Mad Men

Now that the World Cup is over, there is literally NOTHING on TV right now. Golf, racing cars, and baseball are the sports that are going on. It's like a trifecta of boring. I can get into an inning or two of watching baseball, but the rest, nadda. I'm always amused at people who say that soccer is boring, yet love to watch one of those three I just listed. Golf is great to watch when you want a nap. Racing is fun to watch when you want to have some redneck friends over for a bbq. Baseball is fun to watch when you're at the game...and even then I don't watch it.

All that being said, Mrs. McGoo and I have found a show that we absolutely love. "Mad Men." It comes on AMC on Sunday nights and this Sunday will begin the fourth season. "Mad Men" is widely thought of as the best show on television, with two consecutive Best Drama Emmys under its belt along with being the clear favorite for a third at the end of next month. I'd need to check with my crack research staff to see the last time, if ever, a show won three consecutive Best Drama awards, let along doing so in its first three years. (I'll let you know what I find out...and if I ever get a crack research staff) It also has my new celebrity crush in it as well. January Jones. Interestingly enough, I saw her on an award show the other night and told the wifey that I liked her better in the 60's.

There's only one problem to this blog post. We just finished Season 2. See, we borrowed Season 1 from UILF (Uncle In Law Frank) and have borrowed Season 2 and 3 from Mrs. McGoo's rents. So we've got a full season of watching yet to do. Good thing we have a semi clear weekend for the first time in a long time. So I'm sure we'll get a few episodes under our belt.

I say all this to let you know that you should start watching it. It's fascinatingly good. Especially good when all there is to watch is golf, racing, and baseball.

Busy Busy

As Mrs. McGoo alluded to in her blog, things have picked up quite a bit for us. This hasn't been the typical summer for us. We've both been extremely busy and I realized the other day that I have hardly spent much quality time with my wife.

Whether it has been school, kickball, work, housework, or some other things, we both have had plenty to keep us busy.

Summer school has been very hectic for me recently. I took a financial management class in what is called a "pre-term" session at the beginning of the summer. It was basically a semesters worth of work, wrapped up in 2.5 weeks. Crazy times I tell ya. Now I'm taking Sport Law and it is kicking my butt. It is basically law, applied to sports. I feel like I'm in law school. It is pretty neat to cover contracts and stuff, but some of the other things are a little boring.

It hit me two nights ago that things are about to pick up for us. As if our lives aren't already busy, the fall will present a whole new scope of things for the McGoo's. I came home from watching a movie with a buddy the other night (Inception, which I highly recommend) and I tried going to sleep. I just couldn't. It started to hit me that this fall was going to be crazy and my mind started racing.

I began thinking of all the things that are going on this fall and began to question how was I going to be able to manage it all. Here's what it looks like:

Soccer, School (20 hours - junior and senior level classes), house projects, my sister getting married, helping my mom try to move from Kentucky to Arizona. These are all the definite things happening.

There is a potential for something else on the table that I cannot speak about right now, along with bible study on Wednesday nights and potentially another bible study in the works. Then just trying to be a husband and spend time with my wife, friends, and family that is important to me. And finally, which should be first...trying to improve my personal walk with Christ.

I haven't even mentioned Kickball and fantasy football that seem to take some time to do.

As I was saying, I couldn't sleep the other night. Therefore, I went out into our living room and grabbed my bible and started praying. Just praying for clarity in knowing the things that I needed to do and pushing out some of the things that I don't need to do. Prayed that God can give me wisdom in knowing that he won't put anything on my plate that I cannot handle. It is the clarity that I seek in knowing what is from Him and differentiating what is from me.

That being all said, we'll just take one day at a time.

"The future is no place to place your better days"

Now to get back to reading chapter 7 on "Sexual Harassment." Joy

Two Passions

I grabbed this video off of Katie Dunlap's blog. It only took a few seconds of watching it to see that it had in it not only one of my passions (which is the greater one) but another one of my passions as well.

I won't say what they are. Instead, I'll let you guess...

Moses' Story from Global Support Mission on Vimeo.

In case some of you didn't know, Mrs. McGoo and I have been greatly affected by our trip to Africa. We constantly ask God that he continues to stir in our soul a way that we can continue to do missions, whether that is in Africa or here in Memphis.

I can tell you this...we're excited to see what God has in store for us in the future...

My Comfortable Life

Years ago my grandfather use to own a chair. It was HIS chair. He watched TV in it, enjoyed company while sitting in it, rocked his children to sleep in it, and eventually rocked his grandchildren to sleep in it. One day however, my grandmother bought him a new chair for their house. One that matched a little bit more with the decor. She offered the chair to me and I quickly said yes. Reluctantly, my grandfather gave up his chair to his grandson and the chair moved from his house to mine. When I went to visit him in Kentucky he use to ask me if the chair was still as comfortable for me as it was for him. He told me a few times that he never had a chair that was its equal. When he comes in town, he loves to come by the house and sit in it. I still refer to it as my grandfather's chair.

Now that I own it, I agree with my grandfather. The chair is VERY comfortable and as ugly as it is, I love it. I love my comfortable chair. My dogs love sitting in my lap when I am in the chair. One day I will hopefully rock my children to sleep in that chair.

I say all this because I feel like I've sat in my grandfather's chair long enough. My life has been comfortable for a long time.

Monday night our Ethiopian team members (minus 2 people) got together for a final debriefing of sorts. To come together to hash out what we had seen and what we have felt now that we are 3 weeks removed from our trip. It was a night of good food, good memories, and good conversation. Most talked about how life hit them in the face when they got back home and how difficult it can be to apply what they had seen to their daily life.

I kept rather quiet most of the night until a question was posed to me. I was asked what God was showing me in the time that I have been back. My answer is a two part answer..

1. Since I've been back, I've seen things a little different than I use to. I see things on the news differently. My heart responds differently to someone talking about what God is doing in their life. I had a friend go to Haiti recently and hearing her share her story actually meant something to me. Before my trip, I would have just said the token line of "Wow, that's great that God used you there." Then I'd go back to my own comfortable life. Now, it means more to me. I find myself wanting to do more with what little I have. I keep hearing in my head, "How can I make a difference in people's lives?"

2. Because of what I have seen, I feel responsible for my actions. Not that I wasn't before, but now I "know" and as GI JOE always says, KNOWING IS HALF THE BATTLE. I personally feel convicted of how comfortable I have become in my live. While Mrs. McGoo and I don't exactly have the funds to make huge differences in charities, we do have the belief system in our Lord that we can make a difference in things through our prayer, actions, time, and resources.

What I'm saying is that I've lead a very comfortable life. And I have noticed how we all find our ways into a life of luxury and comfort. A lot of my guy friends (YES, I'm calling you out) I met at church. We all met each other and use to pray for one another and now our conversations generally revolve around fantasy football, fishing, money, kids, work, beer, sports, and other things. As close as we are and knowing where we met, I couldn't tell you the last time I had a meaningful conversation with some of them about what God is doing in their lives. It is like we have all become so comfortable in our lives that talking about God and what he is doing has become a non-existent thing.

This bothers me. Big time. These are guys that I've been in their weddings. They've been in mine. I've had meals with them. Fished with them. Laughed with them. Watched sports with them. Traveled with them. Yet no conversation comes up about our Creator, Maker, and Savior. It's concerning. I'm holding myself as responsible because I've found my way into a comfortable life.

Funny, that's what the enemy wants of us. Have the good ole family. Get married, have a few kids, and get comfortable with having fun with our spouse and kids. Make us believe that is what life is all about. The classic nuclear family.

I'll let some in on a little secret. Those of you that might read this...I'm praying for you. I'm praying that God stirs you up and rattles you like he has me. I'm praying that your life ISN'T comfortable. I prayed about it at church on Sunday in our class. I prayed about it Monday night at our debriefing and I am going to continue to pray about it. I don't believe that Christ wanted us to life a comfortable life.

So I'm here to say to some of you. I'm going to be asking you what Christ is doing in your life. I want you to ask me what he's doing in mine. I give you that accountability for me. I pray that you can find comfort in God's provision for you and know that it does not mean that you can always have a comfortable life.

I'm beginning to understand that comfort in Christ is all I really need. He'll provide the rest. So here's to being uncomfortable.

Except when I sit in my grandfather's chair.

Traveling and Gods Directions

The past couple of days have been fun. On Saturday the wife and I headed out to the Blue Ridge Mountains to meet up with the Wilson clan for a family vacation. This would be the first that I and my brother-in-law Brent have attended since we both wed two of the three Wilson girls.

Anyone that has ever traveled with me knows that I love to travel. The one area that I could improve on is the preparation for the travel. For some reason, and I can't explain, I turn into a bear when we are getting ready. I get moody and short. My wife, who has experienced this more than anyone, understands this and, for the most part, lets me be. I'm not sure if I am worried about forgetting something or what, but I do know that I see travel as a time schedule and if we are not on it, I start getting stressed. I like to get on the road with no hassles and put 'life' behind us.

Once we got on the road, I calmed down and we had a rather pleasant drive. The area of Blue Ridge Mountains we are staying at are tucked away in an area that basically is the tip of Georgia, North Carolina, and Tennessee. Think the Ocoee River for some of you that have been near there. Where we are staying is actually in Georgia. As I was saying, the drive is beautiful. We took the route that takes us across the bottom of Tennessee, into Alabama, into Georgia, back into Tennessee, and then into Georgia again. The wife slept most of the way to the cabin, which should have taken us around five in a half hours. I say should because we ran into some trouble finding the cabin.

Once we made it to the point where our GPS no longer detects roads, we followed our printed out Google maps version. It said to take a right on Hardscrabble then a left on to Laurel Springs. CHECK. Once on Laurel Springs, go .3 miles and take a right onto Dana Rd (Which is where our cabin is). CHECK. Oh wait...there is no Dana Rd. So we drove up this street 3 times trying to find Dana Rd to no avail. My wife was manning the directions and I was following them to a T. Obviously she did something wrong! So she tried calling my father in law, but she couldn't get a signal. So we backtracked a bit and went back a few streets to make sure we didn't miss something. I pulled into a Dollar General about to walk in. I looked at the directions and pointed something to her that she missed. I had printed out text directions as well as mapped directions street by street. All you had to do is LOOK AT THE MAP and see what the next street was near DANA Rd. Pretty simple huh?

I'm being nice in this 'depiction' of our journey because it was anything BUT nice. I basically told her that she couldn't read directions and THIS is how you do it. So I went back where we were missing and was going to show her! The problem...still no Dana Rd. Fortunately we were able to get a signal (I did with my phone) and called my father in law to which he told me that you had to turn onto RHONDA RD (which we saw) and then turn onto Dana Rd. So we finally made it...only an hour later than we should have. And a good argument in between.

Moral of that story for me. Be cognitive of my words to my wife. I didn't want to talk for a bit after that and it occurred to me later Saturday night that it was exactly what Satan wanted me to do. Here we are trying to get away from 'life' and enjoy each others company and yet he used something as stupid as bad directions to cause an argument. It's amazing to sit back and realize how the enemy can interject himself into something so small and make it so big.

I thought about asking Heather for us to pray before we left on the trip. That God would watch over us in our travels and continue to bring fruit to our marriage and conversations. I thought about it and decided I didn't want to. Turns out I should be more sensitive to the spirit when my convictions are telling me something.

Turns out I neglected the most important directions before the trip ever started.