Stuffed animals and a garbage can...

My wife and I are currently doing some "re-purposing" of our upstairs closet space. With the addition of our little girl Taylor, we need every ounce of storage we can find! We have found all sorts of treasures from years past. Silly gifts to each other from when we were dating, all the way back to weird knick-knacks that I had on my desk as a Jr. Higher. I literally found two huge bags of t-shirts that I haven't worn in six years but for some reason, I kept making the case to my wife that I may need them someday for...yard work... Needless to say, much of those clothes have been either donated to a local clothes closet or tossed.
One of the bags upstairs contained about 20 or so stuffed animals. As I went through this bag, the memories came flooding back to me as if opening a tin of Folgers coffee and remembering every conversation I ever had with my grandma. The silly memories that I have of my college sweatheart giving me a frog for Valentines Day, complete with kissy noise, lead seamlessly into memories just as happy but a little more painful. I held a a little dog that had a shirt on reading "I wuv you so much", and thought about how much I miss my mom and dad, and how much they have missed. I remember buying that dog with my dad for a Mother's day long ago. I am not sure how old I was, definitely somewhere in elementary school, but I can still remember how sure I was that this was the perfect gift for my mom! I remember my dad looking at the dog and looking at me, probably thinking "not exactly what I would pick" but still willingly handing me the money that I in-turn handed to the cashier. (that always makes a kid feel better)
I am a full on grown-up now, complete with a mortgage, car payments, two amazing kids and a beautiful wife. It's easy to get caught up in the busyness of life and forget to cherish those little memories that were such a big deal at the time. I often find myself thinking more and more about my parents as i watch my own kids, especially my son. I think about how much they would have loved playing with him or how much he would have loved playing piano with my mom. It's neccessary for us to take the time to remember these moments that have defined us and formed the ethos of who we are.
I don't really have anywhere that I am going with this...no deep spritual meaning or a verse to go with my thoughts. All I have is a grateful heart to a beat up old stuffed puppy and an amazing Creator who is forever guiding this journey we're on.

Prayer Guy

I think that it's a pretty common tradition within Christ-following families to have a go-to prayer guy. Prayer guy (or girl) is the one person you know is going to lead the prayer at family events. In the greater Eisenhart family, my dad was always the prayer guy. Every Christmas, the Eisenhart family with all the aunts and uncles, nieces, nephews and Grandma would get together at a rotating location to celebrate Christmas. And I knew that before we headed over to the overstuffed table filled with all the Christmas classic food that I had waited the last 364 days for... the ham, the desserts, that thing with the jello and pretzels... my dad was going to pray. After that, we'd fill our plates and cram into any spot that we could find and begin the process of catching up on all the latest family news as well as re-telling the same old stories that we had all heard 100's of times! (I do look forward to this!)
So on to my point, for the last 2 years, following the passing of my dad, my uncle has asked me to be prayer guy. It's kind of a big deal to me, and I'm not sure why. I guess I was the default guy since I work in the church, but it was totally unexpected and a great honor to me. I actually got butterflies in my stomach this year when I was about to pray, which seems pretty silly to me. It's almost like the "Christmas Prayer" is the most important prayer of the year, or at least a strong top 3! I'm not sure I have a point to this or a deep theological concept to pass along to you, I just was thinking about it and wanted to pass it on.
I guess that what blogging is for. I'll try to be more interesting next time!