We live in the Northpointe neighborhood in Pensacola, FL… the one that got hammered with a tornado Tuesday night (February 24, 2016). Aubrey and Ragan were away from home, babysitting for some friends while I held down the fort with my younger two children. We knew that a fairly large stormfront was coming through, but I had no idea that we would be in the center of it.
Jonathan Franzone
Preparing Room For a Newborn Child
Sovereign Grace Music produced a Christmas CD last year called, “Prepare Him Room: Celebrating the Birth of Jesus in Song.” It is a really good album and I would commend it to you. The title song, Prepare Him Room, speaks of the wonder and mystery of Jesus, the Son of God, coming to be born …
Adoption Update: Home Study Packet Done
Hello friends and family. We are happy to announce that earlier this week we submitted our Home Study Packet to the adoption agency. What does that mean, you ask? Well, it was a large packet of documentation which had to be completed and turned in prior to our home studies. It was an exciting moment for Aubrey and I as we checked off one more requirement between us and meeting our new child.
So, what’s left? How soon can we expect a baby? These are the questions we get most often and so I’d like to answer them for you.
Adoption Support
Thank you, so much, for your consideration in supporting us to rescue a child. There are a couple of ways that you can support us. Pray! We serve a great God, the Lord Jesus Christ, and He “is able to do far more abundantly than all that we ask or think, according to the power …
Our Quiver is Not Quite Full
Aubrey and I have an announcement…
we have decided to pursue infant adoption.
Allow me to add some context…
Broken Hearted
Aubrey and I have three wonderful children. We started having children after being married for three years. It was our intention to wait to have children. We also stopped having children after our first two and then decided later that we weren’t quite finished. After a miscarriage God blessed us with our third. We arranged to have a tubal ligation during the planned c-section to prevent any further pregnancies.
Aubrey and I have both become remorseful over those decisions. The decision to limit when and how many children we had and the final decision to stop having children. If we could go back and do it all over again, we would not put any limits on when and how many children God blessed us with… they are a blessing.
God is sovereign. We take great comfort in that knowledge. He is not a weak God that could not have prevented us from stopping Aubrey’s womb. That isn’t to say we blame God for our decisions, but we know that He works all things together for our good (since we love Him and are called by Him).
So, here we are wanting more children without the ability to have any … biologically.
Email Subscriber Update
Dear friends and family, We are hoping to provide more updates about our family and parenting in general in the near future. To enable us to better communicate with you, our friends, family and readers, we have upgraded our email subscription provider to use MailChimp. If you are reading this in an email, then do …
I’m Not Home Yet
I recently discovered this folk band called The Gray Havens (thanks to Tim Challies), who borrow a lot from C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien for their lyrics. The above song titled Far Kingdom really struck me as I remembered the Pevensie children along with Eustace Scrubb riding on the Dawn Treader to the end of the ocean …
My Reading List for 2015
One of my resolutions for this year is to read 25 books. According to Goodreads, I read 18 books last year so 25 should be attainable, especially considering I have some friends who read well over 100 books each year. In order to have a plan of attack, I compiled a list that I’d like to work on. The list ended up being longer than 25 (51 to be exact), but it gives me a framework from which to choose.
I also recognize that the books I choose to read may change. I’ve actually already modified the list a couple of times because I picked up a new book and wanted to add it. So without further ado, my (potential) reading list for 2015, organized in some fashion.
2015 New Year’s Resolutions
Looking Back
2014 has been a milestone year in my life. God sovereignly transformed my life sometime around Easter in the biggest way possible… He saved me from my own self-righteousness and unbelief. What I had previously thought was the Christian life, was really a false sense of hope and a works-based religion. You can read about that in My Personal Testimony.
Consistent with being a “new man”, my desires have changed radically this year. I spend a lot of my free time reading about Theology or watching sermons online. I have endeavored to “catch up” on the meat of Christian faith that I have missed out on, and it has been good. I have read God’s Word more consistently and with more fervor than ever in my life. I am truly thankful to my Lord and my Savior, Jesus Christ for this year.
A Different Kind of Resolution
My wife read an article about closing out the year writing letters to Jesus and placing them in your stockings before packing them away for the year. We thought it would be a good tradition to try out, so we all wrote letters of resolution to Jesus. In that letter I wrote my sincere commitments to serve and know Christ. It included overall statements, such as the desire to serve God with all of my heart, soul, mind and strength. I also wrote practical things, such as continuing my daily time of reading the Bible, praying and studying.
So my public New Year’s Resolutions this year look more like changes in habit that I would like to implement in my life.
Personal Parable: Repentance
1) to feel or show that you are sorry for something bad or wrong that you did and that you want to do what is right
2) to turn from sin and dedicate oneself to the amendment of one’s life
3) to change one’s mind“Repent.” Merriam-Webster.com. Merriam-Webster, n.d. Web. 26 May 2014. http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/repent.
An Interaction With My Son
This morning my son and I were involved in what you might call horseplay. He knows that I am ticklish and so he likes to tickle me. I, of course, am (for the time) much larger than my son and so usually turn the tables quickly and tickle him into submission. This continued until the playing became a bit too rambunctious; it was beginning to bother other members of the family. My son tends to take things too far, which I wanted to prevent.