The Rock Star Life

I may not be a jet flying, limo riding, party all night rock star, but I do play the guitar and I play loud.  I have friend that took a survey once, she answered the question "who is your loudest Friend?"  she put two answers down, and I was one of them, and boy was I proud.  Here is a picture of a real rock star. One of my rock n' roll heros:

And a picture of me trying  to dress like one:

Wrong era.

I actually paint cars for a living, but Sarah said she would let me give that all up if I would go play and tour for Jeremy Camp, I would prefer to go with Daniel Carson and the boys, but Jeremy would be my second choice.  If you're like my wife your probably saying who is Daniel Carson?  I'll drop another name you might know, Chris Tomlin.  Daniel is the guitarist for Chris and probably the biggest influence on my style of playing.

So my rock star life began about 17 years ago, even though at the time I didn't realize it.  I was nineteen with a hot girlfriend and going to college.  I soon found out I was going to have a daughter.  Whoa!  A family never crossed my mind at all, but God had his plan in place and started it in motion.  We married, had our first child, and bought our first house all at nineteen and eighteen years old.  I didn't grow up as much as I needed to that quickly until God allowed me to do some stupid things and realize I needed to grow up for my wife and daughter.  In 2001 We had our son.  I thought a wife, two kids, a boy and girl, that's the perfect family.  I don't want anything else.  Well, that wasn't His plan.  We had our second daughter in 2005 and what blessing.  Three kids at the age of twenty eight was never in my plans.  Really, nothing was in my plans, I was the type of guy through high school that lived for the moment, what was going to happen in the next few hours.  Now my wife on the other hand probably always had a family plan, how many kids she was going to have and their names, how many husbands she was going to have and their names(smiley face), and the color of house she would live in.  Years ago she did say something about wanting to adopt but I just blew it off thinking, we have three kids that is God's plan for us, we can't add another child. Well guess what, God told us to adopt and we added our fourth child in 2011.  What lead us to realize God's calling will come in another post, but this really just blew my mind.  Even though this is a life that I don't think I could have ever imagined, I wouldn't trade for a sold out stadium full of fans going crazy over me and my guitar playing.   Through all of this God has taught me so much about being a father and gaining a little glimpse of how He views me.

The only thing I ask of you is not to tell my kids what I really do, 'cause I tell them that I am rock star and they believe me, even my "sheltered" sixteen year old daughter.

This is how I come home each day from work to help them believe.