The Non-Essential Adventures of D'Art

Andy Stanley Catalyst ‘09

What man is a man who does not leave the world better.

Be a leader under authority not just a leader in authority.

God takes full responsibility for a life wholy devoted to Him.

It’s not my mark, it’s his mark.

Living to make my mark is too small a thing for me to give my life to.

D’Art Strickland
803.389.7064
heartforboston.com

I’m stoked, tomorrow it starts. http://www.catalystconference.com

Is your dream bigger than an Elephant?If so, then it’s going to tale a while for it to come to pass.

FYI: the gestation period of an African Elephant is over 2 years. It takes a while for that bad boy to give birth.

Give birth to that dream, but be patient. It might take a while, that is, if it’s bigger than an Elephant.

So, I unplugged…kinda.  Today was the first day that I disconnected in order to reconnect.  On average I spend way to much time on Twitter and Facebook on my phone.  So I took steps to reduce the noise in my life so that I can more clearly hear what Jesus is trying to say to me.  I deleted the Twitter and Facebook apps on my phone, and have only had the shakes once today as I went to my phone to check up on all my Tweets.

For the next 40 days I’m going to back off the social media apps.  Instead of spending my time on these sites, I’ll spend that time praying and reading the Bible.  Here we go!

My soul is sick.  It’s in desperate need of some hope and nothing short of a major miracle.  It’s been a tough year.  A really tough one. And I’ve finally come to a place…again…where there is nothing I can do but take my hands off, stop trying to care for my soul by myself and let it die…

But it won’t die, it can’t.  It’s been called, chosen, and challenged.  But my soul is still sick.  So I take some time, give up, let go, take refuge, seek help, cry, laugh, experience.

Jesus, here is my soul.  It needs you.

So it’s been too long.  My bad, again.  I thought, hey, why not make it look like I actually did something, and change the layout of my blog.  Brilliant.  Enjoy the new, cleaner, western, look.  I’ll blog more later.

I’m pretty ticked off.  I learned today that a pastor in GA cheated on his wife with his personal assistant.  That ticks me off.  This arrogant punk didn’t respect his position.  He didn’t listen to his own sermons.  I’m angry.  Well at least I was when I heard the news.  In fact when I heard this news, I kept telling myself, “I knew it, I knew it.”  I’d never even met this pastor, but I’ve followed him and have heard him speak a time or two, and in my own world, things didn’t match up.

After my initial anger faded, I started thinking about guys in the Bible, good, righteous, holy guys.  Guys that walked on water, and killed giants.  Guys that effectively changed the world.  And you know what, those guys screwed up too. Bad.  And I kept going through the Bible comparing this pastors story to others, and they are all the same.  Screwed up people, with the only hope being Jesus.

Then I looked at my life.  I’ve never cheated on my wife, and by the grace of God I never will, and I’ve never killed anyone, but my pride and greed are just as ugly in eyes of Jesus.  How dare I judge.  I repent.

Last night my wife woke me up in a frenzy of pain and saying that her stomach was hurting her. We called the ER and they kind of ruled out anything super serious. So Kellie loaded up on Tylenol and said she could make it through the night. This morning she said she felt better, so I headed off to work.

When I got home, she was still in pain. We called in a favor from our neighbor, to watch our kids as we headed to Urgent Care. Urgent Care is awesome with our insurance, we only have a $15 copay. So we paid the 15 bones, and waited for the Doctor. They ran a bunch of test, only to say we needed to head to the ER to get some more test done.

Off to the ER. I was pretty hungry, Kellie wasn’t, so I headed out to grab a quick bite to eat. The first place I happened upon was Chipotle. I love Chipotle chicken burittos, they are worth every penny of the $8 you pay for them. Yum. I got back to the ER just in time for them to call us back, and to collect our $50 copay. Cha-Ching.

So far tonight they have ran a CT Scan and an Ultrascan. Kellie has an IV in her arm and is being a trooper.Now we are just waiting to hear the outcome. The Doctor has already ruled out a few major things, but now we just wait.

Update:  After several test they determined that Kellie has a cyst on one of her ovaries.  We left the ER last night armed with a prescription for Vicodin and an order from the doctor to rest.