My Friends at YS have made my book their Steal of the Day. Leave a Footprint - Change the Whole World is on sale right now for a cheap $5. They sold out of their first round, so they added another bunch. Looking for a bargain? Snag one of these! Go to the steal now.

In the meantime, there’s a great new issue of YouthWalk, which includes my new column. Check it out here. Hope you like it.

I’ve been sick this week. It started Saturday night-ish, and I’ve been feeling rotten since. I didn’t get any posts ready to go this weekend because of said sickness, and I’ve been busy writing / sick this first half of the week. I may try and put together a few posts for Thursday through the weekend. I should be back up to full speed this weekend.

But, I just saw this, felt like it somehow applied to my week thus far (and to my life in general). It’s an experts guide to napping. Check it out here.

The entire week last week: I stuck pretty close to home, writing. I have a deadline of February 2 for my next book and I’m (almost critically) behind. I turned off the internet much of the week and wrote. I’m such a pitifully slow writer, and I have a very long way to go.

Friday. Nicole had an away game about thirty minutes from Longview. So, we went to that, came home and relaxed. I edited some on another project, and worked on a few projects for Jacqui’s dad.

Saturday was just as uneventful. Jacqui was gone for the morning, and I worked around the house. Spent some time in the afternoon fixing the kitchen faucet, and we spent some time planning the garden. Then, Saturday night, Jess and I went out for a daddy-daughter date. We caught Madagascar 2, ate some dinner, and did a bit of shopping for the garden. I wasn’t feeling so great when we got home, and I should have gone to bed. But I didn’t. I stayed up and edited. Bad idea.

Because, when I got up Sunday morning, I was really sick. Throat on fire. Chest congested. Head pounding. Actually, “got up on Sunday morning” is a bit of a stretch since I really didn’t sleep Saturday night. Anyway, I skipped Sunday school and church, stayed home most of the day and moped. I still feel pretty bad. Hope this goes away soon.

I’ll be writing most of the week. I need to nail this deadline and begin fleshing out some new projects I’ve been dreaming up. There’s a bit of work to do for The Journal too, and I’ll probably jump on that as well.

I posted two weeks ago about our herb planting. We’ve never planted herbs before, so this is a bit of an experiment.

Here’s a picture of what’s happening. From left to right, We planted Thyme, Basil, Oregano, Sage, Marjoram, Dill, Parsley and Chives. Everything is growing now except the Sage. Actually, I have no idea if what’s growing is actually what’s supposed to be growing because 1. like I said, I’ve never grown herbs before and 2. I got the dirt from our garden and I could have scooped up weeds. I guess time will tell.

Sometime over the next few weeks I’ll begin posting pictures of our garden this year. Last spring/summer we had a pretty good first garden. I’d like to ramp that up this year, and grow enough vegetables for our family with plenty left over to give away. There’s still a ton of work to do on that project. We need to decide what we want to grow this year and where we’re going to put the boxes so they can get the best sun. I already know were going to try potatoes, peas, and we’ll hopefully do corn in our field. I might go crazy and try watermellons and cantaloupe again (they rotted and were gross last year). And we’ll plant what worked well last year - early girl tomatoes, cucumbers, squash and green peppers.  I’m pretty thrilled about gardening this year. Does that make me boring?

I can’t help myself. I’m officially 100% addicted to The Moth Podcast. I wrote about this podcast last week, I think. It’s a podcast from stories told live, without notes. I’ve downloaded many of the podcasts available through iTunes, and I need to scour the official site to snag some more.

I’ve been sharing these with Jacqui who reminded me that I’m the last guy to like story oriented podcasts since I’m not a rel fan of autiobook stories or being read to. I’m not entirely sure why I’m so attracted to this podcast. It might be that they feel mostly spontaneous, and they’re fairly short.

My pick this week is the incredibly funny story told by Mike Birbiglia called “Sleepwalk With Me”. Mike is a professional comedian and that kind of kills the spontaneous feel of the story. But, it’s a great story and worth listening to.It’s on iTunes and here.

Found this cool time waster on Neatorama. It’s a kaleidoscope you create yourself. I wasted a few minutes on this thing. Great if you love foolin’ around with shapes. Check it out here.

Here’s the beginning of Chapter 10

When I surrendered my life to Christ, I soon found myself treading water in a deep pool of “do nots.” The version of Christianity I was taught as a teenager focused mostly on a long list of things Christians weren’t supposed to do. Dancing got you pregnant, short shorts led to sex, and men who wore their hair long were rebelling against God. We were told most popular movies were birthed within the church of Satan, and that any kind of music with a beat was probably hand-delivered to our houses by the devil himself. As kids in youth group, we attended seminars where adults spent hours spinning records backward for us, helping us hear garbled messages they believed were laced into the songs, and convincing us that record companies had special rooms where they prayed demons into their records and tapes. Listening to AC/DC would make you bisexual, and jamming to KISS told the world you really were a “Knight In Satan’s Service.” Acoustic guitars could honor Jesus, but electric guitars were a sign that you’d sold your soul to Beelzebub. Being a Christian meant memorizing as much of the Bible as possible so you could argue it with that other Christian kid up the street.

My Christian college experience was the same, filled with tons of “do nots.” Good Christian girls always wore dresses and never walked on the side of the street where the boys’ dorm was. Good Christian boys wore shirts with collars and kept their hair cut short and neatly combed. And, even though I graduated six years after I became a Christian, girls were still getting pregnant from dancing. Hadn’t they found a way to prevent that yet?

Popular Christianity is too often ruled by pointless, silly, and empty rules. We spend so much time focused on should nots, can nots, and better nots that we end up never really experiencing anything. Maybe we set up these strict rules because we want some way of measuring whether we’re really holy. Maybe we fear that the “do nots” in God’s Ten Commandments don’t quite cover all the bases, so we think we need to create a few more lists of our own. But our desire to fill our lives with lists of limitations affects both our passion and our ability to shape the world the way God planned us to shape it.

Imagine a baby taking its first steps, only to have one of its parents standing next to it with a ruler. Each step the baby attempts, the parent slaps its feet and lets out a stern “No!” That’s the way a lot of us imagine living for God. We hear God’s call to step out, but then something slaps us back—either an old family rule, an ancient edict, or our own fears. The result is a lot of believers who have all the courage they need in God, but none of it in themselves. These Christians stay packed away safely in churches, reading through their do-not lists, but never really impacting the world around them.

You know, it’s possible for us to live our entire lives without ever really making a difference, walking from garage-sale spirituality to prepackaged answer to just-add-water theology. But then we wake up ten years later and realize we’ve spent our days without any real purpose, having never really lived. Do you want to live your life in God like that? I don’t.

One year ago I started inviting youthworkers into a project that I was convinced would help other youthworkers through desperate times. After a long year or working and waiting, the project is officially in the hands of a proofreader. It’s been edited very well by Doug Davidson, and editor YS graciously handed me at the beginning of Leave a Footprint. Doug has really weathered my weirdness on this project. It’s got this great cover, designed and mulled over by the crack staff at YS.

We worked with about seventeen different youthworking writers to put together a really encouraging project. And, while the book isn’t officially completed (no book is until it’s on the shelf, in my opinion) proofreading is close enough to done for me to start celebrating. After cleaning up anything the proofreader finds, it heads to design, then a final look see, and then it’s printed.

Here’s a few things I learned along the way…

• Be careful about how you invite to write and who you invite to write. I got lucky, but at times this past year I was aware that I needed to tread delicately about some issues with some writers.

• Be careful what you promise to an author. I naively promised payments nearly immediately upon completion of the chapter. That was a huge mistake. What if someone backed out after payment? What if the chapter didn’t make it in? Turns out, everyone involved in the project is completely top notch.

• Let people write their stories and stay out of the way. There were a few moments in this project I wanted to step in and write the story for someone. I didn’t, bit my lip and let them write. They said what they needed to say way better than I could have.

• Work way ahead. Which is something I did on this project. I started way earlier than I needed to, and it paid off in the end. We had plenty of time to edit and reshape without completely blowing the deadline.

And, one last note. I’d do another one of these in a heartbeat. Without question. I loved managing the project. I loved working with the authors on the project. I loved dreaming it up. I pretty much loved the entire thing.