The Way

So . . . it has been awhile. I have no excuses. I just have not blogged. Let me try and do a quick catch up here. November - the whole family flew to Phoenix, AZ to be support Mark in Ironman AZ. He did an awesome job in some really cruddy weather (rainy and cold) and completed a complete IRONMAN on a broken foot. He is a beast! We had a great Thanksgiving. Sondra and I traveled to east TN and enjoyed our time with Mark's family on his grandparent's farm. Wil had a birthday the end of the month. What a great young man. We are blessed to have him in our family. December - we all headed to KC for my nephew's wedding in early Dec. It was great to see family and attend the wedding. James (Jimmy) and Megan had a beautiful wedding (officiated by my dad) and they live in the Dallas/Ft. Worth Metroplex now. Beautiful couple.  - Mark had his tonsils removed which is a big deal at 5 and a horrible deal when you are 26. He was down for a couple of weeks.  - We all spent so...

Sometimes I get more than I aimed for. I realize that is a terrible way to start a blog post and to end a sentence, but it is very true. Sondra will always be the one that I out punted my coverage on. As a young teenager, I made a list of what I would look for in a wife and then I met Sondra in college. I looked at my list, wadded it up and threw it away. She was and continues to be more than I ever had dreamed of as a mate. Then God gave us two daughters. I have written much about each of them. Shelbi and Morgan are truly delightful, wonderful and far more than I ever dreamed gifts from God. Sondra and I made some mistakes along the way in rearing them but we intentionally purposed to help them love the Lord their God with all their heart, mind and soul. As they grew and matured and headed off to college, God brought a couple of young men into their lives. Mark grew up as an east Tennessee boy where I think they got indoor plumbing about the turn of the century. ;-) He and Shelbi...

One of my favorite memories of being a dad while Shelbi and Morgan were young girls, were the times that they would take their own money to the store to buy something. Most of the time it involved something Barbie but sometimes it would be something like rocks. You know those bins of rocks that were so mesmerizing for young eyes. So many small things in a various array of colors. It was always a "fun" time trying to help the girls understand their options based upon the amount of money they had to spend or the packable space still left in the '95 Saturn. (Still driving that beast by the way! I know you are jealous.) Invariably, the question, "How much does it cost, daddy?" followed by, "Do I have enough?" Sometimes when they did not have enough, I would make sure that they were covered. It's what we dads do sometimes. It was in those times that I realized that I was investing in their lives not only for the "here and now," but in hop...

How is it that time goes by so quickly? I remember when I was a kid, my mom and dad would talk about how quickly time goes by and I would sit and wonder, "what the heck! Time doesn't go by quickly, it has taken me ALL MY LIFE to get to be 12 years old!" But now . . . my perspective has changed. Time does by quickly. And I realize that more just about every day. So . . . since my last post, here are a few things that have happened. This is big news! Over Labor Day Weekend and after 29 plus years, Sondra and I said, "so long! to our waterbed." I can a bit of a slow adopter, but 29 years was enough. It was a good bed. She had sprung a leak or two over those years but that bed served us well. It must have weighed about 5 million pounds so I am sure there will be less stress on our floor joists. Our new bed arrived and we both seem to be sleeping pretty well. We are in the process of finding some new bedroom furniture too. Not my favorite pastime but pretty much...

Yesterday, Sunday, August 11th, was Shelbi and Mark's 1st Anniversary. What a whirlwind the week was leading up to their wedding, and what an amazingly quick year it has been since that wonderfully, great day. This past week we were blessed to have Mark and Shelbi at the house for a few days. I have to tell you that it is very exciting to see how the two of them are honoring God in their lives and relationships. Sure makes a dad proud. It also pretty much marks a year that Morgan and Wilson (Wil or Wil P. as I call him) have been officially dating. I am not sure if I have introduced Wil to my blog readers but I guess if Morgan is going to keep him around for a year, I better do some introductions. Wil and Morgan met at Union and both graduated this past May. Wil graduated with a double major (best I remember) in history and I think biology. He is smart guy. He knows alot about alot of things but does not come across as a know-it-all by any stretch. He is his own person which I...

So the last two weeks have included a lot of in the car trips. Since I was driving I got to throw my bike in the back so even though I did alot of driving, I did some a couple of fun rides as well. Morgan and I headed out to Chattanooga for a World Changers project and enjoyed some time together along with visiting some great ministry sites. I host Ben Trueblood and Eric Geiger for some of the sites and really enjoyed spending time with them. Both of those guys are great guys who got to see students in action helping others. It was alot of fun. Over the weekend, our family met up in Rome, Ga for Shelbi's 23rd birthday and we had a great weekend. I got a nice bike ride in over to Berry College and Winshape, we ate cake, Mark and I played a little golf and we attended church together on Sunday. It was such a blessing for all of us to be together! On Sunday, I headed towards the mountains of North Georgia to meet with a great church and help their staff work through some cla...

prep·a·ra·tion    /ˌprepəˈrāSHən/ Noun The action of making ready or being made ready for use. Something done to get ready for an event or undertaking. Some of you know that I am training/preparing for a Sprint Triathlon in May. I have been a runner for many years but a few months ago was challenged by one of my friends to do a triathlon. You know I am stubborn (I like to think of it as "disciplined") so I took up the challenge and the preparation that goes with trying to complete a short (very short) triathlon. A couple of events have happened in the last couple of days that have made me think about preparation/training in a little different way. Our oldest called this week, sharing with us that as a nurse, she lost her first patient. It was a traumatic death and one that shook Shelbi to the core as you might imagine. I will spare you the details, but I did remind Shelbi that God had been preparing her for a long time to work with patients and that there would c...

How in the world does a dad steel himself for not only giving away the bride, but also officiate the ceremony? I have no idea. I do know that yesterday was an amazing day of worship, and family and friends.Thanks to so many who have prayed for us as parents and for our girls. Mark and Shelbi's wedding day was splendid. It was great fun to see so many family and friends and we are especially excited to be family with not only Mark but his entire family. I am not sure they know how to take us, but it was just a sweet time with Mark's parents praying right before we all headed down the aisle. Just another huge blessing among so many others. The newlyweds are enjoying the week together and we are getting back to some normalcy. Thanks for continuing to pray for the new Ellison family; Mark's parents and family; and for those Turner folks as well. And she "left with her new favorite boy."

So it is Monday, August 6th and I have lived 48 August 6ths before but this Monday starts a different week for us as a family. This Saturday, Shelbi, our oldest trades her name in for one that comes alot earlier in the alphabet. It is true, Shelbi Brooke Turner will become Shelbi Brooke Ellison and Mrs. Mark Ellison. Holy freaking cow! our baby is getting married! And . . . it is a very good thing. I spoke about Mark earlier here so I will not rehash that all over again. I will say once again, how thankful and proud we are to have him as a part of our family. This past few months (about four or so) Sondra and Shelbi have been in wedding prep mode. Actually I think they both had been thinking through alot of plans prior to the engagement and just put most of that plan into action in April. To watch those two has been a blessing in itself. A little background will help you understand that last statement. Both Shelbi and Sondra are "planners". They make lists of lists of t...

And thankfully not a baby! but we are definitely adding to our family. This morning about 930ish, Mark proposed to Shelbi on our front door step. He called me last week, we set up a Skype call for earlier this week since I have been traveling a lot, and we had a great conversation via Skype on Monday. He asked for our blessing and permission to ask Shelbi to marry him and we granted him that honor. There are a lot of things that come flooding to my mind as I think about what has transpired and what will soon transpire as we prepare for a wedding, but the purpose of this post is to let you know that we are extremely excited about Mark and Shelbi being engaged and probably soon to be married. (I really can't say much about them wanting to get married soon since Sondra and I were engaged only about 6 months before we married.) I do want to take a minute and let you know Mark from my perspective. The motto at our house is and has been, "boys are bad" and as they girls ...

Shelbi & Alcatraz We had a great Christmas break as a family. It was big fun to celebrate Christmas with Evelyn too since this was her "first real Christmas" as she put it. On New Year's Eve. Shelbi and I flew to San Francisco to spend a few days together before I started teaching a class at Golden Gate Seminary. We did all of the touristy stuff and really just enjoyed hanging out together. How quickly she has become such an incredible young woman. Actually we are blessed with two daughters who are simply amazing. I have included a couple of pics of our time out here in CA. May God bless you as you head into 2012. We are expecting God to do some great things in and through us. Not because He has to but we as a family are positioning ourselves to be all that He wants us to be. Palo Alto 5k One of the other fun things we did was run a 5k on Jan. 1 in Palo Alto. Here is a pic from that too.

I remember three years ago when Shelbi said to us that she had been praying for awhile and really felt like God was calling her to the nursing profession. We were a little surprised since she had never ever intimated that to us but were very supportive. She has great skills, talents, and the temperament to help others so it definitely fits the way God has wired her. A couple of days ago, I saw this commercial, It definitely reminded me of Shelbi. She is currently doing a clinical at St. Jude's.

Sounds like a line from Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band but actually it holds greater significance for me on this day today. I was youth pastor at FBC, Donelson, Tn and had taken our youth group to camp with Two Rivers Baptist Church. Two sister churches who decided not to compete for kids but reach as many as we could in ministry. Med Skeens was the youth pastor there at the time and we had a good working ministry relationship. We were at camp at Panama City Beach, FL and my wife called me at 3a and said it was time and that I needed to get home. A little background - Sondra was great with child and that child was to be Shelbi Brooke. She was not due for another 2 weeks so we made all kinds of contingency plans just in case I was in FL at camp when Shelbi decided it was time to make her entry into the world. It might very well be the last time she was early to anything too. I climbed on a plane, connected in Atlanta and arrived at the hospital with about an hour to spare. So...

This was an interesting weekend at the Turner's. Shelbi had been in China for two weeks with Show Hope and was to return on Friday night but with bad weather across the northern part of the US, she made it to Newark and then flew to Washington Dulles and that was as far as she was able to get. We got her a hotel not far from the airport and she spent the night and got home on Saturday morning. She had a great trip and you can read some of her exploits here . Her boyfriend Mark was surprising her by having some time off from his summer job at Winshape , so he drove over on Friday and was with us Friday and Saturday. He might have thought it a little awkward being at our house without Shelbi but hey, he got to do his laundry and eat some non-camp food so I think overall he was pretty good with it. Friday night was also rehearsal and rehearsal dinner for Kyle and Rachel's wedding that I was officiating on Saturday at 530p outdoors. The trick was that we needed no rain which we g...