Big Decision & Big Steps Back In Time

I've got so many things going on in my world that I've seriously wondered whether it's wise for me to take the time to do this blogging stuff at all. So, I've done some praying about it, on good advice. In fact, let me mention something interesting, possibly worth a whole blog post - over the years, a number of people with Bible names have given me pieces of good, godly advice, some of which I've heeded, and some of which I haven't, but learned that I should have. One of these many Bible-named people is Michael H, former roommate and frequent visitor to this blog, who advised me in so many words, "pray about everything before you do it." I could go on and on about great advice I've gotten, & not always heeded, from people with names like Paul, Lois, Stephen/Steven, Annie (version of Anna), Philip, and so forth.

So, my prayerful decision is not to totally discontinue blogging, but to go on a strict hiatus every time I'm taking a Jewish Studies course. What that means in practice is that I'll be an active "force" in the blogosphere (to put it a bit grandiosely) during the approximately two-month turnaround period between courses, and then crawl under my rock for a period that could be as short as three months or as long as an entire year. This goes along with my other prayerful decision, which is to try to complete my Jewish Studies courses in a substantially shorter time than I've been doing so far. So, that's my decision, and I believe the LORD led me to it.

Now, I'm picking up an open tag from Dave, on a meme called "Big Steps Back In Time." Dave's another one of my Bible-named friends. I don't recall any major pieces of advice from him, but since we're in regular contact via the blogosphere, his golden nugget may still be coming my way.

25 Years Ago I...
Was a junior in high school
Played cello in the HS orchestra and a dinner music group called the "Rainbow Strings"
Thought I was going to be an optometrist

20 Years Ago I...
Was a senior in college
Played in the college orchestra and the Fargo-Moorhead Symphony
Had taken two years of Latin and was in my second year of Greek
Had just experienced a life-changing experience of disappointment of which I will say nothing more

15 Years Ago I...
Had recently graduated from seminary and was in Western Wisconsin taking my second unit of Clinical Pastoral Education, working as a student chaplain at a nursing home and hospital
Re: the above, I was in a 6-month period of time in which I actually lived in a hospital room! People don't believe me when I tell them that ...

10 Years Ago I...
Had just moved from Texas, the site of the first church I pastored, to Indiana, the site of the second church I pastored
Was working a temporary second job as an evaluator of standardized diagnostic tests (I specialized in 10th Grade Reading). I ended up doing that job three times while in Indiana, and it was one of my favorite jobs of all time.
I had recently met the aforementioned Michael H, and was slightly over two months away from meeting my bride-to-be

5 Years Ago I...
Had lived at our present home for two months. At the time I pastored just one church, the "town church".
Had joined a college/community orchestra in the region, the first time in five years that I had played in an orchestra
Was in the midst of a long search for the "perfect" distance learning grad program

2 Years Ago I...
Had been working with both the "town church" and the "country church" for a few months
Was taking the "Jewish Theology" course from Spertus
Had an alarming case of chest pain, which turned out to be only a mild case of acid reflux which was gone after a brief period of treatment. But, to make a long story short, the med exams and treatment I had in October 2004 proved to be a wake-up call that spurred me on to change my physical self-care so as to buy more tomorrows, as the LORD wills. At the time I weighed about 220-225 pounds.

1 Year Ago I...
Started the "Medieval Judaism" course
Weighed 193 pounds (I would creep up to 199 during the ensuing Holiday Sweet Treat season, but managed to keep it below 200)

Yesterday I...

Preached at two churches
Went to the park with my wife and our dog
Assisted in cooking the evening meal, including some wonderful sweet corn grown by another Christian guy named Dave, an organic farmer who was one of the main influences towards me being a "crunchy conservative"

Today I...

Will take my wife to the podiatrist and do a couple of hospital visits
Might try to straighten up my office a little bit
Might also try to clean out the rain gutters & spouts ahead of the possible first snow on Wednesday
Weighed 179 pounds! Woo hoo! The lightest I've been since 1994, and I'm within 10 pounds of my goal!

Tomorrow I...
Do more office & ministry work
Might be doing the aforementioned rain gutter work that might not get done today
Hopefully won't creep back up to 180 again