I hear it’s all the rage to redo your wedding photos (at least for those of us who were young when we initially had them taken and now realize how differently we would do things).

I don’t know about you, but if I were to go that route, the following sequence is what I’d want.

You can check out the photographer HERE.

She burst on the scene on October 26, 1996, one daughter in a litter of puppies born to parents Littlest Rebel and Bonnie Abigail.  She first entered my life a few weeks later, in early December of that year.

I remember sitting in the kitchen and my dad bringing her in.  She was so little and so white.  I had done a lot of research and basically convinced my parents that a West Highland White Terrier, or Westie for short, was the type of dog we should get.  However, I wasn’t expecting them to get one so soon.  But they did, and it was love at first sight.

We’d been a dog family for as long as I could remember.  I loved all animals, but dogs in particular.  At the time I was a senior in high school and worked part-time at a veterinary office, Ridgetowne Animal Hospital.  I had unfortunately been involved in a terrible accident at the vet’s office that had resulted in the death of our most recent pet at that time.  That experience had really torn me up.  I carried around a lot of guilt about it (still do, actually).  His loss had really wounded my heart.  However, when she looked at me and I held her for the first time, I felt those wounds begin to heal.

I don’t remember the conversation exactly, but we had a round-table summit in our kitchen that resulted in granting our new dog the inconceivably ridiculous name of Www.mistletoe.com Kinsley.  To most people, thankfully, she was known simply as Missy.  To Liza and me she’ll always be THE Missy Dog.

Even though she was a family dog, I honestly always considered Missy mine.  She and I just seemed to share some kind of special bond from the beginning.  At times, this caused some trouble in the house.  Missy got into this routine where she would get so excited whenever I walked in the house from being away somewhere that she would urinate wherever she was.  Thankfully, this was normally on the kitchen tile and not the living room carpet.

I like to think that Missy cared just as much especially for me.  I know that she was very protective of me.  A few years after we got her, when Liza and I started dating, we would sometimes go hang out at my parents’ house.  Somehow, Missy knew that Liza was really special to me, unlike any of the other girls I had brought home before.  She wasn’t sure she cared very much for this new development.  Anytime Liza and I sat on the couch, Missy would rush to get beside me before Liza could sit down, or she would wiggle herself down to squeeze in between us.  She’d then look up at Liza and let out a low growl, just to let the newcomer know to whom I really belonged.

Missy was never much of a barker.  That doesn’t mean she wouldn’t do it, but she didn’t do it much.  Instead, she would talk.  You may think I’m kidding, but I’m not.  Of course, she didn’t really form words, but she would open her mouth and just make noises in this whiny, singsong voice.  I learned to mimic her, and there were times where we’d sit around and just have a conversation, neither one really saying anything but both of us understanding the other completely.

While I was in college and my brother and sister were still in high school, they each acquired dogs of their own.  My sister had a miniature pekepoo named Baby Dog and my brother a lab named Bailey.  Everyone joked that the three dogs each took on the personality of their owners.  I won’t describe here what how that played out for Baby or Bailey, but for Missy, it mostly meant that she got annoyed with the other two and often wandered off to find a place where she could be by herself in peace.

Missy didn’t initially come with me when I moved to Birmingham.  After all, she was technically a family dog, plus Liza really didn’t consider herself that much of a dog person.  However, when my parents decided to move to Africa, I knew that there was no place else she should be than with Liza and me.

While we were making plans for Missy to move to the ‘Ham, Liza made it very clear that she had no intention of taking care of a dog.  She would say, “Missy is your dog, Chris.  You’re going to have to take care of her.  You’re going to feed her.  You’re going to walk her.  You’re going to clean up her messes.  You’re going to bathe her.  She’s yours, not mine.”  Of course it wasn’t two weeks after Missy got here that she had won over Liza (as she did everyone), and the two of them had formed a little alliance.  I quickly realized that I had unknowingly become outmatched in my own house.

Those of you who haven’t had pets and aren’t really that into dogs probably can’t comprehend how greatly a person can care for an animal.  But let me tell you, it’s a lot.  Many of you know the difficulty Liza and I experienced in trying to have a child.  As absurd as it sounds, Missy really filled that void in our lives in a lot of ways.  I think especially for Liza.  Whenever she calls Missy her “baby,” on some level, she’s not kidding.

Of course, Liza did eventually get pregnant.  While we were eagerly anticipating Story’s arrival, we were also trying to assuage our fears, ease our worries and find out as much as we could to prepare ourselves.  One of our chief concerns was for Missy.  We knew that she had been the “princess” in the household and had long received all of our affection and attention, and now she was about to have to face some major challenges.  Once Story was born we would send blankets that she had been wrapped in home with people to place in Missy’s kennel so that Story’s smell would be familiar to her.  Then the day we got to come home from the hospital, we made a big deal about getting to introduce them to each other for the first time.  Story was asleep in her carrier.  So we brought her inside, set her in the middle of the living room floor and then brought Missy over to her.  Missy just sniffed at Story once, turned away, walked off, jumped up on her spot on the couch, and laid down.  She wasn’t interested.

However, Story eventually won Missy over and vice versa.  From the moment we knew about Story, I kept telling Liza that one of the things that pained me the most was thinking that she would probably never remember Missy.  I can’t describe to you how much I hate knowing that has come true.

Storykins and the Missy Dog from Chris Kinsley on Vimeo.

Missy has been slowly fading for a while.  She started sleeping a lot more than she used to.  She couldn’t quite make it around the block an entire time when we went for walks together.  Her hearing had started to go, and she sometimes didn’t eat very much.  I haven’t heard her “talk” in months.

She stopped eating sometime last week.  She started being sick to her stomach a lot and lost four pounds in about as many days (which is a lot for a dog her size).  We took her to the vet to get checked out on Tuesday and the news wasn’t good.  Her blood work showed that her kidneys were not working the way that they should be and that toxins were building up in her blood stream as a result.  So, we’ve been taking her in for treatment every day this week where she’s received fluids, medicine and special food, all in an effort to cleanse her system and see if we couldn’t jump start her kidneys to start working at least a little better.  Today the Dr. ran the same tests he did Tuesday and the results weren’t any better.  In fact, they were worse.  Knowing that her kidneys weren’t improving and were actually continuing to decline after four days of treatments specifically for them meant that there was not any hope left, especially with her age.  And we didn’t want her to suffer as her systems just continued to shut down.

So, Liza, Story and I went by the vet this afternoon to say, “goodbye,” and let her know how much we loved her.  At about 4:07 I held her while they gave her a shot through her IV.  She went to sleep in my arms as I stroked her fur, and after just a moment, her heart stopped and mine broke.

She was a dog, but she wasn’t just a dog.

I loved her and miss her and will always.

Many of you did, do and will too.

Thank you.

The Missy Dog ~ October 26, 1996-March 26, 2010 ~ The Preciousness

Because I’m already a proud papa, you’re going to have to begin enduring baby pictures of Story from me pretty early.

Here she is.

Here’s her foot.  You can even see her toes.

And here she is fist-pumping, just like her Auntie Ber.

Don’t you think she looks just like Liza?

Liza had another doctor’s appointment today.  Actually, the appointment wasn’t actually with a doctor, but a nurse.  She performed an ultrasound.  The purpose of which, amongst other things, was to discover the gender of our child.  Well, Baby Kinsley really wasn’t interested in being photographed.  There was a lot of movement away from the ultrasound machine and Baby kept squeezing its legs together.

And that’s a good thing.  ‘Cause we finally found out she’s a girl.  And that’s going to be a good discipline for her to have developed, especially with the rising statistics of teenage sexual activity, but that’s for another time.

So, we’re having a daughter.

Her name is Story.  Story Reese Kinsley.

And, oh, what a Story she is.

I’ll have more to come.

Oh… and I’m back, by the way.

Believe it.

jea*lous – adjective

1. feeling resentment against someone because of that person’s rivalry, success, or advantages (often fol. by of)

2. feeling resentment because of another’s success, advantage, etc. (often fol. by of)

3. characterized by or proceeding from suspicious fears or envious resentment

4. inclined to or troubled by suspicions or fears of rivalry, unfaithfulness, etc., as in love or aims

5. solicitous or vigilant in maintaining or guarding something

6. in the Bible: intolerant of unfaithfulness or rivalry

“Do not worship any other god, for the LORD, whose name is Jealous, is a jealous God.” – Exodus 34:14

So, our theme at Student Life for our spring events in ’09 is Live Love. I won’t spend much time now getting into how or why we chose that theme or what we really mean by it. Perhaps I’ll save that for another post, or you can come to one of the events yourself and find out. What I will say is that we’ve begun working on the content for that event that will flesh out the theme. Today, in particular, we had our first meeting about the Bible study for our Just Like Christ series that will go along with this theme. For this initial meeting we try to cast some vision about what we’re wanting to generally communicate about the theme from a Biblical perspective and then try to prayerfully hone in on what Scripture passages we should focus on. We go about this in any number of different ways, everything from just tossing out specific references or stores to talking concepts and topics. Present for the meeting in question were Andy Blanks (Director of Resource Development), Drew Francis (Creative Director), Justin Ireland (Director of Ministry Events), Jenny Riddle (Publishing Assistant), Travis Hawkins & Erin Moon (Big Time Producers), and myself (I’ve included titles because a lot of us have gotten new ones lately, and I think it’s kinda funny; mine’s Content Creator, by the way; how’s that for a title).

At one point, about midway through our conversation, Andy started us wondering if there was a parallel between how we are to love God and how we are to love others. For instance, we’re to serve God. It’s easy to see a parallel in that the Bible is very clear that we’re to serve other people as well. But can you continue that type of thing? Let’s consider worship. We’re to worship God. Are we to worship other people? No. Certainly not. God alone is worthy of worship. Okay. But just what is worship? When I look up just a definition in English I see two things repeated: “honor” and “adoration.” I think that’s pretty good. Well, are we not to honor other people through our love for them? Is there not a measure of adoration for our fellow neighbor involved in our relationship with them? So… you see how we began thinking that might work and could be really interesting.

Well, that naturally led to wondering if, then, there is a parallel between how God loves us and how we are to love others. Now, this made sense right off the bat. After all, we know from 1 John 4:19 that we love because God first loved us. Our love, especially as a child of God, is an overflow of the love he pours out on us (I recognize I just made a little bit of a leap, but I’m just going to assume, as dangerous as that can be, that you’re tracking along with me here; let me know otherwise if need be; besides, I’m kinda thinking and processing as I go along here). Now, if that’s the case, then the characteristics of His love for us should be present in our love for each other. So, let’s just start giving some names to those characteristics: grace, mercy, sacrifice, service, selflessness, humility, joy, peace, forgiveness, understanding, patience, faithfulness, etc. The list could obviously go on and on and on. And if you look at that list and even let it continue it makes sense how those things should be present in our love for other people, whether or not they currently are. But if you continue that list to its fruitiong, some characteristics that it would contain become a little more difficult to reconcile. One that jumped out to me was jealousy.

“… God is love.” So ends 1 John 4:8. Right? No argument there, at least not from me. Now, if you flip back through your Bible, way towards the beginning, you come across that verse from Exodus I’ve printed above. the Lord, God is not only described as a jealous God, He is actually ascribed it as His name. It is so much a part of who He is, it so characterizes Him (at least in certain situations) that you could call Him that AS HIS NAME! Whoa! That’s tough to ignore. Wrapped up in the Love God is the Jealous God.

So, I wonder, is jealousy supposed to be part of me as well?

Confession: unfortunatley, I am a jealous person by nature. Maybe we all are, part of being fallen and everything. However, it’s always bothered me. This character flaw was made most evident in my dating life where I was very possessive of my girlfriend, especially concerning other friends she might have had of the male persuasion. But that’s no the only place jealousy rears it’s ugly head in my life. Whether it be at work or in my family or at my church or anywhere else for that matter, chances are I’ve been jealous of something. In fact, if I’m to be perfectly honest, there’s a good chance that I’ve been jealous of you at some point or another, and I’m not even sure who you (the blog reader) are. That’s how bad it can get. I’m not proud of it. I’m not ignorant of it. I can’t justify it. I don’t like it. But it’s true.

And it’s bad. Really, really bad. I know that. So, then, back to the idea of God as Jealous. Do I understand God’s jealousy in light of my own? Or is He different? I’m going to go with the latter. I find it, not only inbeneficial to try to understand God through my understanding of myself, but completley irresponsible and dangerous as well, not to mention way off base and, frankly, wrong. Well, what does it mean then for God to be jealous?

To start I turn to the definition of the word. This is a little bit skewed because I’m dealing with the English here and not the Hebrew, but bear with me and trust me that it’s okay. I’ve done my homework. I’ve printed the six definitions of “jealous” according to dicitonary.com. The first three all have to do with resentment, rivalry and fear. I’m going to go ahead and rule those out because God is Love, not resentment. There is no one or thing that can rival Him. And He really doesn’t fear anything at all. He wouldn’t be God if He did. So, let’s move on to number 4. This one has to do with fear and rivalry as well. Why not just toss it out like the rest? Well, because of the word “unfaithfulness.” This particular definition is what’s used in relationships to say that someone is jealous. So, when I say that I was jealous of girlfriends and their relationship with their male friends it means that I was worried/fearful/anxious/whatever of them being unfaithful with someone I perceived to be a rival. However, the reason why I think this definition kinda works for God is that He isn’t fearful of our unfaithfulness. He’s fully knowledgable of it. Again, He isn’t concerend with a supposed rival. He recognizes that anything else that receives our love vastly pales in comparsion to Him. Yet, He doesn’t ignore that those things exist. So, I’m going to maintain that He is jealous because of our unfaithfulness, and His reason for this is actually another aspect of His jealousy.

Look at definition number 5. God is solicitous and vigilent in maintaining and guarding us and our relationship to and with Him, which is the reason He is jealous in the sixth definition sense of the word, the one that is directly attributed to the Biblical understanding. He is intolerant of unfaithfulness. He knows, possesses and is what is best for us. He is jealous of anything other than that for us.

So, then, can I parallel this jealousy that God posses on my account with how I might be jealous with others. I don’t know. Maybe. I kinda think so. Can I not hope and seek a manner of love in which I so deeply care about other people that I am crazy with jealousy over anything else that gets their attention other than what I know to be the only thing deserving of it?

I think I can, and I do.

I can’t tell you how many times I have come here intending to write a new post.  I never could seem to get it done, though.  Of course May and June are always busy months around the office, but there is no excuse for my extended absence.  If any of you still check this thing out, my sincerest apologies.  But, man, it feels good to be back.

For some psychological reason, I tend to keep things, especially thoughts and feelings, very close to me.  I mull things over to no end.  This has landed me in therapy more than once.  So, the practice (and discipline) of blogging is something that is very beneficial for me, and I’m extremely grateful to those of you gracious enough to share in it with me.

So, what to write about?

I think I’ll go ahead and tackle one I’ve been meaning to for awhile.  This speaks to the question of why I love doing what I do.

More than once on this blog and elsewhere I have made allusion or direct reference to my frustration at producing short sketches for upper-middle-class, suburban white American kids.  I have long ago tried to make some kind of peace with this.  What follows is a short picture of why I actually love it, however frustrating it can be at times.

Earlier this summer, on June 1st, in fact, I was up at Covenant College in Lookout Mountain, GA with our Blue team for their first week of camp.  This is a great team of people.  We at Student Life were extremely blessed this year with regards to our production staffs.  Sure, there’s been some struggles along the way, but for the most part, they’ve been awesome, and the Blue team helped set the bar.  This particular day was their second day of camp.  So, they had been through Orientation, Celebration and two nights of Worship and had done a really grate job.  However, at 10:30 that night they had to tackle their first night of Late Nite.

This particular night was called “Gendergeddon” and involved a number of different activities that pitted the guys against the girls.  Throughout the night they have various opportunities to score points for their particular gender.  Intermindlged throughout the night are some funny videos.  There was a lot of chaos going on in trying to get it all set up and ready to go, but once things got going, they did a great job, in particular the Blue team actors, Jill, Ian and Matt.

About halfway through Gendergeddon there was a moment where one girl would be brought onstage to be crowned the queen of Late Nite and one guy would be brought onstage to be crowned the king.  The girl they had chosen was older, late high school, and pretty.  An obvious candidate.  She came up and was given her crown.  Then they called out the guys name.  The one they chose was a seventh grade boy who was actually sitting down in a row about midway back through the room.  When he heard his name called, he tentatively stood up, stepped out into the aisle, and nervously looked around.  There was a huge group of older guys crowding the front of the stage.  They were all looking around for who had been chosen as king.  They looked up the aisle and noticed this junior high guy.  When he saw them staring at him, he threw his arms in the air triumphantly.  The guys all cheered and ran down the aisle, picking him up and hoisting him on their shoulders.  The put him up onstage.  Matt lifted him up again and Ian bestowed his crown upon him.  It was glorious.

Now, you might be wondering why that illustrates why I love what I do.  After all, there wasn’t a whole lot of creativity in that moment.  It was much more up to random chance that it even happened.  There doesn’t seem to be hardly any spiritual benefit at all to that moment and we don’t even get to know what happened to that kid after Late Nite that night.

So, allow me to explain.  No, it wasn’t a big moment, spiritually or otherwise, and I really didn’t have much to do with it at all.  But that’s the beauty.  Who knows who this kid was?  Who knows what was going on with him?  Who knows how the rest of camp went for him or what kinds of things he had to deal with once he went back home?  I don’t know.  But what I do know, is that for a short amount of time, this shy junior high boy was honored.  He was lifted up and elevated and encouraged.  I guarantee his group was talking about it.  I guarantee he was talking about it.  I also can expect that this silly, little moment also kept him engaged.  God ordained a ridiculous Late Nite called Gendergeddon and had Matt pick this guy specifically for that moment to happen, for him to have fun amongst other Christians, to be able to carry that with him.  That moment alone isn’t really significant, but what we get to do at Student Life hopefully engages students in a series of those types of moments.  Some of them have a lot more spiritual value, but my prayer and desire is that all of them serve to assist churches and youth workers in keeping their students interested and engaged in ways they weren’t expecting.

As I read back over this, I’m not sure it will make a lot of sense to you, but it does to me.

And I love it.

So, I’m tired again but I know that the last post really sucke so I’ll push through and try to make this one more interesting (or at least more detailed).

Today was a great day. Actually, it didn’t start terribly great. About two minutes after we left the hotel we realized that I had left the tripod (you would think that is something that I wouldn’t do; you’d be wrong). So we had to turn around to go get it. Surprising, everyone was very understanding.

We visited our first project today. It was at Capitol City Foursquare Church in Quezen City. In the Philippines, children typically attend the Compassion project on Saturdays, so it was different to see this project. What we were able to experience however is the Child Survival Program part of this project. This program works with mother/child units ranging from expecting mothers to children that are four years old. It was really cool to see how the workers interact with the mothers and children and to learn how they are giving them a huge advantage in simple survival.

Callie was able to meet the child she sponsors. His name was Jaepee and was extremely shy at first. You know, when those of us who sponsor get the opportunity to meet our children we typically bring a backpack full of gifts. Then we meet the children, give them the gifts, take a lot of pictures and ask a lot of questions. This can be extremely overwhelming. But Jaepee eventually opened up, though he had very little interest in being filmed.

For lunch we went to a place called Max’s, which is evidently a pretty typical chain restaurant around here. Eric and I sat a table with a number of people that included two of the LDP students, Michelle and Nice. They were kind enough to walk us through our meal, and thanks to them I had a taste of my first corn-milkshake. Some of you know that I have an adversion to corn in any form, much less as a milkshake, but it really wasn’t that bad. You can see a little bit of our lunch in the video below, hosted by Eric.

We also shot interviews today with all four of the LDP students. This is by far my favorite part of these trips. Just in case you’re not aware, God is working mightily in the world, and these LDP graduates are living testimonies of that.

The most poignant moment of the day was when I asked one of them named Kiwi to try to describe what poverty looks like in the Philippines. She said, “I remember when apples first came to the Philippines. It was a really big deal. It was like everyone had apple fever.” At this point I was actually trying to figure out if she was talking about Apple computers or the fruit. She was talking about the fruit. I’m an idiot. She continued, “I begged my parents to buy us an apple so that we could just see what it tasted like, but even a rotten apple, we couldn’t afford.”

What have you eaten today?

The day was good. The day was long. The day was hot. I want more days like today.

Now on to a more personal matter…

I’m really torn between two worlds right now. I want to be here, in the present, making the most of the opportunities God has blessed us with to listen to these stories and discover how to best share them. But my heart right now is back home.

Some of you know that Liza and I have been journeying through fertility treatment. We haven’t been just super-open about it because there are a lot of unknowns still and just to be honest, people don’t always know what to say about it and just end up saying something stupid. That’s probably prideful, but anway…

So, that journey is somewhat culminating here in a couple of hours as I write this, and I’m halfway around the world. And honestly, I don’t know how to feel about it. I believe I’m being faithful and obedient to the path God is calling me to walk, yet Liza is having to walk part of the path by herself right now. And that sucks.

And I feel helpless.  There is absolutely nothing I can do to affect the outcome.  This is truly beyond any illusion of control I might have.  And it’s realy life.  This is seriously real-life stuff.

When did this start happening?

I hope this isn’t whining.

So, if you see Liza today, or if you just want to call her, it would be awesome for her to know the people that care about her today.

And I’d like to ask you to pray. And pray hard. The financial and emotional burden this has been is taking its toll. We’re looking forward to ending this part regardless, but we’re sure expecting God to come through with one particular outcome over the other. And to have you join us in asking Him for that would mean the world to us.

Tomorrow we’re supposed to see some of the poorest areas in which Compassion works. How do you even process that?

We’ll see.

Signing off.