On Discipline and Grace

Speaking of my husband and preaching, he shared an awesome message recently at Barclay College on some of the lessons that have been near to us in the last three years. This message is also available online by clicking here.

Omniscience & The Great Whale

Adam was able to preach on Sunday about the story of Jonah and God's omniscience for our Omni sermon series at Crossroads! He did a great job. You can even listen here!

The Silence of God, Andrew Peterson

Isn't suffering so hard to understand? This song contains the most powerful lesson on suffering ever. Sometimes art can master with poetic truth what a linear argument can never master with logic.

Youth Group Spring Break Fun!

Road Trip to Dallas!

The day after our run through the grasslands we headed to Dallas and went to the Sixth Floor Museum which is a museum dedicated to the legacy of John F. Kennedy. The museum is located on the same floor of the building where Lee Harvey Oswald purportedly fired the fatal shot at the motorcade. We drove north from Dallas into Oklahoma and camped at the Ockashaw National Recreation Center and did some lake hiking!

Grasslands Trail Run 2011

A friend of mine ran the Grasslands Trail Marathon last year and bragged all year long about how miserable it was in the mud and muck on a cold, windy, snowy/rainy day. I got tired of hearing him tell me about it so I signed up for 50 miler there this year!

The course is on the President LBJ National Grasslands near Decatur, TX (just 30 miles west of Denton off of I-35)(serviced by the US National Parks System). We drove down after work Friday and camped out 100 yards from the start/finish line in a really nice remote park and campground.


Sarah ran the half-marathon with an 8:30 start time. She said she was surprised by how much sand there was but had a nice time. As she finished she thought the distance was “just right” and was glad to be done because it was starting to get “hot”. She finished 189th – results here. The first time I saw her after my 7am start for the 50 mile was after about 30 miles and I still had 2 more loops to complete, one of 11 miles and the other of about 9. The 50 mile course consists of 5 major loops and one small 5 mile “correction” loop to start off with in the early morning before sunrise. I didn’t take a headlamp and just stayed behind someone who did and tried to step where they stepped etc until I could see which didn’t take more than 20 or so minutes. Each loop is a different color and the course is actually really well marked and really clear. A few times I wondered if I was off course but in the end I never really was.


Overall, I say Grasslands is much like the Rockin’ K course except a lot more sand and no bluff loop, meaning the ups and downs aren’t as bad. And no water crossings at all this year. My feet never got wet at Grasslands. It was the third Saturday in March and the temperatures climbed into the mid 80s. Felt like the mid 90s to me. By noon it crazy hot and my head was pounding and I was going through a little more than 2 bottles of water per hour. This was especially hot considering winter was just getting over.


As far as I’m concerned this is a race I want to do just once. But it’s not anything negative about the course, organization, or RD’s. They were all just great! The aid stations and volunteers and organization was all class act but the course was stinkin’ tough. I was really shooting for 10 hours and if I would’ve been tougher I still think I probably could have done it but I faded a bit in the end and finished in 10:50. Only 26 people finished and I finished 14th among them. I don’t know how many started but I’d guess 50% or more dropped out. 50 mile results here.


This was my first race of anything marathon or longer since the Run for Missions 2010 on November 1st. While I had a good break from racing, I did get some good winter training in and am ready to have a successful and fun April and May busy with running marathons and trail ultras.


My (Adam) conclusion: everyone should run Grasslands at least once!

Hope For A Brilliant Future

There is no hope for a brilliant future in the Quaker (Friends) story without a conscious, deliberate, and sustained effort to enlist and to train ministry related to the peculiar needs of our time and therefore different from any of the stereotypes with which we have been familiar in the recent past. This will not be accomplished unless the fire gets much hotter than it now is. The encouraging fact is that Quakers have, inherent in their total philosophy, a conception of the ministry which the modern world is looking…

--D. Elton Trueblood,
The People Called Quakers


In the study of the history of missions, one can even be formulaic about asserting that all great missionary movements begin at the fringes of the church, among the poor and the marginalized, and seldom, if ever, at the center. It is vital that in pursuing missional modes of church, we get out of the stifling equilibrium of the center of our movements and denominations, move to the fringes, and engage in real mission there. But there’s more to it than just mission; most great movements of mission have inspired significant and related movements of renewal in the life of the church. It seems that when the church engages at the fringes, it almost always brings life to the center.
--Alan Hirsch
The Forgotten Ways


A great deal more failure is the result of an excess of caution than of bold experimentation with new ideas. The frontiers of the kingdom of God were never advanced by men and women of caution.
-J. Oswald Sanders