Whiny Kids Are a Beautiful Vacation

Yesterday, I began my vacation ... and I did it at McDonalds with whiny kids! Well, despite the failure of the "Happy Meal" to live up to its name ... "I'm lovin' it."

Family has been circum-navigating my heart every since I left for my trip. While I know that most of you out there are perfect ... you humor me by reading my blog to gather some faint idea of what imperfection feels like. Often times my past relational boo-boos and blunders are thrust into my heart.

"How could I have even thought such a thing ... much less have said it!?" "Man, what a idiot!" You remember the feel of finger nails scratching across the chalkboard? Yeah ... then you understand my gut wrenching during these lovely trips down Memory Lane.

Then ... and thankfully "then" comes ... then I remember that I actually have children ... which several years ago I never believed would grace my life ... my less a wonderful darling of a wife.

At one time I entertained the fantasy of meeting who was to become my beautiful bride in high school or even college. Not any more! I would have ruined my chances from the first hello.

But look at us now ... not perfect ... but continuing to build a very beautiful friendship. What a mightifully wonderful God I serve! You see Salvation is not simply a one moment of conversion. It certainly includes that, but Salvation is so much more. Salvation following that one moment of conversion includes taking that idiot I was and molding and shaping me into the husband and father I am today ... not that I've "arrived" or obtained mathematical perfection in husbandry or fatherhood. But I'm not where I was ... and I'm also not where I'm going to be next month or even next year!

Salvation is not clean ... its down right kids-gettin'-the-ketchup-in-the-hair messy. The Holy Spirit is so marvelous. So ... yeah ... I'll take a vacation with less than sit-up-and-shut-up-style kids any day. After all the presence of my kids is the tangible evidence that I'm on vacation from the power of the sin that so easily beset me ... and I don't plan on returning from that vacation! Yes ... I can easily return to my former self and former mistakes ... but the good news of the Gospel is that I don't have to! A major part of the Gospel is the opportunity of being transformed from depravity into the righteousness of God. In a Ronald-McDonald-hair fashion ... that is wild!