Reunited...

...and it feels so good. =)

Great times yesterday hanging with Jess and Krod -- my old Mitchell crew -- down for some eating and bowling at the Eastlake Tavern and Bowl. The three of us haven't hung out together in ages! Even though I've hung out with both of them individually on a pretty regular basis still, it was awesome that we could all get together again. I only wish we had a regular camera so this pic wasn't grainy, but I still love it.

Love Came Down

The Pat Little Band has been singing a song at Flood lately called "Love Came Down", originally written by Brian Johnson. It's become a fast favorite of mine, and I wanted to share the lyrics and video below. With whatever fears we may have in life right now, I'm reminded that God is right there to fill us with hope and guide us through whatever comes our way, and that we have His perfect love to cast out our fears (I John 4:18).

If my heart is overwhelmed and I cannot hear Your voice

I’ll hold on to what is true though I cannot see

If the storms of life they come and the road ahead gets steep

I will lift these hands in faith

I will believe

I remind myself of all that You’ve done

And the life I have because of Your Son

Love came down and rescued me

Love came down and set me free

I am Yours, I am forever Yours

Mountain high or valley low

I sing out remind my soul

I am Yours, I am forever Yours

When my heart is filled with hope and every promise comes my way

When I feel Your hands of grace rest upon me

Staying desperate for You God, staying humbled at Your feet

I will lift these hands and praise

I will believe

Love came down and rescued me

Love came down and set me free

I am Yours, I am forever Yours

Mountain high or valley low

I sing out remind my soul

I am Yours, I am forever Yours

I am Yours, I am Yours, all my days, I am Yours

Safe.

Today was supposed to be the first trip of the year to Disneyland. Well, I certainly got a ride a little while ago. It just was not one I was expecting.

Flashback to about 4 hours ago, where I was downtown, having just completed the Race for Literacy 8K run from Balboa Park and down the 163 Freeway. On a happy note, I did the 5 mile run in 56 minutes, which works for me considering that's an improvement on the 4 mile run last August that took me 51 minutes. Plus today's race was rainy and cold. Was so happy to get outta there and back home, since the plan was to drive up to Disneyland to meet Sarah and the OSFs.

Well, Brit came to pick me up at 11:30, and she offered to drive this time. Fantastic, I thought, since I don't like driving in the rain and I was hoping to take a nap. We were driving up the 805, not even past the UTC area yet, when we got into a car accident. We're both okay. It was frightening, and those few seconds were harrowing. It's cliche to say that it all happens so fast. But an accident happened right in front of us, and then another car swerved in from the side. Brit maneuvered in between to avoid those two, but then hit another car that was also trying to get out of the mess... after the hit, there was some swerving going on, but no spinning around thankfully, and Brit got us on the shoulder. Someone from a car that was involved that was now behind us came storming up to one of the cars that was now in front of us and started swearing up a storm, and it wasn't pretty. Two people were carried out on stretchers after being removed from their car with the jaws of life. Thankfully, Brit and I weren't really injured, but our necks feel a little stiff and I think her back too...

The tow truck gave us a ride to a gas station, where Trent picked us up, and he dropped me off at home, and I feel somewhat numb... definitely a little frazzled (though not nearly as frazzled as Jim from the latest episode of The Office). Was looking forward to spending the day with the crew at Disney, especially as it's Sarah's birthday, but there's always next time. And I'm glad there can be a next time. Thank God no one was seriously injured, that more cars weren't involved and we weren't hit again from the side, since I felt like the right/passenger side seemed the most vulnerable once the car was swerving.

The day started off well with a successful run, and I'm determined to end it well. I think I'll take a nap, then head off to Flood and give thanks to God for keeping us safe through it all.

I miss my laptop.

I am computer-less at the moment, as my MacBook Pro has been sent to the Apple geniuses for repair. The best part of that is at least it's a free repair even though it's out of warranty by a month, thanks to the kind-hearted guy at the Genius Bar. Hopefully I'll have it back tomorrow. All it is - that I'm sure of - is the optical drive needs to be replaced. No wonder I couldn't burn CDs anymore...

But today was a good day! Started off with my Sunday beach run with my Team in Training mentor Heather. Did a 3.5 mile recovery run in PB, and then had breakfast at Kono's. Apparently they are known for their good grub, and I do not disagree. The "Little Breakfast" I had is not so little - wish I'd taken a picture! But it was great and now it'll be a meal for tomorrow - score...

Fit in my weight circuit at the gym, did my laundry, got some new polos, and then had a bro-evening with Chris. Had a great service at Flood, and capped it with dinner at Wahoos - no green sauce for me, thanks. ;)

Anyways - now to wind down and do a little reading perhaps before getting a good night's sleep.

-- Post From My iPhone

Random - Movies

A few days ago, I started thinking about the movies we used to watch as kids. I don't remember what triggered these memories in my head, but I started to reminisce. In my childhood, a staple for me and my cousins was to watch those Disney sing-a-long videos, where you'd follow the bouncing Mickey Mouse head to the lyrics, over scenes from Disney movies or the Disney parks (...land, ...world, ...which makes me wonder why there's no Disneyuniverse Park somewhere). And of course, the regular Disney movies, like "The Aristocats", "Beauty and the Beast", "Aladdin", and so on.

But what I was really reminiscing about was what I like to think are the top 3 movies of my youth - the ones I'd watch over and over with my cousins, and we'd have our favorite scenes, know the lines, etc. The short list may surprise you.

In no particular order --

1) Sister Act 2.

Not only did we have the movie (VHS y'all), we rocked the (cassette) soundtrack in my aunt's minivan all the time. It wasn't as successful as the original, but it was so much more fun! Now that I think about it, the high school setting of kids who could really sing and the teacher who tried to pull it all together totally reminds me of "Glee". The songs were hella catchy. I mean, "if you wanna be somebody, if you wanna go somewhere, you better wake up and pay attention"... yeah, I can still sing along. And the "Joyful, Joyful" medley that brought St. Francis Academy the state championship always had us singing and dancing along in the living room. Our favorite was the song over the closing credits, where the credits rolled over the cast singing and dancing to "Ain't No Mountain High Enough". Man, I wanna watch this movie again. Oh, and it's what introduced me to Lauryn Hill - whose music I still enjoy today. "Some girls/guys are only about that thing, that thing, that thiiiiiiiiing..."

2) Hocus Pocus

Yup, the Halloween movie with a young Thora Birch, Sarah Jessica Parker, and a talking cat named Binx. I never really celebrated Halloween (dang my parents and their overly conservatism), but my cousins and I watched this one alot no matter what season of the year. I don't remember too much of the story now - I know three witches came back from the dead because a virgin lit a special candle, and they needed to absorb the soul of a young girl before sunrise in order to remain alive again. Kinda ridiculous, but it worked. It wasn't scary, it was Disney-ish without being under their umbrella, and it had a fun musical number... that my cousins and I knew the moves. Moving on...

3) Ghost

I know, right? Why are a group of kids under the age of 12 enjoying this movie? Maybe we had a thing for Whoopi Goldberg because of "Sister Act"? Actually, that did have a lot to do with it. She was the comic relief in the movie (and won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress that year), and her relationship with Patrick Swayze's character was very endearing. She was the fraud psychic who all of a sudden could communicate with this ghost trying to send a message of warning to his love, and while the movie wasn't a comedy, their interactions provided a deal of humor to the dark yet romantic yet suspenseful film. Our favorite scene that we watched over and over and over was Oda Mae (Whoopi) first starts hearing Sam's (Swayze) voice and she starts freaking out when she realizes she can actually hear a ghost during the fake seance she was conducting. We just found the scene incredibly hilarious ("Sam Wheat???") - what can I say, we were young.

And thus ends my random trip down memory lane. [bows]

Let me see if you can run it, run it...

Girl indeed -- I can run it, run it.

I'm pretty sure certain those lyrics have nothing to do with running a marathon, but every time I get up to run, I tell myself that I can do it.

I haven't blogged about it yet, but I'm currently training for the San Diego Rock and Roll Marathon on June 6th. I joined up with Team in Training, which is raising money for the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society (LLS), and we'll be training as a group every weekend until the actual race day, in addition to mid-week scheduled runs that we can do on our own or with others.

This morning marked our 4th weekend run - we hit the one month mark! Exciting. We're building up our mileage and endurance week by week, and there are three levels you can choose from, depending on your experience. I went with the middle group, and on that first week, we ran 4 miles. (Note: whenever I refer to a "run" at this point, I'm more of a run/walk-er. I try to run for most of it though.) Today we did 8 miles... which is longest distance I've ever gone, and it's only going to keep getting higher until we're ready to run 26.2 miles.

It's definitely going to be a mental game moving forward. I'm pretty good at psyching myself out. But then the cheerleader in my head starts beating down the pessimist, chanting "you can do it, keep going"... and it's a good battle, until I'm back at the starting point and I've completed the entire run. It's tiring, but it's a good feeling knowing I made it. It was raining for a little chunk of the run too, which was an inconvenience... but it's like they reminded us in one of the earlier weeks: though we may get tired/sore, it's nothing compared to chemotherapy. And although our hair may get wet/dirty, at least we still have our hair... it's a good reminder of why all of us are doing this. Every week we hear a story from another team member who has a personal connection to leukemia, whether that's they lost a parent, have a close friend with the disease, or their child was recently diagnosed. And to hear a story about kids who currently have it, and yet still have their spirits up and are fighting the disease, it definitely motivates the rest of us. We know we're running for them, and if they can get through all their treatments and not give up, we can get through a couple miles of running.

Team in Training has helped each of us set up a site for donations, and we all have a goal we're trying to raise. If you're interested in making a donation to the LLS, please visit my fundraising page. I'll try to keep both my blog and that page updated with how everything is going.

With that being said (a phrase I've started to pick up from my mentor - heh heh), my legs are killing me, and I worked out my back yesterday as well, so I am taking the day to rest. And then running on the beach tomorrow... good times!

Happy Valentine's Day

I know, right? An odd topic for me to want to blog about, since I'm single and haven't been super motivated to blog about anything in quite awhile... but the following is what spurred me:

Now I've found the greatest love of all is mine

Since You laid down Your life, the greatest sacrifice

It's a song lyric - the pre-chorus (if that's the technical musical term here) to the worship song "Majesty". I'm not sure who the original performer/writer of the song is, but on my computer I have the version by Delirious.

Anyways, I was at church (Flood) tonight for the 6pm service, going by myself as per usual. I was looking forward to it, as I was having a pretty decent day. Woke up in the morning and went on a three-mile run along Mission Beach, had breakfast with two of my fellow runners at The Mission, sent out some emails about the marathon and raising money for the LLS, did my laundry, and had a nice weight lifting session at the gym. And to top it off, The Gate Called Beautiful (Flood's house worship ban) was having their first day back from maternity leave.

So I was actually very pleased with how I was spending my Valentine's Day as a single guy. Yeah, there were the jokes I'd tweet about celebrating "Independence Day" and the usual reference to "Single's Awareness Day", but there wasn't any sadness about being alone. In my mind, it was just another day (and thankfully for me a productive one).

But there I was at church, and it was during the post-message worship session that I felt hit. The band was leading us in the song, and it's one we've sang as a church many times before, and so I was singing it. But when we got to that set of lyrics I quoted up there, and the words resonated in a different way this time, I was just struck with the realization that I wasn't alone after all. That even though I'm not in a relationship or dating someone to share and celebrate all this love stuff with today, I suddenly remembered that I'm loved so deeply and passionately by a God who's faithful and whose grace and love have zero bounds.

Earlier in his message, Matt (our pastor) recounted a time when he was 17 and went to a youth group event at his church because the cute girls were going to be there. But as he was going through the motions of worship, he said he felt God grab a hold of his heart. That it was inexplicable, but that he felt the call to start following Him. And so for me tonight, it was somewhat surreal to have a similar experience -- to be standing there in His presence, feeling loved in the midst of my solitude, tears just coming out of nowhere, trying to hold it back because I felt silly but then just embracing the moment and continuing to sing out the rest of the song with everyone else. But this time, with a different feeling.

Majesty, Majesty

Your grace has found me just as I am

Empty handed but alive in Your hands

Majesty, Majesty

Forever I am changed by Your love

In the beauty of Your majesty