far be it from me to be vitriolic...
(hannah and me...part thirteen)

ed. note - i wasn't at church on sunday, and for once, this has nothing to do with humc.

...but there is just too much sticking in my crawl at the moment not to be. firstly, and i am not going to drop any names here, but boy is it a lot easier to preach a sermon than live it. and this is something that i have struggled with, myself, and will continue to struggle with for the length of time that i continue leaving "messages" here or living messages in my daily life. not one time when i have stood in front of a group of students or a small church plant congregation or a handful of employees did i not struggle with the words coming out of my mouth matching up with the character i displayed outside of the "church" environment. sometimes they did. sometimes they do. sometimes they don't. but here's the part the rubs me the wrong way. you are not above accountability just because your feeling of being "called by god" has been affirmed by some denomination's board of ministry or equivalent. you are not above being called on the carpet when someone disagrees with you or your approach. you are not above being wrong. you are not a more credible commentator on society because your occuptation requires you to "preach" from a pulpit. you are not any more observant or worldly or wise. and if you believe or misunderstand otherwise, you need better friends. friends that will tell you when you are wrong or misguided. friends that will make you accountable. or a wife. or a child. you need to back up off this idea that your "sacrifice" is worth a lifetime of moral immunity. moving on...

hannah, apart from the ambiguous rant above, today has been a good day. your room is almost ready for you. yes, we'll have to do something about those shelves, but your carpet is clean, your room is a beautiful purple fit for a queen, and we are less than two weeks away from being in our new house. how fun.

hannah's been an interesting character the last month or so. her memory is striking and the way she is putting together sentences is just a tad scary. her mom found herself counting the words to one of her run-on's a few days ago and i wondered to myself when the last time was that i used eleven words in a sentence that i didn't type. she makes no qualms anymore (most of the time) about cleaning up. she loves to help with everything. instead of everything being completely instinctual and reactionary, you can literally see her understanding and processsing her actions now. it truly is amazing how far she's come as a little person while maintaining all her cuteness that she's had since christmas day 2003. it's weird to think back on my own first memories and know that the house we are about to move into will be the one she remembers as her first. i remember my first house and it's such a good memory. not for any sort of romantic reason such as my parents still being together. more that it's one of my first. first memories are very special i think. you don't have very many and they are all over the map. i can count on one hand how many true memories i have from the age of 4 through 8 or 9. that's a lot of years and days and time with not a lot of recall. but one that i will always carry is the picture in my head of my first house.

you and your future brother or sister (god-willing), hannah, were very much in mind when your mommy and i chose this house for your mental scrapbook. i hope you like the purple and your puppy and your big back yard. i hope you remember how much love filled the walls of your first house as soon as we stepped in it as a family.

it makes me sad to think of all the blowhards, the teachers, and the preachers that will fill your mind up with all sorts of garbage about the world and what you should or shoudn't do to fit in, how you come to understand right from wrong, how you deal with the fact that you were "born crappy" and in need of some sort of enlightenment. don't let them bother you too much, though. your mom and dad have a pretty good grasp on things. we'll make fun of all the noisemakers around our dinner table and figure out ways to make them take themselves less seriously.