Life in list form

Here’s some updates about life for me. What I’ve been doing, what I’ve been thinking, and what’s next on the horizon.

• In three days, I will be married for two months. Wow. Sometimes it still blows me away that we are married. It took so long to get there (I don’t suggest engagements longer than a year by the way…16 months was way too long) that it’s hard to believe the wedding has already come and gone.
• Marriage is probably the greatest litmus test for pointing out my selfish tendencies. Nothing in my life has been able to so easily and so often point out my selfishness as marriage has. Now don’t get the wrong idea. Kindel doesn’t point out these selfish tendencies to me. She’s not nagging me or calling me out all the time. It’s not like that. It’s just one of those things that I feel so often when it happens, like my own conscience became so much more sensitive to pointing out selfishness. It’s like having a car alarm and turning up the sensitivity so high that it goes off just from loud noises in the parking lot.
• So what am I doing about my selfishness? I’m learning to serve and love. The key word here is learning. I’m certainly not doing all of this right and I know I fail sometimes. But I’m learning to serve my wife more and more and love her more and more. I thought I loved her before we got married, and I did love her. However, I now feel like I am only beginning to learn how to love her.
• Design work is picking up. I’m excited to get to do more design work. Not only because it allows us to pay our bills and put food on the table, but also because it allows me to grow as a designer. With each new project, I learn new functions in the software I use, new techniques to design more efficiently, and gain more perspective. My “designer’s eye” is not perfected by a LONG shot, but it continues to get better. Currently, I’m designing three new church logos for 2 different churches, branding sermon series packages for two churches, and doing some oddball design for a couple churches.
• Barista life to begin again soon. I should be going back to work at the coffee shop in less than a month. Gotta pay the bills.
• New website concept coming soon. This week I’m starting to work with a programming guru to put together a new website idea. More details to come later.
• Last week, I read The Call to Discipleship by Karl Barth. It’s an excerpt from his large book, Christian Dogmatics. It was a good read, but definitely a hard read. It was originally in German and translated into English. The sentence structures were very complex and many times confusing to follow.
• Now I’m reading God’s Politics: Why the Right Gets It Wrong and the Left Doesn’t Get It by Jim Wallis. So far, it is awesome! It is great to read the perspective of a Christian who doesn’t buy into the concept that God is partisan. It is also great to read someone who brings to light that abortion and gay marriage are not the only moral issues. War, poverty, education, and healthcare, for example, are all moral issues as well. So far, Wallis has done a great job of presenting an un-partisan view of politics with Scripture as its basis. I can’t wait to keep reading. I already recommend it.
• Free entertainment. By the way, the copy of God’s Politics that I am reading is from the public library. After Kindel got her name change done and got a new driver’s license, we went to the public library to get library cards. Instead of renting DVDs so much, we can go check one out for FREE. Plus all the books. Definitely an entertainment budget saver!
• I think we’ve finally settled into our apartment. It took almost two months, but I think we finally did it. There’s still some work to do here and there, and there is still parts to improve upon, but, for the most part, I would say we have finally settled in.

Overall, life is good. We are depending on God for direction like never before.