About a week ago I started this story at Starbucks. I wrote until my Pike’s Place was gone and the post looked unreadably long, and decided I would just finish it in a part 2.

So… here we go.

As I said, about three weeks after interviewing for a job with a company that I had never even heard of before, I got a call.

And the timing was great, because Steph and I were having a very crappy day. (If you’re single, brace yourself for certain days in marriage where you and your spouse both love each other and really don’t have anything against each other, but it’s like there’s some demon of communication in between who takes everything you want to say and makes it sound unloving. So you spend the day feeling like your spouse is mad at you, and you’re mad at yourself because you know they feel the same way.)

Anyways… one of those kinds of days, and I got a call with a job offer! I would never put my salary on my blog, but to give you an idea of how God dreams differently, I’ll put it this way: I’m up for another raise at work right now. The raise I’m getting by taking this job is 5 times as much as the raise I would get by staying. Plus the benefits are a little better, and I’ll get a little more time off.

On top of that, the new company has already worked with me to help me line up some time off to go with our youth group to Chimney Rock for a long weekend, and also to take a week off when our little peanut is born.

So, where will I be working?

This Tuesday, I will be working at Gilbarco Veeder-Root.

What will I be doing there? Good question.

I will be writing software for these:

“But Zack” you say. “Software in a gas pump? What’s up with software in a gas pump?”

Great question. Ask me again in about 2 weeks and I will have a great answer for you!

That makes this my last week at IIS. It’s been a great job and I’ve really enjoyed the friendships I’ve made everything I’ve learned about developing software. But I know they’ll be just fine without me.

In fact, I’m not really sure too many folks will even notice that I’m gone.

So praise Jesus with Steph and I for being a great, great Provider. And pray that I will excell at this job and that God will use it to spread passion for His glory among the people I’ll be working with!

Dad,

I thought a lot about what would be a neat gift to get you this Father’s Day, and I realized that more than anything, I wanted to write you this letter. I’ve been meaning to write it for a while, and Father’s day gives me a good, hard deadline.

First off, I want to share a story with you:

A few weeks ago, instead of having our usual men’s Bible study at church, we watched a movie at someone’s apartment. I had never heard of it, but it was a big deal for someone so we ended up watching this movie called ‘Flywheel’. On the surface, it was one of the most low-budget, unprofessional movies that I have ever seen. It was actually done by a church, and I don’t think anyone involved with the whole project was a professional.

But the message of the movie came through very well, and it even had several subtle lessons to be learned. When it was over, we discussed it a little bit.

Now you have to picture me, my friend Dan (about 26-27 years old), and probably 8 other guys who are all at least 35 — and most of them retired. At first our conversation was pretty surfacey, until a very strong, German personality asked the question, “What parts of the movie made you cry?” He said that for him, it was one particular part of the movie where the main character’s dad tells him that he loves him, and that he’s proud of him. He said that his father was a very proud man, and he never told him either of those things, and it has always made him question himself.

Then, one by one, all but maybe 2 guys in the room agreed and said the same thing. Each one had a different way of saying that he always wondered what his father thought of him — whether he was proud of him. Some said that they knew he did because he communicated it by spending time with them or allowing them to come to work or to come fishing. Some said that their father had already passed away and they had to just hope that he would be proud if he could see them today.

I wanted to speak up and praise my dad and tell everyone how you have never failed to give me that kind of affirmation, but I couldn’t.

I couldn’t because I was actually tearing up as the power of that reality impacted me. For the first time in a long time – and maybe the first time ever – I tried to envision what my life would look like if right now, at age 25, I wasn’t sure you are proud of me, and that you love me whether I succeed or not.

The best I can do at putting words around it is to say that you have given me freedom and courage.

You have given me freedom because I know that if you hadn’t consistently communicated to me – over and over again – that you trust me and my decision making, then I know that even today, the first question I would probably ask is, “What is my dad going to think?” instead of, “What is the right thing to do?” or “What is the Holy Spirit saying to me?”

And you have given me courage by always teaching me, through your words and actions, that you believe in me. Would I have done all the crazy stuff I did in college, or gone to the other side of the world, or pursued any of the dreams that I have if I thought that you didn’t expect me to succeed? I doubt it. If I did, it would have been with a lot more doubt in my mind.

I could spell it out a lot of other ways, but I really just want you to know that I’m thankful for the father that God has given to me in you. And I am so impressed by how you have done such a great job without any real role models to look at and mimic. I imagine that in many ways you seek to be the father you wish had.

And in a weird way, that encourages me as I prepare to be father. I am overwhelmed at the responsibility of being entrusted with a human life. But I look at the father you have been to me, and I am encouraged that if you can do a good job without a good example, then maybe I can do OK having had a pretty good experience to work from…

(The rest is personal :0)

I took this on Friday. I had to fill up again on Monday. And I drive a stinking Camry!

I’m taking donations…

I’ve been growing my hair out for like 5 months.

I had visions of letting it getting to serious ‘fro proportions, but for the last couple of weeks it’s been long enough to feel kind of silly when I’m at work, and I didn’t want to spring for a haircut to get into shape, so…

Bye Bye ‘Fro :0(

This is our church lobby this past Sunday morning. I started recording about 30 minutes before service, and stopped about 20 minutes after.

Notice a couple of things:

• There is a ton of activity after 10:00, when service starts.
• The fans look like they could cut through steel.
• Larry works very hard to make sure every person who walks through the door is greeted :0)

What else do you notice?

Hey folks! I was thinking it would be fun to perform a little experiment.

I’ve been doing this blog thing for a couple of years now, and I think I learned a little bit about how traffic works. I know that all I have to do is mention specific political figures or religious leaders, and my blog traffic will go through the roof, but it’s not from people who care about what I’m writing, they just either want to tell me I’m right or wrong for liking a guy, or not liking a guy.

I also found that I can mention things that are hot in the news, and all the little news spiders will find my blog and make it look like my traffic is doing really good.

But when I write about real things, or just everyday life, I don’t see much traffic.

I do, however, know this: On an average day, about 100 folks will make it to this domain, and a handful of others will read via some sort of RSS feed (read about RSS here).

Out of those, about 40% always go to this post, because apparently there isn’t much known about Bell’s Palsey, so people google it and find our posts about Steph’s experience with it.

So here’s the experiment:

I want to know about the remaining 60-or-so people who look at this page on a regular basis. And I want to get those people, specifically, on the blogroll, so that it serves the purpose of a fun social network, instead of a list of awesome ministries and resources, which is about all it is now.

So if that’s you, please leave a comment and let me know, and if you have a blog or a website, I want to link to it, so let me know and I’ll add you to the blogroll.

Also, if you use Twitter, let me know so I can ‘follow’ you. (If you don’t know what Twitter is, read this post — and don’t think it’s only for technology geeks!) When we get a little bit of a community built up, I’ll put an RSS feed with everybody’s updates on the side of this page! And if you don’t use Twitter, then you need to because it’s fun and seriously addictive.

Sound cool?

My dad caught this beast of a catfish (about 40 pounds) on 10-pound test in a little pond!

You can see all the photos here

As promised a week ago, I have an mp3 file of the teaching on ‘worship’ I did last Sunday. Please give it a listen and let me know what you think! I’m sure there are some things you would have done differently, so let me know what they are!

Right-click here and choose ’save as’

We took our third trip to the doctor yesterday and we got to see our little guy/girl!

As you can see, Baby Riesland is about 10 weeks old and measures about 4 cm from but to head… and somewhat resembles a turtle :0)

I was really excited because it was dancing around like it was having a party or something.

Maybe Steph will write more about it later…