Jeff Kerr

Corn on the Cob, and the shedding of blood

Last night was the annual church picnic.  Once again… good times.  A lot of hard work from a lot of great people made it happen.

I enjoyed pretending to be a rock star for an hour.  I loved that Kristie was able to join us for a few songs on stage.  She did so not without her share of drama.  She sang the Faith Hill song ‘Sunshine and Summertime’.  As the song was nearing its end, I looked at my music and there was blood on it.  I looked around and there were drops of blood on the stage.  “Is somebody bleeding?” I thought.  I had no contingency plan for this.  I’ve never had any blood on the stage at any of my gigs before.  I felt like Ozzy Osbourne. 

It turns out, earlier in the day Kristie cut her thumb while making salsa.  It was quite a gash and her Spongebob bandaid wasn’t cutting it.  Her hand was covered in blood, as was my music, her shirt and small portions of the stage.  At that precise moment, the church picnic reached legendary status.

After the picnic, Kristie got three stitches at Urgent Care.  She was the second family member of a pastor at urgent care that day.

Legendary Status.

I want to give a huge thanks to the tech and video departments for their huge amount of work.  The tech crew under the leadership of Chris Cortte was there early Sunday morning getting all the sound and lights set up.  The video crew under the leadership of Tom Poch was there to handle the rather large task of video taping the testimonies of the 75 people that got baptized while video taping the picnic itself while video taping the water baptism service.  Nicely done.

Nils Lorvick was the guy running sound at high volumes.  I gave him the instructions to make it just loud enough to draw a “please lower the volume” request from the senior pastor… he succeeded.

Clete Luartes was the guy running the sound on the stage for all the high maintenance musicians.  It’s hard to keep musicians happy.

Jeff Achen, Casey Burress, Tony Vietti and Dale Cross were all there capturing the night on video.  Well done.

Heath and Ginger Ewing, Aaron Johnson, Titus Marshall, Dave Callies, Jeremiah Dally, Kirsten Nissly, Kristie Kerr, Jason Perri and Ryan Williams were the ones making all the noise.  Exceptional musicians. 

A great night it was, and I managed to not have anyone take any pictures.  If you have good pictures from the night, could you email them to Jeff.kerr@rivervalley.org ???? 

Rock On.

P.S. Kristie assured me that there were no bits of thumb in the salsa.

Local Man Glutton for Cheeseburgers, Punishment.

I took the kids to McDonalds for lunch on Monday.  It was a rainy Monday, lunchtime, the end of the summer, after a long rain soaked weekend… This is what I will now refer to as ‘the perfect storm for spazzy kid behavior’.

The playland was chaos.  I’ve never seen so many kids fit in one set of playland slides and tunnels.  At one point a wave of about a thousand kids came flooding out of there and began running crazy.  All the kids were gathered up and there were still twelve basketfuls of kids left over.

As my kids sat and ate their happy meals, Lucy made an observation.  She said “Dad, you’re the only dad in here.”  I looked around the sea of moms and kids and was realizing she was right when I caught the eye of one other dad in the far corner with his three boys who were quietly eating their happy meals.  Our eyes met as we exchanged glances that said… “our kids, through some weird combination of circumstances, are sitting quietly and eating their food and we MUST not do anything to mess this up.”

McDonalds playland on a rain soaked Monday lunch hour is an assault on every one of our senses.  It’s loud, hot, humid, smelly, bright and sticky.  I’m sure it also tastes funny, but that is still unconfirmed.

As we were driving home, we drove past the new High School that is being built near our house.  “That’s the new high school” I said.  Lucy said “That’s where I’ll go someday”.   I said “yup, in 7 years and you’ll be a sassy teenager who’ll say stuff to me like (spoken in sassy teenager tone) “DAAAAAD, You are such a dork”.  And Lucy replied “Yah, and you’ll just embarrass me.”

“So we have an understanding then.”

7 years doesn’t seem long enough before I have a high schooler.  It’s going by too fast.

Lessons From The Couch

Hello all.  Kristie here.  Once again I have taken over Jeff's blog.

I am starting week 7 of bedrest...yes,my friends, week 7.  But the good news is that everything is looking really good with both the baby and me - and if things continue to go well, my doctor said that in about a week, I should be able to resume some normal activity.  So - that's what to pray for this week!

I have been thinking a lot - cause really, what else is there to do - about what I've learned through this season of life.  I'm a big "reflector" - I always like to figure out what I've learned about myself and those around me.  So - here are my observations.

1.  I would do anything for my kids.
People's first reaction when you tell them you are lying on your couch 24 hours a day is, "I could NEVER do that - I would go CRAZY!"  And the truth of the matter is that, indeed, I am closer to the loony bin today than I have probably ever been in my life.  However, what amazes me is the strength of will in me to protect my child.  I remember when Charlie was in the hospital as a baby, I was crying to my mom one day that "I just can't do it anymore."  And she told me, "The part of you that needs to care for your children is always stronger than the part of you that wants to give up."  She was right.  No matter how difficult things have gotten for us - I have this deep God given "mama -bear" instinct that is capable of things I would never think I had the strength for.  Amazing.

2.  It takes a village to have a Kerr baby
My brother in law, Rick was teasing me the other day.  He said,"You know, some people are so selfish.  They just have a baby all by themselves.  But not you - when you have a baby, we ALL have a baby." And it's true.  It's actually quite humbling.  I'm kind of an independent girl.  So to have to ask for help - to not be able to take care of my family can be a bit of a blow to my pride.  But what amazes me, is not only that our friends and family (and people I didn't even know before!) have chipped in and watched my kids,  cleaned my house, and brought us food - but the fact that they have done these things with such love and grace.  I always feel so apologetic when I thank them for reaching out to us, and instead, they say how blessed they are to help out.  I cry every time.  The body of Christ in motion is truly a beautiful thing.

3. I married well.
What can I say about my husband?  I know you have all been keeping up with his exploits in his "Summer of Homemaking."  I have truly watched in awe at all the things that he can juggle.  He cooks, he cleans, he takes care of the kids, he does laundry, then he still manages to be creative and do his job with incredible excellence.  And then there's the whole "dealing with the emotionally overwrought, hormonally challenged, bedridden wife thing."  Where some guys who were stretched as thin as he has been would probably throw up their hands at the "crazy pregnant lady", he amazes me with his patience and calm.  He always manages to take me from crying to laughing in a matter of minutes.  I'm not quite sure how I managed to snag such a guy.  Every once in a while, God gives you the opportunity to appreciate what you have in a deeper way than your ordinary life allows.  This has been one of those moments, and I am completely over the moon for my guy.

So here's to lessons learned.  Here's to perspective's gained.  Here's to the village.

I am blessed.

Sowing and Reaping, Lessons number one and 'Number Two'

So the Chiropractor looked at my X Ray and said “If I had to bet, I’d say you did this when you ran head first in to the fence at softball”.  So I got in my car, popped in my mix tape and was on my way to Lifetime Fitness where somebody had just pooped in the pool.

Now, for the details:

I was at the chiropractor because I’ve been having a bunch of pain and stiffness in my back and shoulders.  I explained to her that I was running for a fly ball at softball a few weeks ago and I stumbled right before the chain link fence and kind of ran full speed, head first in the fence.  The result was a sore back and no kidding, a chain link fence pattern scrape in the top of my head.

So now you know how to tell if you have your Canadian Music Pastor playing on your softball team.  Just look for imprints on the top of the head.  (My woes with softball have been well documented… see my past blog “Old at Heart”) 

As a result, I found myself at the chiropractor looking over my x ray that showed quite a significant side to side curve in my spine.  Nothing that 6 visits wont fix.

And just like that I was on my way home.  My cell phone was dead so I had to plug it in to the car charger which rendered my car radio useless because I have a broken antenna because I went through a car wash with the antenna up a year ago.  When I plug in my phone, the radio goes haywire.  I don’t have a CD player in the car because my car was built in the last Millenium. The only thing I had in the car to listen to was a “Mix Tape”.  I don’t know when I made this tape, but it was pretty good.

So the point today my friends is that there are causes and effects.  There’s sowing and reaping. If you drive an old car, you won’t have a CD player.  If you go through the car wash with your antenna up, it will eventually break.  If you don’t plug in your cell phone at night, it will die.  (this is most often a plus for me)  and If you try to show everyone that you’re better at softball than most Canadian, Musician, Pastors you’ll end up with a chain link grid imprinted in to the top of your head.  It's just rare that the Reaps to all of those Sows collide on one August afternoon.

Another lesson of sowing and reaping: If you take your toddler to the pool at Lifetime without a swim diaper on, eventually they will poop in the pool thus shutting the whole thing down for an hour.  This happens all too often and I don’t quite understand it.  Seriously folks, just put the swim diaper on your kid.  So here’s my question.  When someone poops in the pool are you glad they take every precaution and shut the thing down for one hour?... or… are you like me? 

I’d prefer it if they would remove the actual unit of poop from the pool and just swish the surrounding water around a bit, blow the whistle and get us back to swimming.  The actual percentage of poop in the enormous pool has to be extremely low.  That’s a small price to pay verses sitting poolside for one whole hour. 

Of course I have a child in diapers.  Betty likes to show us she has a dirty diaper by sticking her hand down there and pulling out a handful for us to see.  So I remain un-phased when a kid puts a Number Two in the pool.

And the final lesson…  If you continue to blog about nothing, people will eventually stop reading.