A strange couple of days here have left me scratching my head. Saturday we were looking forward to getting together with my mom's side of the family out at my brother's place in Indiana. It's about a forty-minute drive out there and we were having a great time until Kaelyn just went a little crazy; she had a few weird days where she's barely slept. So we left after a couple of hours, spending almost as much time in the car as visiting. Not so good.
That night I was invited to a party hosted by a guy on my soccer team. It was cool to meet some of his friends but it ended up being a classic frat party with keg-stands and liquor luges. It was a great venue in which to start a conversation with, "So, yeah, I'm a minister." But I was actually able to have some meaningful discussions with people who were only slightly inebriated. So, all in all, pretty good.
Then yesterday I was speaking out at the Bethel Church of Christ. They have two services: a traditional and contemporary. In the traditional service, median age 68, I might have delivered the worst sermon I've given in a few years. I did, however, get in the line "baptize them in beer" which actually received laughs. I was a little better in their second service, but still not great. Again, not good.
But we had a chance to go to lunch at Rob and Alicia Gee's house out there. Rob and Alicia are some great people who drive a half hour each week to come to Echo. Their kids Henry and Sydney are wonderful to Kaelyn and Alecia's food was restaurant worthy. So things were getting better.
At church last night Derek and Rachel Brown filled in for Tye and told about their mission trip to Guatemala. They did awesome. But I followed that up with another egg, rounding out an overall bad day of preaching. I thought I could put the weekend behind me and woke up early this morning to work out at Xavier. I get in the Explorer and it refuses to start. It's at this point that I wish I had my own liquor luge.
But before I fret, I call my buddy Micah. We were on staff at Mason together. He's a mechanic and knows my car from three years of working on it. He and his wife Missy just welcomed their fourth child, Levi, into the world and he was glad to give me advice. He reminded me that it was a similar problem that I had with it four years ago [the idle air control for you auto-clubbers] and all I really needed to do was disconnect it, tap it with a hammer, and reattach it. Sure enough, I did that and the car started right up. Excellent.
Honestly, I'll forget about this weird weekend in a few days but I was really down last night; I even went to bed a couple of hours early. But that's what I like about the new week: it can all turn around today.