so here's the deal...

about 6 months ago, the gore's moved into our house. i thought this was a little weird, but the idea was to help them save a few bucks to get a house downtown and leave them flexible so they could move as soon as they found a place. also i thought it wouldn't hurt to have some extra hands around the house after my surgery. but i told jason this wasn't quite conventional and if, after a month, any of us didn't think it was working out, no hard feelings, no questions asked, they'd move out. well, our house didn't feel as small as i thought it would with 7 people living in it and it's been a lot of fun for us and our kids. and there's something about living your closest relationships out in front of others that provides an unusual but healthy type of accountability. so the thought of them moving out was a bit of a bummer.

so this fall sometime, my wife and i stopped by this big house on edenton st because jeff nielsen was working there and we wanted to see how things were going in advance of his surgery. i remember thinking the house was beautiful and big enough for two families, but under contract. bummer. well, in december the contract fell through and i went and looked at it again and we all started seriously talking about buying a house together... crazy.

this is one of the more challenging decisions i've made in my life. it started out as a nice house that was a good financial opportunity and a chance to live with our friends. but it's on the edge of the really nice and the not really nice parts of downtown raleigh (translated: about a half block down you can get any drug you want any time of day). and to keep a long story from getting too much longer, it came down to a combination of a desire to be downtown where we've planted this church, a desire to live our lives a little differently by living with friends, a desire to be closer to people that have needs much greater than ours in hopes that we'll have opportunity/desire to do more about those needs, and the fact that this seems to be an extremely rare opportunity. a friend of ours is selling the house and doing some things that allow to us sell our current house empty while living downtown and the gore's are willing to live in the hurricane that is our family and we can get downtown while the getting's still good. so here we go...

and as kind of a postlude (right word?), we listed our current house on craigslist on friday, had a showing on saturday, and signed a contract to sell it on sunday. 2 days. really. from what i hear, that doesn't happen...

so in the past 9 months, we've had a baby, had open heart surgery, planted a church, and bought a house in a not-so-great part of downtown with another couple... hahahahahaha

a few pics of our new house...

...story to follow...


main floor living room & entryway









upstairs bathroom












our bedroom (bobbi-jo has always wanted a purple bedroom)












upstairs family room












downstairs family room









downstairs










dining room









main floor fireplace









kitchen












stairs












kitchen

A few random things...

Saturday night I'm eating dinner with Michael and Matthew and Jason sits down at the table and asks Michael, 'Who's your best friend, Michael?' I don't know why he asked and I wasn't sure that Michael gets the concept of a 'best friend' and I was hoping he would say Matthew (I try to convince them they're best friends in hopes that they won't fight as much... and because I really hope they become best friends). In any case, he said, 'My daddy.' Wow...

Saw a trailer for a movie on human trafficking/sex trade coming out April 13th. Go watch the trailer at www.tradethemovie.com. Only big name in it is Kevin Kline but it's great that it's going to get attention. The plot is about a Romanian girl who gets offered a job and ends up getting kidnapped and brought to (i think) America. Exactly the situation described by Kimberly Smith, the woman coming to speak at Visio Dei this spring. And it will be released just before she comes to visit. We met last night and we're working on a benefit concert and a sleep-out on the capital lawn. Could be a powerful weekend...

In other movie news, Will Ferrell and Jon Heder are coming out with a movie about male figure skaters on March 30th. You can see that trailer here. Looks really stupid. I'll probably see it at noon on March 30th if anyone wants to go...

A few thoughts on Ford...

I watched a bit of the services for President Ford on Saturday night. Bummed I missed them today. The 21 gun salute on Saturday night got me choked up. It's been interesting learning a bit about him. I was born in '71. One of my first memories is being in a voting booth with my mom in '76 as she voted for Ford (strange which memories get filtered out and which remain). Other than that, I didn't know much about the guy other than he took over for Nixon and lost to Carter.

I knew he played football in college (he once said that even in the white house he bypassed the front page of the newspaper for the sports page), but I didn't know he won two national championships and turned down an offer to play for the Green Bay Packers (in hindsight, a good decision). Didn't know his highest political aspirations were to be the Speaker of the House, but I have a lot of respect for that. Didn't know he only got into the vice-presidency because of a scandal involving Spiro Agnew. I always figured he was just Nixon's VP and thought that made the pardon pretty shady. The fact that he wasn't elected with Nixon makes the pardon a gutsier move and everyone says he probably lost the next election because of it. There is an article in Time that talks about his faith and the role it played in his decision to pardon Nixon. Here is an excerpt:

Ford told the nation he was pardoning Nixon in a statement that invoked God's name six times. "The Constitution is the supreme law of our land and it governs our actions as citizens," he said. "Only the laws of God, who governs our consciences, are superior to it." He invited the congregation to think of the Nixon family: "Theirs is an American tragedy," he said. "It could go on and on and on, or someone must write 'The End' to it... Only I can do that. And if I can, I must."

The article talks in general about the depth and development of his faith and how he refused to use the label 'born again Christian' to his benefit in the 1976 election even though he considered himself a born-again Christian and Carter used the term a lot. It definitely would have gotten him votes but he didn't think it was the right thing to do. I have a tremendous amount of respect for that. I would strongly encourage you to read the article if you have a few minutes. It's only two pages long.

In any case, it seems a great man has left. I thought a couple things as I watched Saturday night. I thought the contrast between his demise and that of Saddam Hussein was very poignant. And I thought we should take the time to honor everyone's life the way we honor this president's. It would take a whole lot of time, I suppose, but something seems right about the reflection, the commentary, the deliberate nature of the events surrounding his funeral. It seems right that we should honor a life departed like this, and it makes me wish that I did a better job of honoring lives present.