Is Truth True?

So last night we talked about truth. To me it is such a simple word. The meaning seems pretty obvious. Yet somehow to most people it is extremely difficult to practice. We believe we are being honest because we are not telling lies. But when you really stop and think about it- Are you being true to who you are?? Are you compromising who you are to be who society wants you to be? Do you let others change who you are to fit in? Do you practice what you preach? Well I thought I did. My kids will tell you mommy hates lies. And I do-I just cannot stand lies. I cringe at fakeness- makes me angry. I’m a tell like is it kind of girl. I don’t see the point in sugar coating things. But what I learned last night is I might not lie to others- but I have been lying to myself for years. I tell myself I value time with my kiddos. But when I am with them I am constantly telling them no mommy does not have time to play, mommy has to do the laundry- mommy has to wash the bottles, mommy has to clean the house…. I have been so consumed with keeping up with things around the house and my kids are suffering the loss. It’s time I stop worrying if my house looks like a toy factory exploded and start playing with the escaped superheroes I find under my feet and dolls with tangled hair that need mommy’s help. I need to put the To Do list away and sit down and play candy land in the mess. Need to remember what my mom always says- people will know this house is lived in, not a display.








What I noticed is every single one of us struggles with truth in some way or another. Yet I know truth does exist. It is real! How do I know you might ask? Well we have a magnificent God that shows us the realness of truth. He says what he means and means what he says. I also see it in More than More. I see it in the actions of this amazing group of people. People who not only say they care- BUT ACTUALLY DO! I know it’s hard to believe a group of strangers from all different walks of life can become like a family. I didn’t believe it when I first joined More than More. Thought the idea of More sounded pretty exciting but was extremely doubtful. But then I sat down in a circle of strangers and immediately a super sweet gal sat down beside me and my fiancé and made us feel welcome- important- included- LOVED. Now about a year later this super sweet and super funny gal was mistaken to be my husband’s mom. You see this group is super cool. I mean it. Don’t let anything stop you from coming! You will be welcome as you are for who you are- and that is the TRUTH!







So if you are sick of the American society where lies are everywhere, politicians with beliefs not backed by actions, lies to our children, and dishonesty to get more money more stuff more success, and interested in a different way of living- a way where truth exists and people really matter…..Then come hang out with us on Thursday May 31st, from 6:45-8:00PM, at McAllister Recreation Center, just off 20th and Schuyler Ave, Lafayette. As always AMAZING childcare provided (really my kids beg to go back!)

Whar's the big deal about a birthday?

Last More than more we had a fantastic time on an outreach.  What is an outreach?  I'm glad you asked.  At More than more, we believe that life is about More than just the everyday stuff it seems like it is about.  There is much More.  We enjoy learning about this and looking for new ways to change our perspectives on this life every other Thursday night at McAllister Recreation Center, just off 20th and Schuyler Ave, Lafayette, from 6:45-8:00.  In fact we will be there this Thursday night, May 3rd.  As always. there will be cool activities for all age kids.  
But, our usual Thursdays are only a small part of our lives.  We want this idea, this life, to be the way we live all the time, in our homes, in our workplaces, in our schools - we want to be different, wonderfully, joyfully different!
Part of what makes us different is that we just are not content to sit and enjoy our perspective and joy, we are determined to share it with as many people as possible - we are thrilled to be living life better, but we are sad at the fact that there are so many people in the world right around us who do not realize the wonder of life!!

All that to say, our outreach projects are designed to show other people the kind of perspective we are trying to live with every day and that we learn about every other Thursday night. 

So, back to the title of this post - what's the big deal?

Well, did you realize that on the day of your birth, you were a gift to the world?  The God who made you could have chosen any combination of your parents' genetic material and out of all the possibilities, He chose you!!!  You are a gift, to us, to your world!

So many times in our culture we attribute value to people by their financial statement, by the health, by their popularity, by their location, by their race, etc.  Once a person told me they truly believed that a person's actual value only existed if they made certain amounts of money and was "productive."  But that person was wrong (and they made me kinda sick i have to tell you).  You see, all of us have a birthday - all of us are a treasure to the One who created us, amazingly and intricately made, each part of us a masterpiece!  And so many times we miss it - our value comes in our birth - that is a lot to celebrate!

So, at More than more, we love birthdays - not just because we love an excuse to party (even though we do!) - but because we love to celebrate God's creativity and birthdays become an outreach when they become a way for us to share the joy in our lives with someone else and remind them of their value, to us, and to God, by celebrating their birthday!  

This last Thursday we celebrated the birthday of one of our friends, her name is Carla.  We all went over, had a fantastic lavender frosted spice cake (that's her favorite kind!) and the kids painted bird houses - she loves birds.  We gave her gifts, she blew out candles and a good time was had by all!!  

But the best by far was the peaceful joyful face Carla had as the realization sunk deeply into her heart that she mattered, that she was wonderful, that the real gift on her birthday was her, from God to us!  I hope she never forgets, and i hope you don't either.

If this kind of crazy fun sounds like it might be worth a try, please join us Thursday - we do have tons of fun!
Hope to see you there!

What's Coming Up!

Hi everyone!  We have been having a fantastic time at More than more.  Last Thursday night Dottie talked about some of the amazing experiences in her life - it was a great time to hear how amazing life and even death can be, in a different perspective than many of us have heard before.

Next Thursday night we are going to having a birthday party.  One of my friends, an older woman named Carla was not going to have any celebration for her birthday and so on the 19th, instead of our usual More than more time, we are going to go to her house and have a huge party!!!  The kids need to wear clothes that can get paint on them or bring something to cover up their clothes!!  We will be meeting at McAllister (just off 20th and Schuyler Ave) at the usual time (6:45PM) and then driving to Carla's place, leavnig ABOUT 6:55PM!! 

You see, we believe that it is an amazing thing that God gave the world the gift of Carla on her birthday and we want to be able to celebrate God's creativity expressed in her!!!

We hope you will be able to make it - it will be awesome!

Just a Tuesday

               It's Tuesday morning.  6AM.  As i look out at the landscape of my day, i see a crazy schedule.  If i just give it a glance, i see lots of people who will have all kinds of problems and schedule that is fast paced to say the least...i see 3 kids and a wife who have all kinds of things to do and accomplish and schedules to follow and keep...i see a multiple different groups that we lead and have things coming up and if i am not careful, the task list begins to spiral in my mind - getting bigger and bigger (or as Doctor Seuss would say, biggerer and biggerer), threatening to drown out all semblance of anything else and make me a slave to its domination.  I see all these things have their place in my life and there is a purpose in each of them.  I have chosen to place them in the day - but together they form this tornado that threatens to take me far away from what together in my life they were supposed to be, to wreak havoc on the very purpose of life!  You see, i feel this need to do it all well.  i want to succeed and thrive and work hard and not fail - and this drives me to do too many things sometimes...

               So, here i sit, talking to God in the beginning of my day, asking Him to bring His perspective to the moments of this day.  Asking Him to help me to not be dominated by my need to always do everything right and good and betterer.  Asking Him to help me to remember that it is not the schedule or the success that is the key to this being a wonderful day, but the people who are in the middle of it all.  In fact, if this is to be a wonderful day, i need to be ready to shirk the drive of the schedule and instead notice the broken hearts and lives around me.  I need to be willing to realize that all my pursuit of doing everything just right over the years, while successful in terms of what our culture would say, has never brought me joy.  The only thing that has brought me joy has been flying in the face of all the things in this crazy culture of ours that push me to always get more stuff, buy more stuff, achieve higher goals, make everyone happy, rise in the corporate ladder, have more positions, have more tasks and do them the best, and instead choosing to grasp these things as lightly as possible, choosing  to notice all the in between people and things that reorient my life to what life is really about.  As someone said, "It is the journey of life that makes it beautiful, not the destination" - which i would change slightly to "It is the joys of the journey of life that take us to a different, more wonderful destination."  The more i notice the amazingness of the world around me and the wonder of the people (and their brokenness) around me, the more life opens up and becomes wonderful and joyful and full of purpose and meaning and even awe.  The more i recognize the beauty of the God who made it all and who loves us so much and invite Him into the moments of my day, asking Him to be in the moments and help me to not to lose His perspective.  The more i realize that i will never be able to make myself happy and neither will my wife or kids or family or friends, only God can take all the things that already exist in my world and help me see them in a new way that will bring deep joy to my life.  The more i do all these things, the landscape of my day looks amazing, full of promise.  No longer do i feel a slave to my compulsions.  I am free.  There is More than more - and that is a beautiful thing!

               If you are sick and tired of the usual mores of our world, feel trapped by your schedule and just have lost your joy.  You might consider joining us Thursday night, the 5th of April, at McAllister Recreation Center, just off 20th and Schuyler Ave, Lafayette.  We spend our time talking about and working at living this way and sharing life together.  It is a great time and as always there is a group for kids and teens/tweens.  We hope you will be able to join us!!!

Bathrooms and Floors and Walls

A bunch of the people of More than more spent last Saturday serving on a beautiful day for an outreach! We spent from 8-5 hanging out and scraping/sanding walls, mudding drywall, repairing floors, ripping out bathrooms and then replacing bathrooms, and generally cutting up, laughing, and having a good time!

It was fantastic to spend the day together, helping out someone in our communicty who really needed the help and most importantly sharing the love in our lives with someone else. You see, since we have been hanging out at More than more, we have been realizing that life can be so much more wonderful that the usual American lifestyle of get more, become more, buy more and this day gave us a good chance to share all that with someone else!!!

One the members mentioned that they had been to things where people were serving from other organizations in the past and they had never seen so many people having so much fun and never had seen so many people stay clear through to the end (in fact everyone came over to our house for a cookout and campfire after even - most people staying til 8 or 9PM) - it seemd to them like in the other groups people were just interested in getting credit for being there and once they were there for a while, they felt they could leave - like they had better things to do. We were just having so much fun that it felt like an ideal family reunion, just with work along with it.

In the middle of the day another bunch of met at Dream Dinners and made about 40 meals for people around our community who do not have enough food - those people have been delivering that food this week!!!

We will doing more of this inthe future - one of the the next will be on April 19th, a Thursday night, in place of our usual More than more time - we will be visiting with a friend of mine who would love to have some people just come and visit her - it is her birthday week and we will be celebrating her birthday with her with cake and ice cream and she likes birds and feeders and we will be doing something with bird feeders and the kids - stay tuned, but mark your calendars because you are gonna want to be there!!!!!


If this kind of living sounds inviting to you, we will be hanging out tomorrow night, the 22nd of March, from 6:45-8:00PM, at McAllister Recreation Center, just off 20th and Schuyler Ave, Lafayette - as always there will be a group for teens and tweens, and a group for kids - led by fantastic people who want to be doing exactly what they are doing!!!!! Hope to see you there!

How to live a Healthier Life.

2-28-12
The other day i was a real butt-head. I know, you're like, "What is this guy doing writing like he has something to say if he's behaving like a butt-head?" I treated my wife badly. Sometimes i just get so caught up in my junk and hurts and issues that i act stupidly. I don't like it, it just happens.
Now, each time i act like this there is a period of time when i act badly and then some time later, usually a period of hours, if i'm lucky minutes, i start to feel guilty and bad for acting like that. I start to feel like crap. The goodness of our relationship plays in front of my eyes and i face the fact that i have betrayed that. The heaviness of it sometimes feels like a literal weight on my back. It absolutely bites! I can feel my stomach churning and my head pounding along in beat with my heart that is racing. I feel a tension in my shoulders and my muscles.
Shortly after that i go, with head down, tail between my legs (if i had a tail), to my wife and hardly can stand to make eye contact with her. But with much effort i look up at her angry eyes (did you think she takes me being a butt-head lightly - i don't think so - that was said with a hand on the hip), and i choke out those words, "I'm so sorry. I was wrong. Can you forgive me?"
What i hear sometime after that (it depends on how serious of a butt-head i was how long it takes) is something beautiful. It is accompanied by a softening of those beautiful blue eyes and a taking of the hand off the hip. Usually it is along with some closeness of her to me...those words, "I forgive you."
When she looks at me with those words and embraces me, when she accepts me as her husband again and loves me in spite of my butt-headness, the pressure lifts from my shoulders, my heart relaxes along with my muscles and my stomach settles down and i can begin to see the joy in our lives and future again.
I think you all can identify with this, in some fashion at some point in your life. Do you remember what it is like to ache inside and out for the pain you have caused? Can you revisit the hurt you have caused to someone you love and what it makes you feel like? Can you remember what it feels like, the relief, to be forgiven. To see those relationships restored and full again? To feel the warmth of the hug of love in the post hurt rest?

Well, believe it or not, this is a moment worth noticing. Check out these links:

http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/forgiveness/mh00131

http://articles.latimes.com/2007/dec/31/health/he-forgiveness31

http://www.health.harvard.edu/press_releases/power_of_forgiveness

How about that? The observation of our relief is not just something that is unique to us. Apparently medical authorities like Mayo Clinic and Harvard University and even popular press like the LA Times, agree with us!!

This is all nice if we are simply chatting about being good people and asking for forgiveness and all, but this shows us something even more important than this.

Do you seriously think that people developed from chemicals at the dawn of the Big Bang and all and somehow we developed this unbelievable need to have wholeness in our relationships? Or is it much more likely and take a lot less leaps in judgment to decide that a fantastic and loving God made us to love like He does - to be in deep and loving relationships?

Yet, our world does not encourage us to foster deep relationships. Nothing out there is teaching us that love and friendships and depth in our relationships are important. What we hear is that getting more stuff is the key to happiness - play more, get more, achieve more, become more - we abandon our relationships if they are hard (but who experiences forgiveness unless we go THROUGH the hard times???) and they end in shambles...

You see, in our hearts, we understand, and we may even say that we believe in this stuff about forgiveness, but we do not strive for it as a society or as individuals. We live on and on and on after this emptiness we call the American Dream...

So, how do we break away from the usual American lifestyle? Well, you might start my noticing. Notice that you are made to forgive and love and even your body tells you so...In that moment recognize that there is a magnificent God who made you this way - He is the One who made you to love like this and to appreciate the really wonderful things about life that we all know exist, like being forgiven. And in those moments as you notice, thank Him. Thank Him that the emptiness of the American dream is not all there is. And, if you really want to begin changing your life, invite Him into the moment with you. Ask Him to join you in your life and try to begin to notice Him in the every day things of life and see if things don't begin to change in the way you live your life.

Also, if this kind of life appeals to you, you might consider joining us. At More than more, we are all about this way of living. We will be hanging out together Thursday March 8th at McAllister Recreation Center, just off 20th and Schuyler Ave, Lafayette, from 6:45-8:00 PM, as always there will be free, excellent activities for all kids - both those under and over 5th grade, with separate activities for youth and kids.

A Reminder

Hey everyone!

Wanted to remind you that this Thursday night we will be hanging out at McAllister Recreation Center, just off 20th and Schuyler Ave, Lafayette, from 6:45-8:00PM


As always there will be great activites for the kids and youth


Hope to see you there!!