the.slow.down

well i leave thursday morning bright and early (thanks for the ride carl) for the desert of southern california. joshua tree national park to be exact.

i’m heading on a cool “retreat” of sorts. it’s called wilderness leadership training. basically i’m going out to be by myself in the desert for 5 days. i won’t be checking my email, phone, or talking to anyone (other than my crazy self and God).

i did a similar trip here about 2 years ago out in colorado which was a really powerful experience for me. the time is designed to be difficult emotionally and physically. designed to help push you into a needy place where you can cry out to God and meet with Him. so as i’m anticipating this time, i’m both scared and excited. scared of being alone by myself - which most of us have never done in this kind of a extended way. and excited because i know that God is eager to meet with those that put them in a place to hear and that feel their need.

i’d really cherish your prayers, if you think of me over the next week or so. we enter our solitude on sunday (28th) night around 6pm and finish the solitude on Friday(26th). here are a few particulars you could remember…

• pray that i would really experience God, meet with Him, and hear from Him.
• pray that i would sense the Lord’s leading for the life of our family and our future.
• pray for Jayne, Tommy and Lou while I’m gone. she does great when i’m gone, but it’s a long trip. pray that she’d get and accept the help she needs.
• pray that i wouldn’t have migraine issues while i’m out there

have a great 10 or 12 days and i look forward to updating on how things went when i return…

just an fyi for all you rss subscribers…

i’m back, the thing works again, also upgraded to wordpress 2.0.6 (the best blogging platform out there btw.)

so after reading that chapter, quite compelling as it relates to flushing out our “compulsive self”, i probably shouldn’t even be writing here.

what a wordy world we live in. words everywhere, here before us, as i type, as you read, all over your screen, before our eyes wherever we are, in our speech, into our ears. words everywhere.

a large part of the asceticism of the Desert Fathers was the practice of inner silence as a way to communing with God so that as speech was required it could be spoken simply out of a deeper well than any we possess in ourselves.

again, read the book, there’s lots of good words in there.

some thoughts/reflections/memories prompted out of this great book.

i’m reminded of the pain of being alone out in colorado wilderness lt. the pain of not having anything to do, to take up my time, someone to talk to, something to run to, my obesesion and wild thoughts of a million different things just to keep me from dealing with me me. that compulsive self, false self is so true. coming to a place of brokenness, of naked neediness, though it sounds so good and what i desire as i sit here in comfort surrounded by a full schedule, friends, family, stuff to do, things go acomplish, meetings to attend, conversations to have. Continue reading ‘thoughts from the way of the heart by Henri Nouwen’

well, when you’ve been slacking on the whole blog thing and then new years comes around, you feel somewhat compelled to post, well something, anything really, b/c you almost have to, or shame on you blogger wanna be (preaching at myself if you didn’t quite catch that)

anyways, so the rohlfings had a VERY laid back and low key christmas and new years. we’re on the “no travel at christmas plan” for a while and so we just hung out with our kids, spent time with local friends as they were around and basically got some much needed refreshment. i think we did at least.

when you get right down to it kids wear you out. in a sweet and special way they’re akin to a version of chinese water torture with their never ending endurance and energy. there are always needs, fights to moderate, emotions to work through, conversations to be had. of course each of these engagements sucks out of you a certain amount of already limited energy, that isn’t so easily recovered.

it was definitely less stressful and overwhelming to not be on the road a bunch or have to worry about living out of suitcases with 2 little kids for a week, so that was really nice. and it was great to spend some good times with friends who had a little more time than usual as well.

my friend ben and i embarked on destroying our master bath, for a much needed remodel (we’ll just say water damage). so here’s what our master bath looks like currently:

nice eh? so you can guess what will consume my spare time [insert laughter] for the next 6-36 months. but we do have some fun plans so we’ll see how it goes… as a side note here, i scored a 350 dollar skylight for this bathroom for 108 bucks, not too shabby if you ask me, i was stoked!, 21″x47″ BIG!!!

i figured it would be good to get a couple holiday pics of the kids up so here ya go:

yes they’re ridiculously cute, we know! and thanks!

as for me, well what’s coming up in 2007:
- i get to spend a little over a week in joshua tree national park, california, here at the end of January, which i’m excited about. Going out there with a program called Wilderness LT, for 5 days of solitude in the desert. should be good, if i can survive the emotions of isolation i’ll experience after about 2 hours.
- i need to do a LOT of support raising in 2007, and in actuality, jobwise that will consume me for the year methinks. thanks so much to those of you that are “on the team”! do you need “on the team”? well just let me know!
- have a bathroom that needs a little work
- going to be celebrating 9 years of marriage with my lovely wife, which is exciting!!
- excited to do some camping & climbing with tommy here this summer.
- and really who knows what else will happen in life, it tends to be pretty unpredictable at times eh?

well there it is, my required HAPPY NEW YEARS entry. have a great - aught seven -