Walking in God's Woods

  The book of James says that every good and perfect gift comes FROM God. Several years ago, I realized that, in my life today, most of those gifts come THROUGH my amazing wife. Angie and I met in 1999, got married in 2002, and became parents in 2006. Throughout all that time, she has stood right by my side in every easy and difficult situation, and I could not have asked for a better partner in this life. Like the verse in the image says, my heart trusts in her. The last line of the verse says, "He will not lack anything good." Our family has definitely seen our share of hardship, especially in the past year and a half, but I can confidently say that, as long as Angie is by my side, I truly am not lacking anything good. God has blessed me beyond measure, even in our difficulties, because he gave me a wife of noble character. The thing I love most about my wife is not how much she loves me, but how much she loves our children. I pray one day they realize the gift they were gi...

  When I think back on my childhood, I cannot remember a time when I wasn't taken to church. As long as we were able, Mom made sure that Chris and I went to Sunday school and church. As a matter of fact, Mom was our first Sunday school teacher. The one thing that Mom wanted me (and every other child she has ever known) to know is that Jesus loves me. As a kid, going to church was something that I just took for granted--if it was Sunday, we were going to church. Today, I could not be more thankful for the solid foundation that Mom assured us. She truly and deeply believes in Proverbs 22:6: "Train up a child in the way he should go: And when he is old, he will not depart from it." I hope I am a living testament that Mom was right. Like anyone else, I have not lived a perfect life. I have strayed from the "straight and narrow" way more often than I would like to admit, but thanks to my upbringing in church, Mom's prayers, and God's grace, I have always retu...

I started this blog a year ago, and I haven't added any new posts in eight months. In that time, my family has faced several challenges. First, Rayne moved off to college a little before my last post, and the change in this house has taken some getting used to. In particular, it feels so quiet without the usual sound of drumming coming from Rayne's bedroom. Also, I absolutely miss the extra one-on-one time we got to spend as I drove him back and forth to band practices and rehearsals. On the bright side, he has had a very successful first year of college, and he will be home for the summer in a week! On September 27, we were in the path as Hurricane Helene tore through the NC mountains. Seeing the devastation that occurred all around us makes me even more thankful that God spared our family the majority of the damage that we could have faced. We had a few trees down around us, but none of our property experienced any major damage. The worst thing we dealt with was two weeks wit...