The Important Questions

Yesterday I found out that I was approved for the Chicago track at the University of Illinois. I did not explain this earlier, but once you are accepted to Illinois you have to go to Chicago or Urbana-Champaign. Chicago always fills up first and I was placed on the Urbana-Champaign track. Without any real effort on my part the admissions committee called to offer me a place in the Chicago track! I was going to wait until after we purchased the condo to make a big stink. Now, everything is settled…except the condo. We are supposed to close tomorrow and I genuinely have NO idea if that will happen. It appears that the seller is willing to give us an extension if necessary. I am praying for the stress to stop. I am sure I will be able to look back and laugh at how comically inefficient this process was, but not until after it’s over. Currently, everything is at the underwriter’s office. Fyi, the appraisal came back 50% higher than our purchase price, which is terrific in this climate!

For the last month or so I have been doing a fair amount of spiritual contemplation. I keep coming back to Luke 12:48 “For unto whomsoever much is given, of him shall be much required…” At Willow we have spent some time considering the topic, which has lain especially hard on my heart of late. Yes, I have worked hard to develop the gifts God has given me. Nevertheless, I feel undeserving of all that I have been given and I want to know what God wants from my life. I have been doing more reading lately. Lee’s mother gave us The Shack, which is an excellent allegorical examination of the age-old question “Why would a benevolent God allow such terrible atrocities to occur?” Currently, I am reading The Hole In Our Gospel, which was basically given to us by Willow. The book is almost confrontational in its quest to have the reader examine themselves and whether they have truly surrendered to God and what that really means. I find surrender difficult. Until I can fully surrender I don’t think I am going to be able to answer the questions on my heart:
“What does God require of me?”
“Why have I been given these abilities and these opportunities?”
“How does my faith affect my life?”
“How does my life affect others’?”

-searching servant

Feed My Starving Children

Last weekend Lee and I volunteered for Feed My Starving Children, an organization that supplies food for school-age children throughout impoverished areas of Africa. After a long introduction we were ushered into the staging area for a rundown of what to do and then everyone started working assembly-line style. We added rice, vegetarian chicken flavoring, soy and dried veggies to a bag that would eventually be used to make lunch for 6 children. The cost of this bag was $1.02 or 17 cents per child. The work was not very hard and I would think it would be pretty easy to automate. It occurred to us after the fact that it was actually a marketing event shrouded by altruism to drum up donations. Pretty good idea if you ask me. You are asking people that are obviously more giving by nature and they really weren't asking for a lot. It never fully sinks in that $42 could be enough to feed someone on the other side of the world for a year.

Tonight we begin packing. We close next week, so we are kind of going to be living out of boxes for the next several weeks. Very exciting, somewhat stressful times. The cats, in particular, are excited about all the new boxes to sit on.

Two Weeks Notice

Last night, despite being a little sick, Lee and I had a fun date watching the Bulls lose in tragic fashion. We made Shawn Marion and Chris Bosh look like first ballot hall-of-famers. Our front line defense is reprehensible. Garnet and the Celtics are going to eat us alive in the playoffs if this trend continues. I will try to post pictures all the same.
Did anyone else see the link came from www.espnchicago.com? I'm excited about that at least.

We close on our condo two weeks from today. I am told we will hear back from the underwriter today, I should take care of the condo insurance shortly and we have already found a subletter for the summer.

It occurred to me that somewhere along the way, I became Middle-Aged Man to my friends. If you have never seen the sketch it was a hilarious short-lived sketch about a super hero whose super power was being middle-aged and thus having the knowledge and wisdom of a middle-aged person. So, he would randomly pop into young couples' personal discussions about buying a home, saving for retirement, etc. The character died because he required to much research in order to do the sketches, which I find funny in and of itself. With one exception, of my core nucleus of friends, my 20 closest friends, I am the only one that owns a home, the only one to have had a career-level job, the only one with a graduate degree, one of a small handful that is married, etc. I accelerated to middle age pretty fast and I have become the go-to source of background info on life-altering decisions. I don't really understand it though. I don't believe there is an intellectual gap between us, why was I the only one? I made a lot of friends in graduate school and, not surprisingly, a lot of them will be joining the ranks of middle age soon, but still...

-JohnMark

Good Friday

As we head into Easter weekend, I am pausing to reflect on sacrifice. The sacrifices of my loved ones for me and the sacrifices I have made for my loved ones. At a time when so many others are hurting it is feels unusual to accept all the blessings I am being afforded. In the lat couple of weeks I have received the following (among others):
-Admission to my first choice for medical school
-an interview invitation to another medical school
-two random job offers
-my first rent check, thus ending a long financial burden
-a series of complements of which I feel undeserving
-an accepted offer towards what I presume to be my home for the next decade
-joy that Lee's education is taking her in so many exciting directions

At the same time, I have a young cousin that has inflicted with a dibilitating disease. Our best friends at church have been struggling as one of them is slowly overcoming a very serious infection. Lee's best friend at school is going through a painful separation. Many friends have lost their jobs, it feels as though everyone has lost job security. An untold number of people have lost the financial security they have been building for a lifetime... Why are we so blessed? Why now?

Our road lays before us, long and precipitous. How many can say the same?

Hardest dollar I ever earned

When I was about 12 my friend and I decided to create a lawn-mowing business. We called the business Diamond Fields. I have no idea why we thought that was a good name for a lawn-mowing business or what it has to do with lawns or mowing or anything. Essentially, I think it was because it made for an easy logo. I do not know how much business cards cost back then, but it certainly was more than we had. We created our business cards on the back of my Dad's legal cards. The theory went that people won't stiff the son of an attorney. I am glad to say that we were never stiffed, but we didn't know how to negotiate back then either. I will never forget what may have been our first job. We didn't know what we were worth and a guy paid us $7 to cut his yard which was more jungle than lawn. The grass was taller than I was which wasn't such a huge problem, but the mower would conk out on me every few feet. All of the downed grass kept clogging the blades. We finished in just under 4 hours. Our efforts were worth less than a dollar an hour.
Yesterday, Lee and I received our first rent check. I sat at the counter staring at the check, all the while wishing that I was mowing yards again. It seemed more profitable.

-JohnMark

The Doctors Derryberry

Well, I finally received my acceptance letter to the University of Illinois Chicago on Friday. Lee was in New Orleans the past few days for a Business Psychology conference. So when the letter finally came I had to wait to open it until she called me back. Biscuit, Gravy and I sat on the couch looking at the letter intently, trying to decipher meaning from the size, shape and weight the way a child handles all the packages under the Christmas tree.

Last night, we went to Cafe Ba-Ba-Reeba to celebrate. The food was absolutely delicious. I should try to make it into medical school once a month or something.

Lee and I have started to discuss paint colors. We recognize that the vast whiteness of our new place is a little overwhelming. Despite the way that it may appear the place is retina-blinding white. Our plan is to paint 4 weeks from now and move in 5-6 weeks from now. I think there is something about loft-style spaces that demands bold color choices. I have been looking at the other units for sale in the building. It amuses me the number of people that bought a unit at auction, painted, staged and then put it on the market +$100,000 list price. Here is an example of a virtually identical unit that converted the den area into a third bedroom.

Anyone have a painter's ladder we could borrow?

-JohnMark

The story of our home

In a bizarre turn of events, it appears that Lee and I will be closing on our first home together in four weeks. We had been looking a little and were contemplating signing our first offer when a rare opportunity came along...

The story of our Home begins in the roaring 20s where a boy named Samuel began to establish himself as a salesman of kitchen gadgets along the Coney Island boardwalk. In 1935, he gave birth to a son named Ron. As Ron grew up he became part and parcel of his father's trade. Samuel began to understand client demands and invented a device that proved very efficient at chopping vegatables. Samuel and Ron began selling their gadget but they soon discovered a fundamental problem. The gadget was so efficient that they were spending a small fortune in vegetables demonstrating how efficient it was. Ron decided to tape a single demonstration and then replay it consecutively. With the chopper selling like hotcakes, Ron was free to develop gadgets of his own. After a decade Ron had amassed an empire of gadgets, commercials and taglines. As a matter of distribution it became necessary to setup warehouses throughout the country. Ron, the creator of Ronco, is Ron Popeil. Upon selling Ronco in 2005, some of the assets were sold by the holding company. Among those assets was a warehouses he built in the South Loop of Chicago near the train yards. After extensive remodeling that warehouse became what will be our home. And now you know the rest of the story. Good day.

Our side story begins in the late 90s when an overinflated economy decided to sigh...or something. When the secondary mortgage market fell into shambles the developers of our building couldn't sell any of the units because no one could finance them. They held an auction for the remaining units. Investors poured in. The financing still fell through with two of the units. We will be closing on one of those two units at 48% of the original listing price.