Fascinating

$100 Million

Fanny Crosby

250

My life has taken an unexpected turn as of last week. I'm slowly realizing the surprises of aging. While I'm not "old" my body isn't the same as it once was. Balding showed it's ugly head a few years ago. Stretching is an absolute must before and after working out or my body screams relentlessly at me. Now the biggest mark of my body age's came from my doctor. For our adoption Karen and I had to get a physical (No, I'm not that old, yet). We have to get various tests documented for our home study. Karen called to inform me of bad news related to my medical report. The first thing I thought of were potential problems this could cause for our adoption, but I noticed in Karen's voice a subtle jubilation. She's smiling while about to tell me bad news.
Karen had hoped this news would come two and a half years earlier. She had been strongly encouraging me to get my cholesterol checked since we were married. Before we moved to Chicago, I did get checked so that I might calm her fears and worries stemming from my family history and my poor eating habits. To her surprise and disappointment, I was in great shape with a level of 182. Her response, "you're joking me?"
Her good news and my bad news was finally here - 250. The shock didn't set in until Karen and I had lunch after our doctor's appointment. We're in line at Subway and I have to figure out what kind of sauce I can get on my sandwich - definitely no chipotle sauce. As I stood there, I looked at all the people around me in disgust secretly judging my health against theirs. Alas, it doesn't matter one slice of butter if I could out run the three obnoxious women in front of me or lateral toss the tattooed and pieced twenty-somethings sitting to my left. All that mattered was the end of the line. When I stepped down to the end of the line, I declared mustard.
This decision was the first of many decisions I am now making. I can't answer what's going to happen when friends and family come to visit and want to eat the forbidden buffet at Moonlight. I don't know what every meal is going to look like, but I'm well on my way to being a healthy father and husband. There is one goal in focus - loving my family. I can't stop aging, but I can age wisely on matters within my control. I'll say good-bye to butter and welcome leafy greens. May I never eat butter again so that I might love my children and my wife, and may God grant me a long life with which to love them.

According to what?

Yesterday marked fifty-three years since Jim Elliot, Nate Saint, and Ed Mcully were killed in Ecuador by the Waodoni tribe. Their desire was to share the Gospel of Jesus Christ with a people known to be hostile and dangerous to all outsiders. Despite potential danger, these men, their wives and children moved to South America with the intent to establish relationships with the Wadoni tribe and see them live for Christ.
However, the warnings about these people proved fatal for the three men. They died making contact with the tribe. Of all the ways these men could have lived a life of ministry they chose something extremely dangerous knowing they could leave their family husbandless and fatherless.
What makes such a lifestyle choice acceptable and rational? Clearly these gifted men could have been missionaries in many other areas where people had never heard about Jesus Christ and been faithful to Christ as well as possibly seeing people accept the Gospel. But they chose to follow a calling that many people, even in the church, may say is unreasonable. I don't recall their friends' and families' response to their move and mission so I am merely bringing this topic up to encourage people to think about the values with which they seek to live their lives. Is the love of Christ the constraining power driving you? Or is natural reason or selfish motives driving your decisions?
Jim Elliot said, "He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain that which he cannot lose." May the love of Christ and His call to love move us beyond human rationality to godly wisdom.

Wanna Race?

We're having a baby (actually two)!

Karen and I have begun the process of adopting two children from Ethiopia through America World Adoption. We have a blog that details our journey of adoption. However, the blog is private. If you would like to follow our blog email me at johnmark20@gmail.com so I can send you an invitation.

Here is a post that I wrote which describes some of our reasoning and desire to adopt:

Adopting in Our Family
Karen and I talked about adopting from the beginning of our relationship. Once we moved to Owensboro and God provided both of us with stable jobs, adoption became a reality rather than just a desire. Over the past few weeks and days, Karen & I have fielded many questions regarding the adoption process, the costs, and at the bottom of it all, the why.
When you read the statistics listed on Karen's previous blog post, and on the right side of our blog about the desperate situation for adoption in Ethiopia and in other countries, it's easy to cognitively recognize the need. Karen and I feel the call to adopt children in this desperate situation--not only because of the need, but because of our faith.
We are tremendously excited about starting our family by adoption and raising up children for God's glory. There are many things that I do differently--that's for sure! I ride my bike rather than drive a car. I drink hot coffee by the pool in the summertime. I would rather read a good book on a Friday night than go to a movie. American food is not my favorite food. If given the choice, we'd both chose anything but American food. But adopting children from Ethiopia before trying to have biological children, that's not what most people think is natural. Karen and I do not operate by natural thinking. Even so, I would agree; it's not natural. It is so much more. One might even say supernatural.
God has done something that is unthinkable by our standards. While I was far away from Him, a foreigner, his enemy, God brought me to His family. I call Him Father because His son, Jesus, paid for my adoption with a much greater cost than our AWAA fees- His blood. By the blood of my brother, I am not a stranger anymore; I am a son of God. The strangest part of God adopting me is that I did nothing to make this adoption possible. I was the ugly, estranged person that had nothing to give back. But God being rich in mercy and love brought me out of darkness and made me His son. I don't deserve the riches that God has given me, but I know whom my heavenly Father is and what He has done for me. It's not natural by any measure at all.

Ridin' & Killin'

From Bike Monkey:

I always considered pepper spray products such as Halt! to be the ultimate weapon in the battle against bicycle-chasing dogs.

The former mayor of Seven Mile, Ohio, trumps that with a .357 Magnum handgun.

"The man was bicycling through the small southwestern Ohio town with his wife when a 10-pound mixed terrier named "Precious" chased down the couple, knocked the mayor from his bicycle and attacked him.

He told police that he feared for his life and shot at the dog five times before killing it.

The Oxford Press reports that the former mayor said he is a former police officer and permitted to carry an unconcealed weapon.

Apple Fest 2008

Cindy and Preston came to Owensboro for a visit today. We enjoyed a great time at Reid's Apple Festival. Despite hating seasonal allergies that I was temporarily liberated from when we lived in Chicago, the Apple Festival was a wonderful event. Cindy and Karen both claim the Apple Fest no only rivals Princeton's Black Patch Festival but is far superior. I am not willing to go that far whatsoever. (Maybe I need to make a call to the general, David Amoss)
Karen and I had enjoyed Reid's orchard already on an earlier visited one Sunday afternoon after church at Pellville Baptist Church. But there was far more at the Orchard than apples. Let me go on the record that I LOVE fair food, which you can see for yourself in some of the pictures. It was all there: funnel cakes, apple cider, BBQ, hot dogs, cheeseburgers, polish sausage, fudge, pie and even deep fried candy bars and oreos. I call myself Templeton after the gluttonous rat in Charlotte's Web. I know, very self-flattering.
Besides the food, it was fabulous watching Preston have such a great time on the rides and with the snake. He had no fear at all touching the snake or handling it. Cindy and Karen thought at one point he was trying to kiss the snake. I know better; he was trying to bite its head off.
The rest of today, I'm going to enjoy some apple cider and pumpkin roll.

First Grade!!!

A friend of mine posted this video on his facebook. It's from the House church in Chicago. Check out this boy dancing!!! I'm still waiting on my gift of break dancing.

Owensboro, Kentucky - We are Here!

New blog

I'd like to highlight a new blog that was just brought to my attention - insidetheparsonage.blogspot.com. Amy Cooper is the author of this newly created blog. She is married to Paul Cooper who is coming to visit the city for his 30th birthday next week! Paul and Amy are two of my favorite people on this earth. Paul is an awesome preacher at Marshall Baptist Church in Marshall, Il. Listen to him here

Dog Sitting

Last week Karen & I enjoyed dog sitting our friends, Lauren & Jonathan's french bull dog - Mr. Thomas Jefferson. Bosworth & Jefferson enjoyed many walks, laying in the sun, chasing tennis balls, and their favorite - tug of war. Enjoy a couple of highlights from the week.

Happy Birthday to John Mark- Almost

John Mark re-read through the Chronicles of Narnia last year, and I remember his child-like excitement as he finished each book and was so eager to begin the next book in the series. I loved to listen to him talk about the books and the image of God C.S. Lewis so thoroughly depicted through Aslan.

I was so very excited to learn about one of my super fly coworkers, Sally Hale, who is not only a great and talented therapist, but come to find out is an awesome and famous artist! She created this picture of Aslan, and gave me a great deal on one of her prints! I gave it to JM for his 30th birthday (early-because I'm not GOOD AT ALL with keeping presents) I'm so excited for this print to be in our home, and I'm more excited to be able to share with people who may not know Jesus why in the world we have a huge painting of a Lion in our living room! And, of course I'm so very excited for my husband's 30th birthday! I love that I have my husband--in all of his wonderful and precious qualities! ~~~ such a wonderful gift from a Gracious and powerful God!

Here is an excerpt from Sally's Homepage Check out her website;she's quite fantastic: This painting is a further exploration of the character Aslan from C.S. Lewis' series "The Chronicles of Narnia", a lion who is an allegorical figure of God. According to Lewis, Aslan is "not safe, but good". This touches on the universal question "how can a completely good and all-powerful God exist with all of the evil and suffering that is in the world?" To express Aslan's un-tame nature, I painted the mane as wildly as I could; throwing paint on the canvas, scraping away parts of it with huge palette knives, etc. The morning after I finished, I took it with me to church and after awhile an acquaintance came up to me and pointed out a lamb in the mane. Once I saw it, it was unmistakable. I was perplexed, and wondered at its meaning. I looked and found in Revelation chapter five that Christ is announced as "The Lion of the Tribe of Judah", but in the next moment appears as a "Lamb that looks as though it had been slain." I believe that the lamb appeared to bring me, and others who would see the painting, comfort and faith. For though the presence of evil still confounds me and many others, the lamb reminds us that despite our lack of understanding, God IS loving. The fact that He was willing to sacrifice his own life to make ours infinitely better proves it.

Dr. Karen Hutcheson

This past weekend I had the privilege to witness years of work, frustration, and difficulty come to fruition when my wife attended her graduation at Spalding University. As a young woman who has attended school year round since she was 14 in order to graduate high school and college early, she has completed her academic studies finishing with a Doctorate of Psychology.
It was a wonderful time for all of our family to get together and celebrate Karen. Karen's parents, brother Kevin, his 18 month old daughter, Karlie came in from Texas along with my parents and host of family drove from all over Kentucky to recognize Karen's accomplishment. On Friday night we celebrated dinner at Lynn's Paradise Cafe. We entertained the idea of eating at Maido, but didn't think even with this great celebration we could rally the troops for an evening of sushi. Afterwards we indulged ourselves at the new Homemade Ice Cream and Pie Kitchen on Bardstown Road. On Saturday, Karen dressed in her regalia walked through the ceremony to receive her completed degree of Doctorate of Psychology. Her dissertation was "Integrating Developmental Theories to Enhance Child and Youth Ministry: A Developmentally Based Approach for Training Individuals to Teach Children and Adolescents Concepts for Christianity."
I am grateful to be on the end of Karen's path through her tumultuous road in the academic world of psychology. It has been a wonderful experience for me as a husband, man, and pastor to see the formation of this woman, my wife, and psychologist through such a roller coaster experience. As a writer, I would do injustice to the battles my wife waged as she stood for the Truth of Jesus Christ in such a dark place. Let me settle to say my wife's faith has only grown as she stood for God in her diligence to share what God has commanded His children to carry out in the Great Commission.
I would like to encourage those in the church to rely on resources such as my wife to be an aid for parents, teacher development, and horrible situations that lay outside the areas of expertise of pastors such as child molestation, rape, difficult cases of behavior that we could label in numerous ways depending on one's perspective of such issues.
Karen has accomplished a tremendous amount of goals and accolades throughout her academic career. I am extremely privileged to be a part of her life to witness the tail end of what see has done. While she is an outstanding thinker, public speaker, psychologist, she is an athlete; she has run marathons and finished a half-Ironman (70.3 miles). Her talents outnumber my vocabulary. She is nonetheless extraordinarily talented and beautiful. I can only speak in a small and finite way to describe how beautiful Karen is. I still find myself repeating that she is great and wonderful which don't speak much in description, but my opinion is that she epitomizes these words. I often tell her she is the most beautiful woman in all of time. Sorry gents, she is the one.
God has blessed me with an amazing woman. May God bless me to love her as Christ loves the church. God bless her as she loves such a sinner.

Cubs Game

Karen & I went to a Cubs game a couple of weeks ago. Neither one of us are big baseball fans, but we enjoyed chatting away the game with the friends we went with. Enjoy a few pictures from the game.

"Throwin Shapes"

Bicycles & Me

It all started with a tandem bike. Don’t misunderstand me, it was the first bicycle I ever rode, but my feet weren't touching the peddles. I was on the handlebars of our family’s yellow, tandem bike. Cindy & I would take turns riding with Dad. He would place us on the handlebars & peddle us around the driveway. We might as well been riding to the moon.
Eventually I learned to ride a bicycle, somewhere around six years old. After watching ET, I was determined to learn myself. I’m pretty sure I just picked us my bicycle with a Dennis the Menace fly wheel and rode off into the sunset.
When we lived in our old house, I didn’t ride my bike too much because there was little road space to ride. During our transition to building my parent’s current home, we lived in apartment on West Main Street above a dentist office. I know I was riding a BMX style bike but not sure what kind it was. It was my second bike and I loved riding it around town. As much as I tried, I never did a wheelie or jump over curbs. The bicycle must have weighed 200 lbs because I could never lift it over an inch off the ground. Any elevation and every curb was one more possibility. There were plenty of turn-arounds for me to try one more time over what I thought was the perfect jump site. After my huge heave and muscle strain, my wheels stayed on the ground. I still haven’t figured out the catch.
I didn’t have very many wrecks either, at least that I remember. I don’t recall any war story wrecks, but the lack of scars is proof that I didn’t have traumatic wrecks. My wrecks and scars have come much later in life; I’d say all of them have been post 21.
My mother didn’t rely on the safety of a small town to provide a watching eye over me while I rode. She diligently laid out boundaries about 3 blocks west & 5 blocks east. Despite my requests to ride all over town, her motherly care constrained me to these markers. I am thankful that helmets weren’t pushed as much as they are now, or I’m sure I would have had a helmet back then.
Sometime soon after we moved to our new house and I moved into the sixth grade, Grandmother entered a raffle at the grocery store. The prize was a brand new 10 speed bicycle. Her name was drawn, but I was the winner. I can’t tell you much about this lightning bolt except it was maroon, made of steel, and all mine.
In those days, I spent my days riding my bike or shooting a basketball. Some might remember me as a rough, Bill Lambeer-esque player, but in my middle school days I was lucky for the ball not to punch me in the face when I dribbled. Every ride was a ride of freedom into the unknown. True I had a road bike and I wasn’t quite in the wilderness, but at the time I felt like a pioneer exploring new terrain riding through fields barely a mile from my house. I have no idea how the bike held up over all those years.
Riding in Cincinnati was an entirely different monster. It didn’t matter where I was riding, there were enormous hills in every direction. One Christmas Mom gave me an insignificant present at the time – my helmet. It was a joke. I knew I wasn’t going to wear a helmet, but I still didn’t grasp the term “motherly,” and I’m sure Mom would say I never will understand how much she loves me. I know that is a good and marvelous gift. I will always be her son regardless of how old I am. As one attempting to be a young man in my early twenties, I still didn’t come close to grasping that truth.
Cincinnati is a mean city to ride a bike through, but it was there I found my first taste of speed. Riding past cars and faster than traffic on downhill slopes only fueled my love for cycling.
My mountain bike moved with me to Louisville and carried me through the streets of St. Matthews and the Highlands until it was taken from me – stolen in the middle of the night. Although my car was stolen nearly a year earlier from the same location on Broadway.
In 2004, I purchased a road bike, a KHS Flight 300. Years earlier I had seen Ironman competitions but simply wrote them off as an impossible dream. With a little encouragement from a friend, I was now set on becoming an Ironman.
Louisville is a great city to ride a bike - riding downtown, through Cherokee and Senaca park, or through Jefferson County at large. Before turning 16, the only thing a teenager can think about is getting a license so he can drive. After being trapped in a cage for all these years as a necessity to get from point A to point B, the freedom to ride 40, 50, or 100 miles by your own power is truly invigorating. The hills and curves of Kentucky provide beautiful scenery for long rides. I love riding River road’s flat terrain out to Oldham County. Past River Road the ride becomes more wooded and much steeper. Riding through the country past horse farms, magnificent houses, and patches of forest makes a great ride.
I was able to put a lot of mileage on my KHS for races, and I even bought another bike for racing, a Fuji – Team Super Light. Karen inherited the KHS, and we enjoy riding together (more about family riding later). I still had one more bicycle dream come true in Louisville and that was becoming a bicycle messenger. I know, lofty dream. I remember watching Quicksilver and being enamored with cycling in the city. To make a long story short, for three and a half days I was a bike messenger. I thought I had lived my dream never to return. However, my dream would be relived here in Chicago. I’m cycling away five days a week and still counting.
The bottom line is that I love to ride a bike. Getting on a bike for pleasure, fitness, or travel is fun. During the day I am working as a courier, but here's the catch - I'M RIDING MY BIKE. There is something freeing about propelling yourself around on two wheels. Feel the wind and sun on your face. Take a relaxing ride with you wife or husband. Speed through traffic. Race down the road and hit 50 mph. Park your car.
I encourage everyone who reads this to treat yourself to a ride. Shoot, treat yourself to several rides.

Messengers in New York

Cycling through Chicago

Three weeks ago I set out to find employment as a bicycle messenger. Some of you may remember my short career at the Bike Depot in Louisville, KY as a messenger. However, I spoke with Karen about this possibility in Chicago and she responded, "At this point, you can pedal until your heart's content." Those words were immediately emblazoned in my mind (Although Karen does question the authenticity of her statement).
As of April 28, I began my employment as a bicycle messenger with Standard Courier. My first day was a harrowing experience. Chicago welcomed me with brutal wind, rain, and cold temperatures. At the end of the day, I was soaked, freezing, shivering, and sore. But it was grand.
Since then, my hands and seat have adjusted to the posture of a cyclist. In the beginning, every morning was agonizing when I mounted up for the first pedal stroke. At first I was riding an old Panasonic, but have since changed to riding my KHS. Changing bikes was a total transformation for riding; it's smoother, faster, and much more comfortable. But at the end of my third week, I am thankful for the rest and relaxation of the weekends. The physical demands of the job have been relatively easy to adjust to. Don't misunderstand me though. When I get home, I'm worthless.
Riding through the city is an adventure! Surviving the obstacles of traffic, potholes, cabs, BUSES, and masses of people create many intense challenges. Chicago is very friendly toward bikers. Buses and people seem to create the biggest challenges for me. Squirming through the throngs of people at crosswalks can be difficult but dodging merging buses is scary yet at the same time thrilling. At this point, I'm not going into great detail about such experiences for my loved one's piece of mind.
I have made deliveries to some interesting places, mostly to law firms, marketing agencies, banks, and notably to Oprah's company, Harpo. I wasn't hypnotized, but I did notice several Oprah shrines and people begging for alms in the name of Oprah.













Here are a couple of other pictures from my day.




Chicago is a beautiful city. While this job is short term, I'm thankful for this opportunity to ride my bike all day, everyday. I look forward to serving as a pastor, but for now I will keep on peddling.