Happy Birthday to ME!

That's right, today I am 42 years old. Sidebar, Your Honor (wow, is it possible that i am really 42? 42 is old, it is 8 years from fifty, ... FIFTY! It doesn't seem right.) 42 years ago today, I was born ignorant, helpless, and unable to control my bladder. Some would say that not much has changed. What has changed is both wonderful and troubling. The wonderful part is that I have a great wife and kids, a job that I love, friends that I enjoy, and a growing appreciation for this life and the time that I have to live it. My birthday is truly satisfying because of the good season of this life that I am in. I am very blessed by God. The troubling part is that I have more of so many things that I don't want. More wrinkles and bags around my eyes. More hair on my nose and ears (my wife calls me a koala bear), and less on my head. Like weeds on a parking lot, it doesn't seem right that hair should grow on my nose and ears. I spend more time now on hair maintenance than I should have to. I have more pain in my joints. I have more things to do than I have time for, and more bills than I have money for. I have more exhaustion, forgetfulness, confusion about technology, and plaque on my teeth. What I need more of is patience and wisdom. Oh well, maybe next birthday.

What?!?!

What am supposed to do blog once a week? Come on, this was set up to be a quarterly blog. So I blog on Easter, and now it is near the 4th of July so it is time to blog again. Look, it is not my fault that the blogging community decided that normal is blogging like once a week or everyday. Who has that kind of time? Seriously. I can't make that kind of commitment. It takes too much effort, and I am tired from being old and tired. So ok, I would like to commit to a quarterly blog, but I understand from some of you (Heather Earnhart, Sherri Stone, Denise McCoy, Robin Williams) (no, not that Robin Williams, he's funny) that having a blog means keeping up with it. So for my four avid readers (to me, it is avid if you look at this sight once a quarter), I will again promise to keep up with this blog. Also under threat of removing useless items from our website, I have renewed my efforts to blog (as if a quarterly blog is considered useless, look, a hundred years ago people thought a quarterly blog was good enough, but not now). So there. Ok moving on from the whining and crying which I tell my kids not to do, a lot of things have been happening around here besides employees quiting all the time. I will get to all the news next time (Monday, not Labor Day).

Snow on Easter?! The Final Insult.

Ok, a white Christmas I get. Even snow on Martin Luther King Day or President's Day or New Year's Day. But snow on Easter?!! Come on, this is just getting ridiculous. A few blogs ago, I wrote how I was sick of winter and ready for spring. Well, a few weeks later and it is cold and gray and it is almost April and there is no sign of spring. I guess Mother Nature and Mr. Winter got together and decided to have the last laugh and extend this cold winter for another month. When I am out in the cold for a few harsh minutes pumping gas, walking 50 feet to work, or going out to get the paper off my driveway, I think I can actually hear Them laughing at me in the biting wind. Ok, look, I realize that our forefathers, pilgrims, pioneers etc., would look down on me and consider me soft for complaining about being cold as I go from my heated home to my heated car to my heated workplace, but times have changed. They felt lucky to be alive come springtime, I want to be warm and start playing golf. So maybe I am soft and weak and I never would have survived 200 years ago. I feel lucky to live in this time, but I bet George Washington and Thomas Jefferson would complain about this cold winter too. Complaining about the weather is kind of like a past-time in itself. It is what we do, so here I go, I am sick of winter. Now it will be cold until May.

"The Kingdom belongs to such as these"

Madeline Mitchell is the newest addition to the CFS family. She is the first child for Jodi, one of our social workers. As you can tell by the picture, she is really cute and really happy (for the moment).

Look at me!

Hey! Look at me, I figured out how to put pictures on my blog without the help of Robin, our resident genius. I thought I would try to make my blog more interesting, so what is more interesting than a picture of me hard at work. I took a picture of myself at my desk while I was on the phone with someone. Now that is multi-tasking. So here are my observations about myself on the phone. I seem slightly interested in what the person on the other end is saying. I seem distracted, probably because I was taking a picture of myself. I have a very short haircut which I give to myself about every two weeks. I hold the phone in a very manly fashion. There. I should get back to work now taking more pictures of myself and others around the office. See you soon.

Hello! Blog, where have I been?

Wow! Has it been a month? Where have I been? My apologies to my blog. It's not you, it's me. I know that I left you alone for a month, but I have had a difficult time getting through these groundhog days of winter. I feel like I have been in a daze or a haze or something that feels like a fog. Everyday was cold and gray and my system was sun-deprived. I feel like I just woke up and February was over. Well, I am awake from my long winter's slumber now and I am looking forward with great anticipation to SPRING! I went outside today and stood in the sunshine for a few minutes. I had forgotten what that felt like. I felt very hopeful. Spring is a welcome transition that brings hope with it. We have had a lot of transition around CFS these past few months. We have a new executive director in Steve Awtrey. He is doing a fantastic job! Honestly, I am not saying that just because he is my boss and he reads this blog. (Hey Steve! You are the greatest guy in the world!) We have a new staff member in our social work department, Miquilaue. She has a beautiful name, and is young and smart, two things that I used to be. Another WOW! (as we call it) has been the addition of Erin to our office staff. She braves the Metrolink everyday to work here, and usually has a good story to tell about her experience riding the train. Wait until you see what she has done with our new website coming soon. Transition always brings hope, and I am excited about the coming spring. See you next week, blog, I promise.
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Staff Day

We just had a annual staff day where we close the office, get away from the phones, and look ahead to the new year. Here is what I got out of it, I really like our staff! What a blessing it is to like, love, and respect the people that you work with. We had a time during the day where we all shared some things from our personal life and spent time praying about those things. What I learned is what we all know, that we all are battered, bruised, and scarred from this battleground of life. We come to work at CFS with a passion and a mission to help the hopeless and the helpless, but we also come with our own burdens and baggage. We have stress, health concerns, families to worry about, financial concerns, the list goes on. We come to work as people wanting to help and needing help ourselves. Jesus once said to Peter, "Satan has come and demanded permission to sift you as wheat. But I have prayed for you that your faith will not fail, but when you do fail, turn and strengthen your brothers". The call of this life is not to avoid failure because we can't. The call of this life is to do something with our failure. It is what we do here at CFS. We help the fallen, because we are the fallen.