As November comes to a close today, so does No Shave November. After 30 days of letting my Mach 3 razor take a break, here is the final No Shave November picture:
Other No Shave November blog posts over the last month:
A great No Shave November video chronicling the beard growth coming by tomorrow (Monday) morning. I’m finishing it as I type this.
Something truly special happened yesterday that I must share…
As I mentioned in my previous post, Heather and I for the first time spent the Thanksgiving holiday just the two of us. No family. No friends. Just us.
Heather, like always, treated me better than I deserved and cooked me a full Thanksgiving meal – complete with turkey, dressing, mashed potatoes, green beans, fruit salad, rolls, sweat potatoes, gravy, and pecan pie. The meal was delicious.
Because it was only the two of us, I knew that we were going to have a load of leftovers. I love me some Thanksgiving leftovers, but enough leftovers for every meal for a week is a little overkill. Before I could mention our leftover problem to Heather, she started fixing a big, to-go Thanksgiving dinner plate.
Curious, I asked her what she was doing.
My beautiful wife begins to me of an encounter she had with a woman earlier in the week when she made a quick pit-stop into our local CVS. Before leaving the store, Heather told the woman checking her out “Happy Thanksgiving”. In response, the older woman began to share with Heather that her entire Thanksgiving will be spent working at CVS.
Never forgetting that short but oh so meaningful encounter with the CVS woman, Heather made a massive Thanksgiving dinner plate and hand-delivered it to the woman last night. That lady may have spent the entire day working the check-out line at CVS, but thanks to my wife she still got to enjoy a Thanksgiving meal. She followed the leading of the Holy Spirit yesterday by giving food to somebody who was hungry.
She would never want me to write this story so publicly, but this is a story worth sharing.
I saw Jesus in my wife last night. That is one of the many reasons why she is one of my heroes and one of the many reasons why I love her with all my heart.
It would be incredibly cliche and predictable for me to type out this long post telling you all that I am thankful for, so I will spare you from that.
I will tell you that I am very thankful for you and everybody that visits this website. If you are reading this, that means you! To all my friends, family, and strangers that consistently visit this blog, thank you. I am honored and humbled that my thoughts and words attract your attention. Happy Thanksgiving to you all.
I will tell you that this Thanksgiving is different from the 26 previous other Thanksgivings that I have experienced. For the first time, Heather and I are enjoying Thanksgiving by ourselves. No other family members; no other friends; just us. Heather, of course, is going all out still with all the traditional Thanksgiving food, so enjoying turkey, dressing, fruit salad, sweet potatoes, pecan pie, and more is in my immediate future. The Tennessee Titans are also on TV this afternoon, which will be good to watch. They are playing the 0-11 Detroit Lions, so they should win. Besides that, Thanksgiving will be pretty chill this year.
Happy Thanksgiving.
“Life is tough, but it’s tougher when you’re stupid.” – John Wayne
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Have you ever struggled with inconsistency in your personal relationship with God? Times where you bounce back and forth between times of being spiritually disciplined and times of being spiritually lazy. You may have decided that you were going to read your Bible cover to cover over the coarse of a year when you hit Numbers mid-February and lose your motivation. You may have made the commitment to spend time in honest, intimate prayer before bed when life gets busy and tiring and you seem to prematurely fall asleep every night watching TV on the couch.
If you have ever struggled with being disciplined in your relationship with God, I feel you. You are not alone. I have gone through my ups and downs over the years.
Like John Wayne said earlier, “Life is tough.” I am pretty sure that applies to all humanity – rich, poor, educated, uneducated, Christian, not Christian, etc. What’s even worse is when we have to face this tough life without the tools to be more successful, or as John Wayne so eloquently puts it, “when you’re stupid.”
Some of us (I’m talking to myself here) try having a personal relationship with God without having a clue how to have it. When I gave my life over to Jesus, I was never handed the manual of how to have a close, daily relationship with God. You ever feel that way?
I wanted to encourage you today by giving you three questions to ask yourself everyday that might help you raise your spiritual radar and help you maintain a more consistent, honest relationship with God. Ask yourself these three questions before you go to bed every night:
That is it. Answer those questions, journal your answers, find one person you can answer those questions to everyday, and be brutally honest. What a simple way to be more aware of the work God is always doing in our lives that we so often miss.
I got these questions from Dave Ambrose, who is an amazing man of God and mentor in my life.
Try answering these questions everyday for a couple of weeks and see if it doesn’t help in your personal relationship with God. Remember, your relationship with God is not about perfection and figuring it out, it’s all about putting forth effort and trying.
Mother Teresa puts it this way, “God doesn’t require us to succeed; he only requires that you try.”
Ben and I are about to start the 9-10 hour drive home in a few minutes. It will also be the first time that I will drive my new car. I see a lot of The Herd and baseball talk radio in my future.
It has been a great trip. I have met some great people, deepened my friendship with Ben, spent some quality time with my parents, ate some good food, and been challenged as a minister and follower of God. That being said, I look forward to seeing my girls when I get home.
Pray for safe travel.
With the use of modern technology, I might be able to give some updates over the long drive, so check back throughout the day.
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UPDATE 10:54am – Just had my last Starbucks run on this trip in Jackson, TN. The barista forgot to take off the whip cream so the frap was a little disappointing.
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UPDATE 11:31am – Tennessee is seriously beautiful.
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UPDATE 12:56pm – Arkansas is not.
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UPDATE 4:08pm – Texas is somewhere in between.
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UPDATE 5:48pm – Made it back home safely to all the Cromer girls.
Here’s the picture three weeks into No Shave November: (Again, I must remind you that the joyless mug shot picture is only because I am making a video that chronicles the hair growth of my beard and reduplicating the same goofy smile 30 days in a row is quite the challenge.)
Compare this picture to THE START OF NSN, THE 1 WEEK UPDATE, and THE TWO WEEK UPDATE.
With December being around the corner and being 2/3 completed through NSN, I want to give some serious props to all the girls in the Shannon Oaks Church Student Ministries who have rocked the “man-legs” this month. You girls rock!
Positives of not shaving my face:
Negatives from not shaving my face:
After the ten hour drive from Sulphur Springs, Texas to Nashville, Tennessee yesterday, I have had a pretty eventful 24 hours. Here are some of the highlights:
-I got to hug the necks and see the big smiles on my parents face when I pulled up to their house.
-I got to see the new car I bought last week for the first time. Oh yeah, I forgot to mention that I got a new car, a used 2008 Hyundai Sonata.
-We got to eat at arguably the restaurant that holds the majority of my childhood, restaurant memories. The restaurant is called “Strattons” in Ashland City, TN.
-I woke up at 5:30am this morning to run 14 of the hardest miles of my life. There were tons of HUGE hills (on the verge of calling them mountains) that we had to run down and up. That was nothing compared to the weather. The temperature never got above 30F. It was dark; it was windy; it was brutal.
-I traded in our junky (but very mechanically sound) 1999 Toyota Corolla…and actually got money for it!
-Started the conference and heard one of the most challenging, powerful messages of my life (by Francis Chan) that rocked me to my core.
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It has been a busy 24 hours. I know I will sleep hard and well tonight.
Greetings from Nashville!
As of yesterday (Thursday, November 20, 2008) I am officially on vacation. Ben Vos and I are currently in Nashville, Tennessee for National Youth Worker Convention – a sweet youth ministry conference that is put on by Youth Specialties.
With all of the incredible opportunities and highlights that will be available to me over the next few days – like incredible speakers, resources galore, big named bands, relevant classes, deep spiritual experiences, and much more – I think I am most excited about simply getting away and taking a break. I am excited to sleep in, stay up late for no reason, eat good food, see my friends and family who live in or near the Nashville area, watch the Tennessee Titans play on Sunday, get a daily caramel frappuccino at Starbucks, laugh with Ben, and listen to God. I may take a break from the blog or I might blog like crazy…not sure yet.
I’m pretty sure God likes that agenda over the busy, rushed, got to do everything schedule that conferences like this often provide.
I really just want to hang out with God over the next few days. Just me and him. I need that right now.
Right now I am skipping out on some classes, sitting in a Panera restaurant drinking a bottled water, and taking advantage of their free wifi.
According to my agenda, I’m already right on schedule.
This article is incredibly refreshing…and worth the 3 minutes it will take you to read it.
J.P. Hayes is officially now my favorite professional golfer.
Michael Jordan did it (twice). Brett Favre did it. Bernie Mac in Mr. 3000 did it. And now I am doing it.
I am officially announcing that I have decided to come out of retirement and return to the world of long distance running. I (along with my youth ministry partner, Ben Vos) will be running in the Fort Worth Cowtown marathon on Saturday, February 28.
Some of you know after running two previous marathons, I officially retired from the grueling sport of long distance running. As I crossed the finish line of the Dallas White Rock marathon a couple years ago, I adamantly shouted, “I’m never doing this again!” I have been firm on that commitment, but it is time for me to again strap on the ole’ running shoes and tiny shorts and pound the pavement once again.
This is not a decision I made today. We have already been training for 9+ weeks. I just have not publicly come out in the open with this information because I knew if I did, then I was fully committed. If I said it on the blog, then I would have to do it for accountability sake. That being said, we have a 14 mile training run this weekend that I am not looking forward to.
It’s official…I’m back.
Who’s with me?
