels to come off. I need to get out of the way and let it fly.

God has made it clear that my role at Glenview is over. I’ve done my job. I’m now well into the “too comfortable” stage. I’m still there because it’s what I’ve done for so long I don’t know how to do anything else. And that’s not OK. God has been frustrating me, needling me to move, to get up and go.

Back in May, I was driving home from Wednesday night services and expressing my frustration to God. (I like to talk to God when I’m in my truck alone. We have good talks.) I asked, plainly, “God what do you want me to do?! Just tell me and I’ll do it!”

Then, in a moment of striking clarity, I heard it. “Put your house up for sale. Set the price as high as you think you need to move to Colorado, and watch me sell it.”

Wow. Hmm. That’s… kinda scary.

After bit of market research, a call to our realtor, and a bit of math, we can now see that this time it’s for real. We took a trip up to Denver to meet with a realtor there and check out the market. It’s steep. It will have to be a “God thing.” We live in a $180k neighborhood, but we need upwards of $210k for our house in order to move into a comparable (but $250k) neighborhood in Denver. Our Texas realtor says it’s possible. The house is nice. We just have to put in some work to make it “SHINE!”

So, for the last three weeks, Tammy and I have been sanding and painting baseboards, patching walls, etc. We’ve replaced a couple of doors. We’ll have some new carpet soon and a contractor coming this week to fix up an aged bathroom.

What’s really funny is how, as we are working our butts off to make our house “shine”, I’ve heard several news stories about how this is the hottest sellers’ market North Texas has seen in decades. Many of our friends tell us about someone they know whose house sold in days (or hours) after listing, bidding wars driving prices up.

None of this was news back in late May, when God and I were chatting in my truck. But I’m not surprised at all. I’ve experienced plenty of “God things.” When God makes a promise, you can bank on it. It may not work out like you expected. In fact, it often works out better than you could ever imagine.

Stay tuned as we are still in the midst of this adventure. I can’t wait to see how God works. But rest assured I’ll let you know!

Don’t I know it.

There’s no stopping the future. – Yogi Berra

Stay tuned for a big personal news post to explain the sentiment of this week’s white board quip.

Have you ever had that feeling that you missed something really important because you were overly occupied with something else even more important? Yeah. Me too.

I was out of town last week for something “even more important” and totally missed something really important in one context but completely meaningless in a larger context.

Confused yet?

It will make sense later when I can tell you the whole story. But for now…

Last Monday, June 9th, Surely You’re Not Serious celebrated its 10th birthday, quietly, alone, with a single candle jammed into a banana nut muffin. It was not the joyous celebration SYNS deserved. Instead of toasting my old friend, I was traveling, trying unsuccessfully to master temperature selection in strange showers.

Which brings us to this week’s white board quip!

We all think we’re pretty smart until we try to turn on someone else’s shower.

Yes. I am a master of seque (even though I had to google it get figure out the spelling). Thanks for noticing.

If you’ve got several hours and nothing better to do, you could start at the very first SYNS post and see where it all began!