We started with a couple days in Orlando, where we did a little sight-seeing and paid a visit to the world’s largest entertainment McDonald’s. It was a pretty cool restaurant, even if the workers couldn’t quite seem to figure out how to take orders. Despite the fancy menu items, I suppose it ran pretty much like any other McDonald’s in that respect. We intentionally saved the whole Disney World experience for a return trip, when the daughter will be old enough to really soak it all in. We did squeeze in a trip to Downtown Disney for some window-shopping and people-watching.

Following our time in Orlando, we drove to West Palm Beach, where we took a two-night cruise to the Bahamas. This was a very fun time for all of us. The scenery was beautiful, the food was delicious, and our time together just couldn’t have been better. The best part though was that my phone was out of service! No calls . . . no emails . . . no text messages — for 48 whole hours!

After docking, we drove to Fort Lauderdale and enjoyed some real down-time at our hotel with a full ocean view. We spent leisurely moments on the beach, riding the waves, collecting seashells, and soaking in the sunshine. Even with some high-powered sunblock, generously re-applied, we each managed to get pretty nasty sunburns. I suppose the sunburn is the closest we came to a lasting souvenir. The burn on my back actually has finger outlines, thanks to the kids hasty help with the sunscreen!

I’ve always enjoyed a good vacation . . . but this one was different. We really were able to enjoy some real rest and relaxation. Although our locations changed every couple days, we didn’t feel rushed. We had great weather, great laughs, and even got to reconnect with some great friends — and make some new ones.

Now it’s Monday again . . . and there are many things that need attention at the office. I think I just might take a few seashells to work so that I can ‘hear the ocean,’ as my little girl says.

Money is tight in this economy. Perhaps you can’t afford a big vacation . . . that’s OK. Just be sure to take some time to enjoy the ones you love. You’ll be glad you did. And you’ll make memories that last a lifetime.

I typically move at light-speed, juggling a-million-and-one tasks, each of which someone out there thinks should be priority #1. I’m learning though the important discipline of self-care; that is, making sure my own spirit is nourished, refreshed, and recharged so that I can be most engaged as a husband and father — and most effective as a minister.

I remember very well marking items in the Sears and JCPenney catalogs as I created a ‘wish list’ in my younger days.  I often find myself sitting in our living room, looking at our tree (at right) and thinking about what I most wish for now. Most of us, I believe, still have ‘wish lists,’ but we rarely write them down in our hurried lives. It’s true that the best things in life can’t be wrapped in pretty paper and finished off with a bow.

Here’s my grown-up Christmas list — in no particular order:

• I wish for more people to know Christ personally.
• I wish for a cure for cancer, a disease that has taken its toll on my family through the years — and that currently threatens the lives of many.
• I wish for a few new deep friendships where I can be free to be me.
• I wish for more quiet time with God, to know Him better.
• I wish for more quality time with my wife. Our waking moments together are so busy.
• I wish for more children in this world to have the blessing of godly parents.
• I wish for protection for our troops, wherever they may serve.
• I wish for peace in a world full of chaos.
• I wish for time to stand still for those few moments when I hold my children in my arms.
• I wish for godly spouses for my children when they grow up.

And yes, I will always wish for a white Christmas — and am hopeful that one day that one really will come true!

There are so many more things that I wish for — and pray for. I encourage you to take a moment to jot down your own grown-up Christmas list.

I pray that you will always remember that Jesus is the reason for this wonderful season of the year.

Merry Christmas to you and your family!

Sadly, I think that for many Thanksgiving Day is little more than an opportunity to overindulge on favorite food items, binge on college football contests, and enjoy a day off work.

This Thanksgiving I challenge you to truly pause to count your blessings — “name them one by one,” as the old familiar hymn so aptly puts it. No matter how many challenges this year has brought, there are still countless things for which we have reason to be thankful.

My family and I are grateful for a new church family — and a much-needed increase in empathy for those who are unemployed. As so many continue to struggle with unemployment, I am reminded of God’s provision, and I pray regularly for friends and family members still looking for work.

I’m grateful also that despite sweeping social and political changes, God has blessed us with freedom of speech, freedom of religion, and freedom of the press, among others.

I’m grateful for family and friends who make me a better person than I’d be by myself. Their love, prayers, and constant encouragement challenge me to live a life worthy of the calling I’ve received in Christ.

Many of you have had a tough year. No doubt about it. Scripture tells us to give thanks in all things. And I pray that this Thanksgiving, you’ll be able to do just that.

And as retailers roll out the red carpets this weekend, remember that the best things in life aren’t things at all; they’re those intangibles that we so often take for granted — just because we can’t touch them.

No coupons. No discounts. No early-bird savings necessary. These are the things that are truly priceless.

It’s kind of funny, isn’t it? Just think, one day those things we can’t see on this earth will be the only things that matter. Perhaps we should begin practicing proper gratitude today.

May your Thanksgiving be filled with faith, family, and friendship.

Our move to North Little Rock has been such a rich time for me and my family. We absolutely love our church and community. I am really enjoying my ministry and staff team. And God is clearly working in and through us to have Kingdom impact.

But I’d by lying if I said the move had been easy for my son. We tend to think of kids as really resilient people — but the fact is that my son is, for better or worse, more like a little adult. He thinks and experiences life at a different level than most of the kids his age. I guess he’s a lot like his dad was as a child.

And that maturity, while often beneficial, also can complicate things. Take friendship, for example. I met my very best friend in Kindergarten. And while our relationship has changed through the years — through marriage, kids, and all the stuff of life — it has endured. I’m one of those people with lots of acquaintances and very few friends. But the friends I have are rock-solid — people I can count on to be trustworthy, dependable, and present in a moment’s notice if the situation called for it.

Well, tonight as my son and I were doing sunshine and clouds, I asked him about the phone call from his friend today. He choked up and started to cry and said in a muffled voice, “I just miss him so much.”

I cried too — not because I also miss friends, although I do. . .not because I typically cry with those who cry, although I do. . .and not because I wish I could somehow better guard my son’s young heart, although I do.

I cried because I love my son, and I hate to see him hurting.

You know, God is like that with His children too. He loves us with a love that is unrelenting. . .a love that won’t let go. And although He understands all our struggles, He also hates to see us hurting.

I know that my son misses his friend. He wants to share with him about the Air Force planes we see around here all the time. He wants to play Legos with him and use that amazing imagination that God has given him. But more than anything, he wants to just be there physically with his friend.

Phone calls and emails – while helpful — are not sufficient to bridge the gap between two hearts. They are no substitute for the companionship that comes from being able to converse and share life together.

And while I’m saddened that this new situation is such a challenge for my son, I am heartened to know that he has learned early in life the value of a friend.

Because everyone needs a friend. And I believe he’s going to make a really good one for someone else very soon.

There are MANY things I enjoyed about VBS as a kid. Here are my top ten:

10. The smell of that grape Kool-Aid. It just never smelled that strong at home!

9. The sandwich cookies! To this day I still love scraping the filling out with my teeth. It’s one of those things every kid instinctively knows to do — kinda like not eating the crust on sandwich bread.

8. The games we played! I remember playing lots of different games as a young child, but you just couldn’t do any better than Red Rover on the church lawn.

7. The Bible stories! I loved being able to learn more about God’s love for me. VBS always provided a great theme that helped make those stories come to life.

6. The decorations! Lots of work goes into preparing for the VBS experience. As a kid, I just loved seeing the church transformed with color and decorations of all kinds. Those decorations may be a pain to prepare, but they really do help anchor the memory in those young minds.

5. The crafts! The crafts rotation was always one of my favorite parts of VBS. My very favorite craft was a wooden duck candle-holder. It made a perfect gift for my mom (or so she said).

4. The music! I have always loved music, so the songs I learned during VBS really helped the message of the Bible stories stick with me. It’s kinda funny. . .I still know the words and movements of many of those songs!

3. The missionaries! Every year in VBS, we would learn about real-life missionaries. Some years we were privileged to have actual missionaries visit to share their personal experiences, stories, and pictures. Something about that time made missions very real to me.

2. The teachers! I was always blessed to have really good VBS teachers. As an adult now, I understand how hard it can be to get ready for VBS — but I also know that the ministry can be absolutely life-changing, with eternal results for many, many kids.

1. The new friends! Every year I was always thrilled to see lots of fresh faces in VBS. When VBS is done right, a good portion of the attenders really should be children outside the church. There’s no better way to make new friends in the community!

If you are serving in VBS this summer, THANK YOU for your service for the Kingdom. You are making a profound investment in the lives of children and families!

If you have children — even if you do not attend church anywhere on a regular basis — I urge you to find a local VBS for your kids to attend. I can pretty well guarantee that they’ll have a blast. There are great resources for Bible school, but here’s a link to help you find a VBS in your area.

I’d love to hear your favorite memories/experiences from VBS. Your comments are always encouraged!

I must admit that I was a skeptic at first, but I have come to really like Twitter. I have been able to meet some nice people — and am learning a lot of stuff as I take a few dips in the ever-flowing stream of information that comes through those I’ve chosen to follow. Therein lies my frustration with Twitter.

So many of the thousands of people on Twitter seem to be absolutely obsessed with having a large number of ‘followers.’ I understand that those who utilize Twitter for business purposes might want to expand their audience for maximum impact and sales. But I don’t quite understand the unhealthy obsession with having huge masses of followers, because the reality is that, in most cases, the majority of those followers don’t read anything you tweet about anyway.

In the all-consuming quest for more followers, tech gurus have designed a variety of tools to help individuals generate tons of followers. This is what I simply don’t get. As I said earlier, if the goal is business-oriented, then perhaps I can understand. . .but for regular individuals? It seems to me that such massive followings can be a real pain to manage. Plus, the diversity of the followers makes it absolutely impossible to effectively target your message in meaningful ways.

I think Christians have much to learn from this as well. Twitter is really not about followers, although in a day and age where friends are increasingly electronic, it strokes our egos to have lots of them. Twitter is about relationships. The platform provides a means to communicate with people who share something in common with you — faith, politics, hobbies, sports, etc. That certainly doesn’t mean that all the followers are identical to you — but it does mean that there are bridges to build relationships with people, many of whom you don’t know and likely will never meet in person.

As more and more people join Twitter, it becomes harder and harder to maintain focus. More followers demand more time: time reviewing tweets, time managing followers, time replying to messages. In order to be worthy of having lots of followers, a person must be a good leader. They must be able to successfully prioritize, communicate, delegate, and appreciate. These things are exponentially harder to do when your follower base grows from 50 to 500 to 5000 and beyond.

I have given this a lot of thought. And I’m sure some of you would disagree with my perspective, and that’s fine. There are other blogs you can read — something for everyone in the age of the internet.

I definitely believe that if Jesus were on earth today, he would be on Facebook and Twitter. Jesus spent time where the people were. And today people are online.

But in reflecting on the life of Christ, I notice that he was able to speak to the masses, yet he invested only in the lives of a few — people who were truly His followers, His disciples. Among the multitudes to whom he spoke, we can be certain that there were some who truly wanted to be like Jesus. But most of those people were probably just curious. They didn’t have any desire to really spend time with Him. . .and they really didn’t care much what He had to say. It’s almost like our Hollywood culture today. We think it’s cool when we see an actor, actress, or other famous person — but we definitely don’t go out of our way to spend time with them. It’s just neat to be able to say to your buddies, “Hey, I saw Kris Allen today!”

I don’t know about you. . .but I would rather have 10 committed followers than 10,000 onlookers any day.

And, about that understood reciprocity thing — you know, if someone follows you, then you need to follow them. . .Well, I’m glad Jesus wasn’t following Judas.

All that said, if you’d like to follow me on Twitter, find me @GarrickDConner.

Tonight I have one fewer.

Friendship usually starts out very naturally. We connect with someone and find commons interests, common values, and a real sense of camaraderie begins to develop.

When I was in college, I became friends with a guy who was amazingly talented. As for potential, the sky was the limit. We spent a lot of time just hanging out together. Even my move to Texas did not do much to distance us. We continued to talk, to visit, and help keep each other accountable — walking the straight and narrow road, so to speak. Scripture says that as iron sharpens iron, so one man sharpens another. That characterized our friendship for quite a long time.

However, things were not always as they seemed. That’s often the case, isn’t it? My friend was struggling with something that left him feeling terribly alone, incredibly empty, and always searching for that which was missing or lacking in life. 

I watched him fight for a long time. I prayed with him. I prayed for him. I did my best to give godly counsel and biblical instruction. Most of you probably know by now where this is going.

At some point along the way, I began to realize that maybe the two of us didn’t have quite so much in common. Maybe we didn’t share the same values.

Over the past week, I was forced to confront my friend about his thinking and behavior — not with a goal of judging him but with an intent to help restore him. The problem with the truth is that it’s not always pretty. And no matter how much I tried to demonstrate respect and genuine concern for my friend, it became crystal clear that his primary interest was in me supporting personal choices that are clearly destructive.

I’m too much of a friend to do that.

In the ‘old days’ when friends parted ways, it was typically done in person or by phone. However, in today’s world of modern technology, such partings often take place through e-mail, text messages, or social networking sites — like Facebook. That’s what happened in this instance. I was ‘unfriended’ on Facebook by a person I truly care about. (I did confirm that my friend had ‘cut me out.’) This wasn’t one of those ‘friends’ who just knew of me in high school. . .or someone who requested to be my ‘friend’ just to see my online photo albums. This is someone I spent hours with — talking, laughing, and doing life. This is someone who was in my wedding. This is someone I considered a really good friend.

Sometimes things don’t turn out like we planned. That goes for relationships as well. 

Tonight I grieve the loss of a friend. It is clear to me that even if there is reconciliation at some point, things will never be the same again. And for that I grieve as well.

As I reflect on this situation, I take comfort in several things:

• I did my best to share God’s truth in love and with respect.
• I reminded my friend how much God loves him — and how much I love him as well.
• I left open the door for future communication. In fact, I would welcome it.

But the thing which brings me the most comfort is the knowledge that God is working out His purposes — even in this situation. He has a plan.

The one thing with which I struggle is the fact that no matter how much I want my friend to experience abundant joy, that is a choice that only he can make. I will continue to pray for him as he searches to find that joy and abiding peace that only Christ can give.

Please pray for my friend. . .that God would reveal Himself in undeniable ways.

I am fortunate to have a few friends who I know would walk on water for me if the situation required it. Although our lives are such that we may not talk every day now, there is still a very real sense in which we can pick up the phone at any point and know without a doubt that there will be a kind, caring, and invested person on the other end of the line.

As I meet with people on a regular basis through the context of church and counseling, I am burdened by the amazing lack of true friendships that many in our society have. Life is so busy in the booming Dallas area, as is the case in so many parts of the country. However, even in rural America it seems that people are becoming more and more disconnected from one another despite the many seemingly helpful advances in technology. Just because we have become more wired does not necessarily mean we have become more connected. The distinction is significant.

In a society marked by late works hours, closed garage doors, and privacy fences, I fear that we have perhaps insulated ourselves from one of the most powerful elements of life — friendship. Of course, having friendships and attachments to others is not enough. We must have the right kinds of friendships that help us up rather than pull us down.

Listen to these words from Scripture:

Iron sharpens iron,
So one man sharpens another. (Proverbs 27:17)

A friend loves at all times,
And a brother is born for adversity. (Proverbs 17:17)

The quality of our friendships is important. It has been said that a friend is someone who will help you move — and a real friend is someone who will help you move a body. Now, I’m not sure I would advocate that, but you get the idea.

Friends not only accept us, but they also enhance us, bringing out positive qualities and serving to refine us. They provide avenues for love, accountability, encouragement, and support. Who among us doesn’t need those things?

I have often heard that a person who can make it through life and count five good friends is truly blessed. After all, we can’t afford to invest the time and energy into a great number of people. But having a few close people to be our friends, confidants, and comrades is a blessing of inestimable worth.

Maybe today is a good day to evaluate your own friendships. Who do you call a friend? Who could you call at 3:00 a.m. without a second thought, should a need arise? Are you more concerned with having friends — or with being a friend? These are just a few questions that should get you going.

Perhaps you are surrounded by people but feeling more alone than ever before. You don’t have to go through life like that. Make today a time to evaluate the reasons for your situation — and to do something different. We must be proactive in this area. . . or the passage of time will find us empty and alone.

Don’t let that be true for you.

Today my family and I made a special trip to Northpark Mall to let the kids see Santa Claus. Of course, just finding a parking space nearly resulted in loss of life for us. People are stark raving mad as they fight for spots.

As we went through Dillard’s, one lady brushed against my wife as she tried to squeeze through one of those crazy places where they put circular display tables in the narrow aisle. Of course, rather than saying “excuse me,” she grimaced at my wife and said rudely, “You’ve got a stroller in front of you, you know!”

Yes, it’s the most wonderful time of the year — yet, I think many people really don’t understand what the season is really all about.

I love getting to see the multicolored decorations that adorn homes, businesses, and shopping malls. I love hearing the Christmas music — on the radio, in stores, and especially as it is played live by an orchestra or brass band. I also love the food of the season, although I have to be careful with that one. . . too much of a good thing can be really bad!

As it turned out, the line for Santa was much too long. They were issuing numbers to parents and telling them to check back in a couple hours. As it turned out, our first party of the season demanded we return home before Santa would be available. I guess the kids will have to wait a few days.

So apart from the decorations, the music, and the food of Christmas, what are my favorite things?

That’s easy!

1. Time with my family. No matter what we do together, we always have a good time.
    
2. Time with my friends. This one requires a little explanation, because the fact of the matter is that I don’t really have a whole lot of friends — you know, the people you really know. . . the ones you’d do absolutely anything for. . . the ones who you can just truly be yourself with. Most of these people live several states away, so the time I get with them is by phone. Still, it’s definitely time treasured.
    
3. Time by myself. Maybe that sounds a bit selfish, but I’ve discovered through the years that it’s absolutely essential for me to have some “me” time. . . time when I can decompress from the stress of the day. . . time when I can be alone with God. . . time when I can read a book, take a walk, or take a nap. I always feel a bit more useful to others when I’ve had some solitude.
    

I can’t help but think that the crazy road-ragers in the mall parking lot — and the grouchy lady in the department store — might just be missing some of the blessings that I quite honestly take for granted much of the time. I’m incredibly blessed to have a good family, good friends, and sense enough to know when to have some “me” time.

Hopefully, no matter how busy or crazy life gets for you this holiday season, you’ll be able to count some blessings and enjoy some favorite things of your own.