Today, Nancy and I have been married for three years. (1095.726597 Days). We celebrated last Friday by having the most expensive meal we’ve ever had together . (It was a combined celebration of our first child and three year anniversary, so it called for something big.) My thoughts on the occasion? It is a dualistic feeling of “already?” and “it’s only been three years?”. I feel like we’ve never not been married, but also that we are still newlyweds. I love you, Nancy.

This hymn has really been growing on me recently. Read the words… soak them in. If you have a hard time understanding them, think Yoda…

Come, Thou Fount of every blessing,
Tune my heart to sing Thy grace;
Streams of mercy, never ceasing,
Call for songs of loudest praise.
Teach me some melodious sonnet,
Sung by flaming tongues above.
Praise the mount! I’m fixed upon it,
Mount of Thy redeeming love.

Here I raise my Ebenezer;
Here by Thy great help I’ve come;
And I hope, by Thy good pleasure,
Safely to arrive at home.
Jesus sought me when a stranger,
Wandering from the fold of God;
He, to rescue me from danger,
Interposed His precious blood.

O to grace how great a debtor
Daily I’m constrained to be!
Let Thy goodness, like a fetter,
Bind my wandering heart to Thee.
Prone to wander, Lord, I feel it,
Prone to leave the God I love;
Here’s my heart, O take and seal it,
Seal it for Thy courts above.

O that day when freed from sinning,
I shall see Thy lovely face;
Clothed then in blood washed linen
How I’ll sing Thy sovereign grace;
Come, my Lord, no longer tarry,
Take my ransomed soul away;
Send thine angels now to carry
Me to realms of endless day.

Words: Ro­bert Ro­bin­son, 1758; ap­peared in his A Col­lect­ion of Hymns Used by the Church of Christ in Angel Al­ley, Bi­shop­gate, 1759.

Original (most popular) Music was written 54 years later: “Net­tle­ton,” Wyeth’s Re­po­si­to­ry of Sac­red Mu­sic, Part Se­cond, by John Wy­eth, 1813.

My favorite setting of this song: David Crowder Band from Passion 2002 Our Love is Loud.

UPDATE See bottom of post:

We’re back from sunny Florida. It was an extremely refreshing time and now I’m ready to hit the summer full force, gearing up to be a father, and doing ministry in a new outpost (with a lot of prayer and hard work for both…).

I feel a bit like I did after coming back from our honeymoon (three years minus-one-week ago…), a new page has just turned in life, perhaps a new chapter. Many changes are ahead in life, in ministry, possibly in work (DirectSteps is really taking off…). I’m looking at this summer as a time to prepare. I’d really like to write music, read more, and spend more time with family (blood and spiritual). Essentially that means being a bit more strategic with my work schedule. How to provide for my family and still have the down time to do all these things is something I’m still learning, but it is what I brought back from my trip. I have been way too busy, and very stressed (even though I didn’t realize it) these last few months. That is not a good position to be in when starting a family.

I’m looking forward to seeing what this summer holds for us, and what God allows me to make of it.

Nancy took this picture on Saturday morning. It is right by our hotel in Ormond Beach, FL. You can see the rest of them in our Flickr photostream

Update: on Tuesday, we saw a mommy alligator and her babies up close and personal. We kicked ourselves repeatedly when we realized we forgot our camera. Fortunately, a volunteer photographer from the park service was there and he posted some pics on the Web. They are amazing. See them here: mommy alligator photo 1, mommy alligator 2

Along the same line as my last post about The Five Browns, (sorry, the teacher side of me got thinking about more of the media that I have really enjoyed lately) has anyone else out there seen Mad Hot Ballroom? Autumn, who is always in the know about the newest indie/documentary films, told me that I would love it, and indeed, I did. It is a documentary about schools in the New York City Public School system (mostly in low-income, ethnically-diverse areas) that start an after-school ballroom dancing program culminating in a city-wide competition. Oh my, oh my…after teaching 5th and 6th grade band for two years, I feel like this is the best insight anyone could get into what it is like to teach students this age (which happens to be probably my favorite age to teach).

Between slices of the classtime, they do candid interviews with the students. Sometimes I think God planned that our best source of humor would be kids…and you definitely get a taste of that here. Besides being an quasi-inspirational film, I think pretty much anyone would get a kick out of it just from the candid humor.