soon to be me

beliefs

Cody — Thu, 15 Apr 2010 05:56:32 +0000

If there is one thing I have learned in class this semester, it is that our beliefs can totally dictate how we think and feel and act. I’ve also learned from life, not class, that like-minded beliefs among people that gather get amplified. Get a bunch of crabby people together and then you’ll be surrounded by negativity. If a group of more positive people get together, stand back because amazing things could start happening. They might throw a party or change the world. Whatever happens, it’ll probably be good.

So Little Time

Cody — Tue, 06 Apr 2010 15:35:59 +0000

I must say that time just flies by. So many thoughts run through my head that I want to blog about, but then life keeps moving and I forget to sit down and write. While I get myself more organized, you can look below at who’s been on my mind this morning.

In Memoriam: Helen Mae Eiler

Cody — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 03:44:05 +0000

Andrea’s grandmother, affectionately known as Mum Mum, passed away at 7:30 this morning. She was 95 and in ill health so we know she’s finally at peace and no longer suffering. However unsurprising her passing was, the family is still sad at her loss.

I would highly encourage you to read Andrea’s blog post about Mum Mum.

Tagged: In Memoriam, Mum Mum

Getting More Fun

Cody — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 18:50:57 +0000

Linnea has been more and more fun to hang out with lately. Instead of just laying there crying or sleeping, she is finally starting to watch us and react to us. I love that.

Consider these pictures.

Daddy is singing to his daughter

Do I look like my daddy?

The first picture was me trying to learn/sing Coldplay songs to her while they played on the stereo. She seemed mesmerized by my guitar; so much fun. The second picture was taken by Andrea and she (along with the rest of planet earth) says that Linnea looks just like me in it. I don’t even think she looks like herself in the picture much less me. I think she looks like she just woke up from a nap and is still groggy. However, I guess that’s not far off from me considering how few hours of sleep I have been getting lately. I guess that must mean I’m looking ragged these days…but, in any case, she’s still cute. I can’t wait for her to get even more interactive!

Tagged: Coldplay, cute, guitar, Linnea, sleepy

growing up

Cody — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 05:33:28 +0000

The other couples in our small group just left about an hour ago after watching the 3rd installment of Financial Peace University: the budget lesson. We had a good time as always and spent time afterward chatting about how we’ve spent our money in the past–good and bad. One observation about the lesson that came out during our conversation is how many forms were included in it. There is the form where you can determine your net worth; the form where you plan out the big picture of your budget (3 pages worth); the form you use if you have irregular income; the form that helps you determine how each paycheck is going to be spent. It’s a lot of pages and, frankly, a lot of work for us beginners. It feels a little overwhelming sometimes and I think we all may have had the thought cross our minds that we can’t handle it; that this budgeting stuff is simply over our heads and that it’s much easier to just do what we want to do. OK, I can’t speak for everyone else in the group…but I am speaking for myself.

After everyone left the thought occurred to me though that this may be what real life is like. Maybe adulthood was never meant to be easy and that we can’t find magic bullet solutions to our problems. I thought about students I deal with each day. They don’t think about the content of their classes being useful. They want to choose the classes and teachers that are the easiest to pass. But, if these students really need to know statistics in their career, will the teacher that doesn’t challenge them really help them succeed? Won’t their education be sort of worthless?

Dealing with money is hard. I hate all the jargon that’s out there and all the gimmicks and scams that try to play on our ignorance. This means I have to really think and really try to understand what’s happening. I also hate stopping myself from getting the extra coffee during the day or just swinging by the In-N-Out on the way home from work. Habits are hard to break; discipline is unpleasant; but isn’t the process of challenging ourselves for a purpose? What if these moments of giving into our desires means we cannot achieve what we really want out of life? Is it OK to regularly treat ourselves when it means that we’re not prepared for unexpected events?

I know these things are really hard to do but maybe that means we need to become adults. Maybe we’ve been children this whole time and haven’t really been living life honestly. I certainly came to this conclusion about myself. It was easier to plug my ears and pretend the problems weren’t there but that decision ultimately makes life unhappy.

Let’s grow up, everyone, and be real men and women that can handle life and not just get tossed around by it!

Tagged: budget, discipline, Financial Peace University, growing up, Personal Finance

in the small stuff

Cody — Mon, 01 Mar 2010 19:00:48 +0000

It’s funny how God uses every day events and chores to speak to us. After all the rain that we’ve been getting here in Phoenix, the weeds have been starting poke out of the ground. There aren’t just a few weeds but tons of them. They’re an army of HOA fees waiting to pounce on us and it’s been on my mind to spray them down and kill them. I’ve researched different sprays and one of them promises to kill the weeds at the root. ”Yes,” I say to myself, “that’ll get rid of these pests for good!” Well, I know it’s not for good because I used this same stuff last year and the weeds are back. In this way they are just like all the nagging problems that I face in life. I’m not talking about my circumstances but more my character and my recurring sin that won’t go away. They just don’t go away it seems.

One of proverbial weeds that has haunted me is a sense of hopelessness. Last week or so I had a really random memory of a song I listened to in high school, maybe even middle school. It’s a song by Soul Asylum (anyone remember them?) called Promises Broken. Here’s the chorus:

Every little thing about this tells me
Nothing out there is ever gonna help me
All these words that I hear spoken are promises broken

Talk about depressing! I can sing it from memory; that’s how deeply it got driven into my mind. Will no one ever help me? Am I on my own? No. Not at all. This is a weed that I need to kill at the root. My class at Phoenix Seminary is helping me here. I am creating a profile of God based on the Psalms and this verse stood out to me.

The Lord is king forever and ever;
the nations perish from his land.
O Lord, you hear the desire of the afflicted;
you will strengthen their heart; you will incline your ear
to do justice to the fatherless and the oppressed,
so that man who is of the earth may strike terror no more.
~Psalm 10:16-18

God hears you and will bring justice. I need to tell myself this every single day until all those old doubts and fears start to be replaced by the confidence that the Lord gives us.

Tagged: God, justice, Phoenix Seminary, seminary, Soul Asylum, weeds

first shots

Cody — Sat, 27 Feb 2010 21:50:53 +0000

This week Linnea got her first vaccinations since leaving the hospital at 3 days old. As expected, she was not happy about this. The worst part of it all is that she had no idea it was coming and we did. She is still too small to know what needles are and, really, I’m not sure her vision has developed enough to make out these kinds of details (I’m completely ignorant of how quickly babies develop). Anyway, she was laying on the table very contented with her pacifier and then it happened: four shots. I tried reasoning with her. I told her that this is for her benefit and that she’ll avoid disease with these shots; but, she was just being a baby about it. To my chagrin (yes, chagrin) she isn’t into reasoning with daddy yet! I’m kidding here, of course.

But it’s hard to see her in pain, even if it’s a ‘no-big-deal’ thing like shots. There is certainly something in me that wants to take all that pain away. I think all the parents out there know what I’m talking about. In any case, I’m glad that it’ll be months before she gets another round of shots. At least, that’s what I think the pediatrician told us.

Tagged: crying, Linnea, pediatrician, shots, vaccination

Financial Peace

Cody — Wed, 24 Feb 2010 06:51:03 +0000

Our small group just started going through Dave Ramsey’s Financial Peace University last week and, let me tell you, it is a life saver. I’m a huge fan of Dave Ramsey because he has a solid, old-fashioned plan for your money. For years I had NO plan to speak of and, honestly, was too scared to learn how to navigate the financial world. It was foreign and, to make matters worse, I had preconceived notions that money was evil and that anyone with a lot of money probably wasn’t a good person. Why? Well, I assumed that God wants us to be poor, living life paycheck-to-paycheck, and exhaustively spending our lives in service to others; no simple pleasures allowed. If you know your Bible, you can see how these notions have a grain of truth in them but have been twisted from what God intends. The root behind these thoughts was my belief that God is an unhappy God that is more willing to dole out punishment rather than blessing. It took a while, but I’m finally changing these beliefs (a topic for another blog post).

Anyway, tonight’s lesson was about money and relationships. This is huge for me because money has been a gigantic issue in our marriage. The biggest problem with money is that we don’t have enough, of course. God has brought us from a place where we were doing fairly well with our income and placed in a much more desperate spot–not fun. The financial strain has really shown itself in our marriage and I can testify that money problems are marriage problems.

Ramsey has two basic categories of people relating to money: nerds and free-spirits. I’m a nerd. I tend to be a saver and very conservative and very exact with life (i.e. I like to be on time to things). Andrea is a free-spirit. She tends to be more of a spender, less concerned with details and more concerned with fun. She needs me to help keep us on track and I need her so that I can actually have a life. Well, my nerdiness rushes to the surface with money and I’ll start to ride Andrea’s case about the budget–nerd overload, if you will. My stress level rises and it usually ends in a fight or at least a less-than-ideal evening. I know that God is teaching me patience through this process. He’s also teaching me to let go of my death-grip on life because I ultimately do not have control. I need to trust my wife’s abilities and not treat her as if she doesn’t know what she’s doing or doesn’t care. This is so hard to do because it takes mere moments for the blood pressure to rise and for my anxiety to kick in.

I think I owe my wife a nice, relaxing vacation.

My efforts are paying off, though. The better phrase, actually, is that our efforts are paying off. I’ve been praying about my anxious moments and Andrea has really been engaging in our new plan. One of our main reasons for doing this is Linnea. It’s so hard to picture her beautiful face and then picture that face in 20 or 30 years dealing with the pain of debt. We hope to teach her well, set her up well for life and let her avoid the pain we’ve had to endure. For now, I’m just glad that she won’t remember how tough things have been.

And you should read Andrea’s first letter to her. It’s very, very sweet.

Tagged: anxiety, budget, Dave Ramsey, God, Linnea, marriage, Personal Finance, small group

proud daddy

Cody — Sun, 14 Feb 2010 04:14:46 +0000

Tagged: Linnea, parenthood

trying too hard

Cody — Thu, 11 Feb 2010 22:18:36 +0000

On the way to finding my calling, I have found something that I need to stop doing: trying too hard. I’m somewhat of a control-freak by nature and it is really, really easy for me to get lost in solving a problem and lose sight of the big picture. It really frustrates me when something doesn’t work so I tend to expend a LOT of energy to fix it. Imagine how hard that can be when the thing not working is me. **sigh**

I’m starting to think that finding my calling in life is not really found while taking endless personality tests, career aptitude tests, reading career books, listening to career podcasts and taking endless notes on everything I’ve ever thought that I liked. I have learned a lot of good stuff about myself but it hasn’t really worked. That’s annoying. I thought effort = results. Apparently, sometimes effort = spinning your wheels.

Maybe I should lighten up and have a little fun.Something tells me that’s when the proverbial lightning will hit my tired brain. Let’s hope so.