Say What?!?

Normally I would try to limit or exclude making my blog political in anyway and I truly feel that I have been keeping any open mind in relation to the up coming Presidential election. So far I have not been overly impressed with either candidate and so I have tried be fair and look at both honestly. So in that spirit I was reading about the faith forum, on Relevant.com, that both candidates took part in at Saddleback Church. While reading some of the comments on the Relevant article someone mentioned an interview that Obama gave to the Chicago Sun Times called "I have deep faith" back in '04. I must admit there were somethings in the interview that made me uncomfortable; having said that I would encourage any of you who are interested to read it and let me know your thoughts on it.

-Micah

Mr. Mom

Wow almost seven months since my last post, in that time another year came to the end, Molly and I traveled to visit family I had not seen in almost ten years and in June we had a kid. Wow! Life can often surprise me with the way things turn out; since Molly has had to go back to work I have had the privilege of playing Mr. Mom during the day and I have really enjoyed it! Corban and I just hangout, I hold him and play with him, he falls asleep on my lap and I find myself just sitting there watching him amazed by the little person on my lap. I sit there thinking, "What will he be like as he grows up? ", "Will he make good choices?", "Will he see God as someone who he can have a personal relationship with or will he see God as distant or his 'parents' God?"

With these thoughts flashing in my mind I know that there will be challenges ahead for Corban and for Molly and me, I know that there will be times when Corban's and my relationship may be strained or hurt, he may tell me one day he "hates" me or that he wished I "was dead". I know that right now Corban is completely dependent on Molly and me and that our relationship with him will never be simpler than it is now and as he gets older this relationship will be come more complicated and probably more difficult. So the question some might ask is weather it is worth it?

Relationships can be a risk and we really don't know how they will ever turn out, the only relationship that we can full trust is our relationship with Jesus, He is the only person that can be perfect in relationship. When God created us it was for relationship with Him, He knew before hand that we would rebel and demand our independence but he created us anyway. He knew that he would have to send Jesus to die for us so that our relationship with Him could be fixed. Even with all we have done to rebel and hurt God He has still chosen to love us and seek relationship with us. So I guess I can take heart and borrow a page from God's book and love Corban as God loves me. Even though I know Corban may hurt me I still chose love and just as there is nothing that can change the fact that I am God's child, there is nothing that Corban can do to that wont make him my child. So as he gets older yes the relationship may get harder but it will also get deeper than it can be now and I want to know my son and I look forward to getting to know him as he grows.

From Christmas with Love...

Firstly, for those of you who don't know, in later September Molly and I found out that we’re going to have a baby! Since I can’t see any of your faces I can only assume that you are jumping up and down with joy for us. Even if your not I chose to believe that you are.

Molly’s due date is May 31st but I guess she thinks she is going to be late so the baby will probably be born early June. At this point we don’t know the gender of the baby but we are pretty excited either way. I for one, am torn between hoping for a boy or a girl, for me I am excited about both. However, Molly really wants a little boy first, in order to fill the “older brother” role for any future children.

Right now Molly is in her 16th week so we should get to learn the gender in early January, at least we’re going to have Molly’s doctor tells us the gender because I have never been able to make anything out on those ultrasounds.

Now while I am excited about having a child and I do look forward to future Christmas' with the little guy or gal, I have been feeling a bit subdued lately. With the onset of Christmas I have been reflecting on how our world views and treats Christmas. The message of Jesus seems to be increasingly drowned out in the noise of shopping malls and ipods and the images of Santa and Reindeer become offensive to people because of their overt religious symbolism. (Question: When did Santa and his Reindeer become religious symbols of Christmas and of Jesus?)

As I look around the world and I see "Christian" nations where people live their whole lives not connecting Christmas with Jesus. Did you know that only 6% of the population of Great Britain attends church regularly? And only about 40% regularly attend church in the U.S. but even here people are forgetting. It broke my heart when I read the statistic about Great Britain, to think of all those people who see Christianity as a tradition as a label and not something you live out.

I wonder, what kind of world is my child being born into? When I look at "Christian" nations I see something that scares me, its not hate, fear, or even encroachment of other religions, what scares me is that faith in Jesus has become irrelevant. Its not that people hate Jesus or Christianity its that people are indifferent towards Jesus. People don't even know what Jesus is about in order to hate him or love him, rather he has been replaced with Santa.

Wow, this is kind of depressing huh? Well I just wanted to share something I have been reflecting on. I hope you all have a great Christmas! May the Lord Jesus bless you and keep you!

Its true...

For those of you who I was telling about the movie Fanboys, I found it. I think I found the first movie to see next year.

Two Schools and a Myspace page walked into a Bar...

Well I know that it has been awhile since I blogged but for awhile now I haven't felt like there was much to blog about. So you all have my deepest apologies for not filling you in sooner on the life and times of Micah and Molly! Well now that I have the apology out of the way I can continue with the update. Well for all of you who don't know Molly and I did end up buying a house (see last blog entry for more information) we ended up moving in at the beginning of April and so we now have a few mortgage payments under our belts only 356ish more to go. We really love the house and are excited to be here, we still feel sometimes that its all just a dream and we are going to have to move back into our old house that was about 1/3 the size of our new house. Not only are thankful that we don't have to move I am sure that Tre' and Kelly and thankful too cause I don't think they would want us to move in with them since they are the current residence of our old house.

Since we moved to Vancouver my commute to work had become very stressful since I took me anywhere from 45 minute to 1.5 hours to get to work depending on traffic. So after much thought I decided to look for a job closer to home. I applied for a few jobs at one of the school districts here in Vancouver at first I didn't hear anything but finally one of the High Schools I applied at called me in for an interview. They seemed to like me cause I had just gotten home from the interview when the Vice Principal called me to see if I could come in for a second interview the next day. Well the short of it is I was offered the job doing basically the same kinda thing I was doing this last year working with High Schoolers that have behavior problems only this year I will be working at a regular High School rather then a treatment center. Quiting my old job was one of the hardest things I have had to do, I really did enjoy my old job but in the end Molly and I both felt that the job in Vancouver would be better opportunity with longterm goal in mind.

Now as if working at a school wasn't enough I have decided to go back to school for my MAT (Master of Arts in Teaching). I am going to do a part-time program at Concordia University in Portland, the whole program will take 22 months to complete but once I am done I will have my teaching license and will be able to be a teacher rather then just an assistant. I just had the orientation at the school last night and I came away pretty excited about the whole thing, I met some of the people who will be in my cohort (basically the people who I will have all my classes with for the next 22 months). All in all I am looking forward to the program but part of me is already ready to be done. Is that a bad sign?

Now on a final note, I wanted everyone who might care to know that after much avoidance and bashing of Myspace I have finally given into the social pressure of our time and created a myspace page you can now find me at http://www.myspace.com/micahtown While I don't think I will be doing much blogging there it is a good spot to send me messages and such. I joined myspace simply so that I would be able to see friends pages and maybe get re-connected with old friends. Now for all the big updates and deep thoughts of mine keep coming back here to my blog!

Well thats all for now...

When a little Change isn't Enough!

Some Changes in life come very fast and you don't even realize they are coming. For Molly and me this is how are lives have been for the last month or so. After Christmas we were enjoying how our lives were going, nothing big was going on, everything was status quo. However, that was not going to last; while we had been at my parents house over Christmas my father asked Molly to work for him. Now he has done this before but each time he did he wanted us to move to Reno but this time he told he that she could work from home. So once we were home we prayed about it and were a little overwhelmed because we knew that this was a big change. So Molly finally decided that this would be a good opportunity and so she agreed to take the job.

Now if that had been all to the story I would have stopped typing and you could have continued upon your way but this isn't all so keep reading. After she took the job we realized two things; our current house is not really bug enough for her to have a proper office area to work, and that with this new job we could probably afford a house. So we decided to start looking into buying a home, we decided that while we love living in Oregon we would get more house for the money (and save money with no income tax) if we moved to Vancouver. So not only did we deicide to move but to move to a different state! So we met with a mortgage guy and got a Realtor and last Sunday we found a house we really like in our price range. It was heads and shoulder above any other house we had seen and it was really nice. So we decided to make an offer on it and after a little negotiating the offer was accepted and we had the home inspection yesterday! Now we just wait on the money and we could be moving into our new house by the middle of March. Oh did I mention that we have been doing all this while Molly has been gone during the week, for the last 3 weeks she has been flying to Reno for training at her new job. So she flys down on Sunday and comes back on Friday. It has just been crazy!

Here are some pictures of the house; now keep in mind that the current owners are still living there so all their stuff will be gone but you can at least get some ideas:

Change

Well it has been sometime since I have updated my blog and now I risk the possibility that no one will read this because you all assume that I have given up on blogging. Well for the record I updated for so long because of two things; being lazy and not really knowing what to say. However, my life has changed since my last blog entry and some of you only get "Micah Updates" via this blog so I felt that today was a good day to update.

Things that have happened since my last Blog....

• In August I went on a 6 day back-packing trip with my Parents, we started in Mammoth, CA and back-packed into Yosemite National Park. The trip was amazing, we experienced incredible contrast in the environments along the trail everything from desolate high alpine wilderness, snow to lush green Valleys with waist high grass. I saw some of these awe inspiring views in this trip. Physically the trip was probably the most physically and mentally demanding things I have done, even over the mission trips I have been on.
  

• Since I graduated in May I have been on a hunt for a new job and for most of the summer I was hoping to find a teaching job at a Christian High School. There were a few that I thought I might get but by the end of the summer I had not found a job, and with the on set of the school year it didn't seem that I was going to find a teaching job this year. I was frustrated about not finding something. My current job was only part-time and there was no way to increase the hours so I started looking for a job I could do on the days I was off. It was then that Bethany told me about a job opening she heard about at where she works. Clackamas ESD (Education Service District) provides teachers, assistants and Subs for classrooms of Handicap and Behavioral Children (k-12+) and they had an opening for a Behavioral Classroom Assistant at a place that is part psych hospital and part school. I So I applied for the job but after the interview I got a call saying that they were going to offer someone else the job but they wanted to know if I would want to Sub and I said "Yes!". Subing worked great I could sub on the days I didn't already work but the subbing job didn't last long because after about 3 weeks of subbing another assistant position opened up at sameplace the previous job was at and I was offered the job! So I now work full-time with mostly High School aged kids and so far it has been very satisfying work. It's been hard to really asses what constitutes a "good day" when I have kid who yell and curse at me, or wont work on their work all day but I have been encouraged by the development of relationship with the kids and my own improvements in the class. All in all this job has been and will be the most challenging job I have had. This is a non-Christian enviroment and since it is a public school I have to even more carful about what I can and can not say and so I have to rely more on my actions to impact the kids and staff. Dispite the challenging environment I am excited to have the opportunity to learn and hopefully impact these kids and the staff.

Well these have been the big events in my life in the last few months. If you want to see more pictures of my trip just email me and I'll send them to you or we can hang out and I'll show them to you and explain them to you. Also there has been some interest in me leading a short backpacking trip this coming summer if you intrested let me know. I hope this Thanksgiving finds you all surrounded with the many blessings of God and I just want to say how thankfull I am for each and everyone of you! You belss me in more ways than you can know, thank you!

Here are some more pics of my trip->