15

I'm writing this post for my wife. This year is our fifteenth anniversary and I have no idea how it's already been fifteen years. Our tenth anniversary was ruined by corona, so I'm trying to make our fifteenth as special as I can. The term "my wife" is one that at a certain point in my life I didn't think I'd have the opportunity to speak. I remember the night that I said I was going to  give eHarmony one more shot and if I don't find anyone, then I'm just going to figure a way to live my life as a single man. A few days later, I remember opening the site and seeing that I had matched with this particularly beautiful woman. The first line of her bio said "I love Jesus and college football". My first thought was this has got to be too good to be true. So I proceeded to do whatever I needed to to begin a conversation with her. I knew very quickly that I needed to figure out a way to not screw this up because I was smitten already. Admittedly, I moved very slowly. I had to work some things out from a previous relationship and make sure I didn't carry any baggage into whatever this was going to be. I hate talking on the phone. To this day, I hate it. I loved talking to Christa. I would sit and just talk to her for a very long time. She was sending very clear signals that she wanted to meet. I did not receive those signals. Christa was very patient with me. She is still patient with me, for the most part. From the time that we started talking until the time that I finally asked her to go on a date with me was about two months, maybe even three. We met at the Carlsbad Tavern, and I fell in love. It was easy. Not too long after that, we became serious. The sweetest thing about Christa is she is very easy to love. My relationship with her has never been hard. I don't even know if we've ever really had big arguments about anything. We were both 35 so the timeline may seem a little rushed, but within 10 months of our first date, I had asked her parents for their blessing to ask her to marry me. The conversation with them wasn't awkward at all having only met them two weeks prior to asking them if I could marry her. She kept me a secret from her family for a long time before meeting any of them. I still remember bein at Greasewood Flats to celebrate her birthday and her Mom sidling up to me at a table and asking me who I am and how long Christa and I had been dating. Sidenote here. I have the best in laws. I have friends that tell me nightmare scenarios about their relationships with their in laws. Jerry and Mary have been nothing but welcoming and warm to not only me, but to my family as well. I have no complaints about mine. Back to the point, we got engaged after a George Strait concert one night. Eight months later surrounded by all of the people we love, we were married. It's been 15 years now. We have two sons. We've walked through very tough times together. Christa is an incredible Mom and our boys are going to be good men because of how she loves them and is shaping them. If I had written a checklist of everything that I could possibly imagine in what I wanted in a wife, Christa blows all of those expectations out of the water. Proverbs 18:22 says, He who finds a wife finds a good thing and obtains favor from the Lord. All of the prayers in prayed when I was in my deepest, darkest loneliness were answered when Christa said I do. I don't know if you truly understand the hopelessness I felt for a really long time thinking that I was going to spend the rest of my life alone. There were some dark times. And then this light came in the form of my wife. She is a miracle. I tear up thinking about it all the time. God not only answered all of those prayers, He answered them so specifically and so beautifully, I don't know if I have the words to write to explain to you my gratitude for her. I wanted to write this today to tell you and her, just how much she means to me. And in going back and reading what I've already wrote, I'm not sure if I've done an adequate job in telling you of my appreciation for her. For all of her tangible qualities, there are many more intangible qualities that still draw me to her today. Her compassion, her drive, her gift of hospitality, her wisdom, her vulnerability, her trustworthiness, her understanding, her ability to be friends with just about anyone, the way she loves me, all of these things and so many more, make me appreciate her. Christa's love language is acts of service. More than anything I can buy for her, the thing that she loves is when I do something for her without her having to ask me to. I try to anticipate meeting her needs. I hope she knows that I love making her life a little bit easier. So Baby these fifteen years have been a direct answer to prayers that I prayed thirty years ago. Thank you for marrying me. Thank you for loving me. Thank you for our two babies. You are truly the best gift that I have ever received aside from salvation. I love you.

Change. What a generic title

 I can't shake it, so I've got to write it down.  We just got back from a vision meeting for a new campus that our church is looking at buying. It was great. I can see great things happening.  We're staying at our campus in Gilbert. In May of 2018, I walked into Christ Church not knowing what I was getting in to. Christa had been ready to leave the church we had been attending for a pretty decent amount of time already. I didn't know it, but I needed to hear the word of God speak into my life. Not some topic that looked good on the marketing material.I was standing in this new church and I realized that I hadn't been alive for a while. I hadn't grieved my brother.  I hadn't felt moved during worship, I also hadn't heard the phrase "here at Christ Church we go line by line and paragraph by paragraph through the Bible". They were in the middle of going through 1st Corinthians. Whatever the next verse is, is the sermon.  

I began going to the church not fully knowing how broken I was. Life was pretty fragile. I was holding it together enough to be present for my wife and boys. In silent moments, my mind would wander and think of any number of things besides the main thing. The first thing I remember about our first service there was, it felt like I was home. Prior to our visit there, we had planned on going to a number of other churches to check them out. After the first service was over, we walked out to the car and I told Christa that I don't think we need to go anywhere else. She agreed.  So we stayed. We got to know people. I went against my nature to stay quiet and not speak to people. I found myself receiving exactly what I needed. Relationships. I had been able to hide for about seven years. I didn't serve at the church we were going to. I just went. I thought that was all I needed. I was wrong. 

We moved through all of the processes rather quickly and within six months we decided to become members of the church. I had neglected my personal discipleship for so long. I couldn't fake my way through it anymore. The accountability and conviction were impossible to avoid. I had to dive in, so I did. My story is one of many. I've heard the same thing over and over and over. Now change is coming.

Basically, every pastor that we are close to, is moving to the Mesa campus. It stinks. People that have eaten several meals in our house over the years, are changing the location of where they work and serve. There will still be many meals eaten at our house. We will still remain faithful friends and congregants, but it will be different and I don't like it. Jarod, why don't you guys just go to the Mesa campus too? It's just straight up McQueen Rd. Good question. The reason why? That would be the easy thing to do.

 My decision to stay in Gilbert has a lot to do with the idea of being a person like I met when I first began coming to Christ Church. A person like Terry Horne who has been very influential in my discipleship. We went to lunch within a few days of meeting for the first time. His continued presence in my life at church and personally has meant a lot to me.  And I want to be that for people that newly come to the Gilbert campus. I've also began training to know the ins and outs of the entire sound system. Like if something is wrong, I fix it, not call Corey Wilson to talk to him about it. I've been leading a small group for a year, I want to keep doing that because we always need small group leaders. There will be weekends when we do decide to go visit the mesa campus I'm sure. I will need to run sound there when Corey needs a weekend off. But it won't be the same. 

An era that I am very fond of is coming to an end. And it's right that it's coming to an end.  The opportunity to buy this now defunct church campus is a miracle. I'm amazed at the way it happened. The raw piece of land is probably worth about as much as the asking price for the what they want for the land and all of the buildings. It's definitely the right decision. Our lead pastor (Adam Bailie) says all of the time, "I'm worried that we've become a cruise ship, when we need to be a battle ship". It resonates. He's right. There aren't a lot of people that I would go to war for, he's one of them. From another campus.

I don’t know how this story ends. The new location in mesa isn’t even ours yet. I trust that the people that are making the decisions are praying and using God given wisdom to make these decisions. I’ve been friends with enough pastors to know that half the people aren’t going to be happy with whatever decision is made. What I’m sure about is that God has been faithful in the past, he’s faithful right now, and he’ll continue to be faithful in the future. I’m inviting you to come to church with the Tomblin’s in Gilbert. In September though, there will be a new location of Christ Church opening in mesa. The chairs were made for the husky gentleman.