Day 40 of #40Days - Life, as it Happens.

Wow! Forty days is gone already?!?!  It went by so quickly.  I want to close the series by reviewing and summarizing a few things about my Forty Day Project.  I will point out something I learned, my favorite posts and yours, based on site traffic stats.  Then, I will compare the finished project with the goal or vision I had at the beginning.  That all sounds so analytic, but hopefully it will be fun.

Day 38 blew me away.  I was speechless because of the sweet things Jilly said in her second guest post of the series.  There's no doubt that our marriage is special and was ordained in Heaven.  If I had it to do all over again, I would.  My Jilly is amazingly awesome and I love her more than words can say.

Day 30 was a video blog entry or vlog.  I recorded it on the way to work one morning after Jill and I had been talking about childhood influences.  Ted Stolpe edited it for me and his work was wonderful.  I just asked to have something on the front and back of the video to ease it in and out.  Ted went way beyond that.  Thanks again, Ted.

After Day 1, which I linked to each daily post, Day 18 got the most hits.

The purpose of this series was to satisfy the calling I felt God was giving me to blog daily for forty days.  At this point, I feel it was completed, but it was certainly more than just writing forty posts.  Facing my fears of transparency and judgement has shown me that people are interested in what we've experienced; many of you said so.  Additionally, I learned that trying to do this or anything worthwhile by myself will lead to mistakes and to poor quality work.  When I asked for help, the result was way better than expected.  Jill helped me a lot with honest and constructive proofing and editing.

It was a lot of fun to look through old photos and videos.  Our kids looked at them too and asked a lot of questions about who what when and where.  It was great remembering some of the blessings I had forgotten and talking with Jill about stuff we've been through.

Thank you for participating by reading.  If you commented here, on Facebook, or on Twitter, thank you.  The encouragement was motivating.

This ends the intentional daily blogging, at least for a while.  Be on the lookout for life as it happens in The Brasfield Nation, here on Dadofmykids Blog.

God Bless,
Dadofmykids

This is # 40 of Forty Days, the last post of the series. Learn more here.

Day 37 of #40Days - Happy All the Time.

Intentionally blogging every day forces me to come up with something to write.  Today, I feel kind of strange.  I sat down here with two or three ideas to choose from and prayed that God would guide me.  As I started to write about the time when God turned my head like a magnet to steel, I felt a "No".  I could tell you about the multiple trips we took to get Kaymie from her birth mom only to be let down, but "No", or about my neice Falon who suffered life changing injuries at the age of three, but "No".

If you've been following my forty day project, then you know about my brother in law who was injured.  He is scheduled to have surgery this morning.  With his situation still fresh on our family, my step sister was admitted to the hospital in very bleak condition.  Both are sad situations which are probably influencing my mood.

I prefer to be positive and up beat most of the time, but sometimes that isn't reality.  Being real is part of the goal or process of this blog series.  I want you to know that if you are feeling less than "super-dee-duper" then you don't have feel guilty about it.

Some people, especially Christians, either act like or actually say that if you aren't full of joy unspeakable then you should repent.  This idea of being "happy all the time" (isn't that a line from a kids Sunday school song?) puts a requirement on people to act happy even when they aren't.  You may not think anything about revealing yourself to others, or being transparent, but that doesn't come easy for me. I am a genuinely happy and positive person, but have bad days too.

Having a bad day or going through a rough spell, which we used to call a "trial", is normal and expected.  Abnormal is the one who pretends everything is all right.  Am I making any sense here?

I'll get out of this funk in a few minutes, probably.

I love you all.

God bless,
Andy

This is post # 37 of Forty Days.  Learn more here.

PS.  That's just a random video I found of the Sunday school song referenced above.

Day 3 of #40Days: Footloose

I am not a Footloose virgin any more.

In 1984, many of you saw a movie that became a cultural icon of the 80's.  But I didn't see it.  In fact, the only movies I saw in those years, were likely on TV.  No way would I have been seen buying a movie ticket or sitting in a theater.

It was against my religion.  Kinda like in the movie Footloose, where dancing was outlawed.

Honestly, I thought the men's fashion of the day, pink shirts and jazz oxford shoes, was sin and corruption creeping into the Church.  Really.  That's what I thought.

What is this?  27 years later?  And now, I feel just fine watching that movie.  But it was the first time I'd seen it.  I just watched it with my Jilly.

The story was about religious oppression in a small town.  After a fatal teenage car wreck, the town counsel, including the hell-fire and brim-stone preacher, outlawed dancing, among other things like alcohol.  But, like me, the preacher was shown how wrong he was.

Compassion won.

In my teen years, I became rooted in doctrine that said that almost everything young people like to do is sin.  The Bible does in fact teach against drunkenness, fornication, hatred and other things.  My church took that to extremes like the preacher in Footloose.

As I look back on my high school days, when I carried a Bible to school every day and was more interested in putting down evil than I was in lifting up people, I wonder if I did more harm than good.  I've heard from some of my former classmates.  Most of them remember me as a positive influence, they say. 

I remember myself as a judgemental person.  Too heavenly minded to be any earthly good.  But I have changed.

Look up.  God is more interested in seeing us live life to the fullest than he is in forbidding us from things we enjoy.  That doesn't give us a free ticket to abandon prudence.  But it should leave us spiritually Footloose.

God bless,
Dadofmykids.

PS.  This is post #3 of 40.  Learn more here.

The Forty Day Project: Day 1 of #40Days

• After Noah got all the animals on the boat, it rained forty days.
• Moses was on the mountain forty days and got the Ten Commandments.
• The Israelites spied out Canaan Land forty days.
• Goliath verbally abused Israel's soldiers forty days.
• Jesus fasted forty days.
• After the resurrection, Jesus remained with his disciples forty days.  Then he ascended.

I don't expect rain, stone tablets, the promised land, a dead giant,  to be offered the whole world.  But I could handle some time with Jesus.

Let me explain The Forty Day Project.

Sometimes, when God speaks, he makes himself clear.  No question.  Other times, he drops hints; makes suggestions, like a sign over a business you pass every day on the way to work.  You learn the name of the business, but if the name doesn't include what they do, you really don't have a full understanding.  You don't have much info.

I've been passing a sign.  It's a neon sign that flashes "Forty Days".  I think God put the sign there.  I've slowed down to get a better view of the sign and its surroundings.  The building beneath it looks like a blog.  My blog.  But the timeline is out of order.  I see my children and grandchildren reading my blog.  Studying the pictures and videos to see where they got their own physical characteristics.  Drake got his smile from his dad, Daniel.  Kk's little girl has long curly hair and plays the piano, just like her mom did at that age.

Then the time line skips back to 2011.  There's another dad, someone I've never met, looking at my blog posts.  He has a lot in common with me.  And he finds it re-assuring that he's not alone.  There's a young Christian believer there, too.  She wants to know what it was like for Jilly and me to go through the same junk she's going through.  She wants to know if she's gonna come out the other side and be ok.

This is how The Forty Day Project was born.  I may abbreviate it "40 Days".  At this point I still don't know what the end result will look like.  I think God is urging me to trust Him for it.

Let me speak about my fears and objections for a minute.  I'm afraid that I might blog for self gratification, or for recognition.  I still don't know if I'll even go public with this idea.  Just like anybody else, I only have so many hours in a day.  So I don't know if 40 Days will be worth the time it may take away from my family or my business.  I don't know for sure if I have created this vision in my own mind or if God really did give it to me.

But faith may overcome my fears and objections. 

I want to simply do two things:

1. To love God.
2. To love my fellow man as I love myself.

Will "40 Days" help me do these two things?  I think it could.  If I am able to keep the focus away from me and on God and my readers.  Again, my readers may include my family, my descendants, my friends, fellow believers and non-believers. You are already one of my readers.

Who are you?  Please comment on this post, regardless of when you found "40 Days".  Let me know something about you.  Do you need anything? Encouragement? Prayer? Hope?  Anything that I have the ability and time to give?

That's Day One.  Thirty nine more to go.  Who's with me?

God bless,
Dadofmykids

Something new is coming soon to my blog. #40Days

God is into emails, too.

I posted a question about an article I wrote over on the SE Laser Blog. Many of my friends replied, evenly split on the appropriateness of the article. Then, this verse, from a daily Bible verse site, comes to my email:

My son, if you accept my words and store up my commands within you, turning your ear to wisdom and applying your heart to understanding, and if you call out for insight and cry aloud for understanding, and if you look for it as for silver and search for it as for hidden treasure, then you will understand the fear of the LORD and find the knowledge of God. Proverbs 2:1-5 (New International Version)

This verse didn't answer my specific question, but it sure spoke to me about my search for an answer.

It's cool that God is into emails, too. He knew what would be going on today.

BTW. I am going to delete that questionable article.

God Bless,

Dadofmykids