FHFYFUFU

I have a little phrase I’ve been repeating to myself as a reminder of my appetite. And no, I don’t mean peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, although I’m down if you have some to share. I mean appetite as in what I’m hungry for, what I want my life to be about and in turn, what I’m feeding it and how I’m feeding it. What am I doing each day? What am I not doing each day? More on all that here.

For her, for You, for us, for us.

The her is my future ________ (insert “girlfriend” or “wife” here).

The You is God.

The first us is for the relationship I’ll have with previously mentioned girlfriend or wife.

The second us is for the relationship I have with God.

It might sound simple, I know what you’re thinking. Love can walk through…wait, what? OK, it might be simple but it’s been a good reminder to keep my eyes pointed towards God– my savior, my helper, my provider. I don’t always get it right, but that won’t stop me from trying.

-Out of the Wilderness

I accidentally almost ran a half-marathon

Yeah, I almost ran a half-marathon today, 11.01 miles, completely on accident. I’m going to let that sit there for a second.

To put this in perspective, it’s more than I’ve run in the last 20 days COMBINED.

I ran over 11 miles when the original plan was to run 3, maybe 4. But I ended up at Percy Warner Park, which is where I ran a few weeks ago, and saw a sign that said “5.8 mile loop.” Crap, I can’t say no! Problem is, that’s the last time I saw any sign that said “5.8 mile loop.” I totally blame lack of signage for what happened this morning. It’s definitely NOT because I made 2 or 3 or 15 wrong turns.

Needless to say, I had plenty of time to come up with more things to write about! And in the 10th mile I saw 2 horses. That was the highlight of the morning, for sure. The owners let me pet them and they were beautiful, majestic, and I was really wishing I had 4 legs right about then. Although I would’ve passed on letting someone sit on me.

Here are a few screen shots of my ill-advised run…

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Creating time-lapse videos

img_20170926_133846307_hdr.jpgLately I’ve been on a time-lapse kick with my GoPro. Not sure why I’m obsessed with them right now but I am. I’ve recorded a lot of clouds, shadows, and a few other things. The settings I observed that work best are as follows:

Device: GoPro Hero3

Clouds: 1 pic every 5 seconds

Shadows: 1 pic every 10 seconds

Rivers/water: 1 pic every 5 seconds

People: 1 pic every 2 seconds

img_20170926_124717998_hdr.jpgYou will need at least a total of 210 frames to make a 7 second video (30 frames = 1 second), so make sure to do the math on how long you’ll need to record to get 210 frames, more or less depending on what you want. If you’re shooting 1 pic every 5 seconds, that’s 12 frames per minute which means for a 7-second time-lapse video, you’ll need to record for 17.5 minutes (210 frames divided by 12 frames a minute = 17.5 minutes).

If you’re recording a frame every 10 seconds, it’ll take longer to get a 7-second video. The math works out to be 35 minutes of record time.

Here’s a few of the time-lapse shots I’ve recorded recently.

-Out of the Wilderness

My very first Tom Petty memory

News broke today that Tom Petty has passed away so I thought I’d share my first memory of him and his music.

I was in middle school in the late 80s/early 90s and our family had recently moved to Stafford, Virginia. Our next door neighbors had kids around my sisters ages (high school) so they naturally became friends pretty soon after we arrived. At some point they started talking about music and my sisters’ new friend gushed about Tom Petty. I couldn’t help but laugh and think, “What a dork!” Who would like Tom Petty or his music? I thought I was so hip and evolved and my neighbor was out of touch.

Boy, was I wrong!

As I got older, my exposure to music expanded. It was probably some time in college or just after college that I thought back to that middle school Virginia story and was embarrassed again… but this time it wasn’t for my neighbor, it was for me. I was the one who needed to learn more about good music and it wasn’t just limited to the tiny handful of songs or groups I liked.

Tom Petty is a legend and sadly, it took years for that to become a reality for me. He was singing adult music and I was just an immature little child. Here’s a list of my favorite Tom Petty songs:

Free Fallin’

Don’t Come Around Here No More

You Don’t Know How It Feels

I Won’t Back Down

Learning To Fly

 

-Out of the Wilderness

To kill, or not to kill

A friend of mine met me for lunch yesterday and among the things we talked about was guns/ gun ownership/ self-defense. I think we got on the topic in somewhat of a round-about way, first discussing what we’d do (or have done) in scenarios where help might have been needed. Think: car accidents, someone being locked out of their car, house fires, robberies, that sort of thing.

We eventually got to a fear everyone’s thought about at some point: what if an intruder breaks into your house with a gun? I know there are different strategies based on who’s in the house already, like if you have a family, if you’re single, have roommates, etc. Our hypothetical scenario was us as fathers with a family in the house when it’s broken into. The question we asked was would we, or even could we, shoot to kill or would we do whatever we can to allow the intruder to live? My friend and I are both Christians, so while we agreed our first instinct was to defend the family, there’s another wrinkle to the story because we’d be dealing with someone that hasn’t met God…yet. Do we use a gun and, if the person is killed, take away their opportunity for salvation?

My stance was an enthusiastic, “Yes, send them to their Maker.”

My friend was discussing this days earlier and the other person in that convo is a father and husband, and he proposed that because he knows where his family members are going, as in Heaven because they’ve all become followers of Jesus, he would do whatever he can for the salvation of the intruder’s soul, even if it meant sacrificing himself or any member of his family. Sounds sick, right? That’s sort of what I was thinking but it’s more complex than that, and also there are ways to subdue the unwanted guest without killing, I guess.

So back to my friend and I chatting as we munched on lunch at First Watch. He then brought up the strongest defense in favor of the intruder… what example has God set for us in this kind of scenario? Well, He didn’t choose to save His son when He could’ve (when Jesus was on the cross, about to die). And Jesus died so others could live, so it’s kind of like the made-up scenario where maybe one of the family members dies, but the house intruder lives. God chose us, the humans/ sinners/ intruders over His son.

Rocked my world.

It’s still something I’ll think about in the coming days, but at this point I don’t know how that truth can be overcome. God chose us. He chose the ugly, mean, sinful intruder because He wanted us to have a chance at redemption. It’s a beautiful and completely unfair thing He did, and of course, I’m grateful.

But if I’m ever in a situation like the one that just happened in Vegas, I don’t know what I’d do. Are there more than the two obvious choices: let the gunman run wild, or kill the gunman? Maybe killing him so others can live is the answer. I texted my friend about what happened in Vegas and he texted back: “Shoot him… with a stun gun” …so maybe that would work, if the opportunity was there?

It’s a complex world we live in, and really the only way to rid ourselves of horrific events like [insert tragedy here] is to admit we are sinners in need of help. Then, as TobyMac says, “when love breaks through” things would begin to change for the better.

-Out of the Wilderness