Stay Strong - Run Long

The other day (last Sunday) I received a phone call from a man that I consider to be one of the best, God-fearing men in the country and it really concerned me. He might read this so I won't give his name, but he is my uncle and one of my favorite relatives. It is not uncommon for him to give me a call just to check in. He has been here 100% on my spiritual journey and helping me to find Christ. He is a great supporter of mine and I love to just talk to him sometimes as someone who can relate. This was the day of our girls birthday party. All of the grandparents, great-grandparents, aunts and uncles were going to be at our house to help us celebrate, so I thought that might have been what he was calling about. I picked up the phone and he responded and then the phone went silent. Usually that means that I lost the call in my house but my phone didn't say "Call lost." I kept saying his name and telling him that I thought I was losing him. Finally I heard a sniffle and

A couple of months ago my lovely wife and I decided that we were going to take a vacation. Now, if you know us this is something that we haven't done in nearly 4 years (not counting the time off for the babies, which is hardly a vacation). We picked a week and just decided to fly by the seat of our pants. We went camping for 3 days, which was quite the adventure with two kids under the age of 3 in a tent. With no plans and fairly decent weather in the forecast we also decided that it was time to finally paint our house. For those of you who know, we have been attempting to paint our house for nearly 4 months, but with the weather the way that it has been we haven't been able to. We got back to our house around noon on Sunday and set out on the journey to have a perfectly painted home. It started off not all that bad. The weather was a little warm but we didn't realize that it was going to get much worse. We initially thought that we were going to spray on, but the sprayer s