CFS Life

Happy Birthday to ME!

2008-06-30T08:04:00.000-07:00

That's right, today I am 42 years old. Sidebar, Your Honor (wow, is it possible that i am really 42? 42 is old, it is 8 years from fifty, ... FIFTY! It doesn't seem right.) 42 years ago today, I was born ignorant, helpless, and unable to control my bladder. Some would say that not much has changed. What has changed is both wonderful and troubling. The wonderful part is that I have a great wife and kids, a job that I love, friends that I enjoy, and a growing appreciation for this life and the time that I have to live it. My birthday is truly satisfying because of the good season of this life that I am in. I am very blessed by God. The troubling part is that I have more of so many things that I don't want. More wrinkles and bags around my eyes. More hair on my nose and ears (my wife calls me a koala bear), and less on my head. Like weeds on a parking lot, it doesn't seem right that hair should grow on my nose and ears. I spend more time now on hair maintenance than I should have to. I have more pain in my joints. I have more things to do than I have time for, and more bills than I have money for. I have more exhaustion, forgetfulness, confusion about technology, and plaque on my teeth. What I need more of is patience and wisdom. Oh well, maybe next birthday.

What?!?!

2008-06-27T13:47:00.000-07:00

What am supposed to do blog once a week? Come on, this was set up to be a quarterly blog. So I blog on Easter, and now it is near the 4th of July so it is time to blog again. Look, it is not my fault that the blogging community decided that normal is blogging like once a week or everyday. Who has that kind of time? Seriously. I can't make that kind of commitment. It takes too much effort, and I am tired from being old and tired. So ok, I would like to commit to a quarterly blog, but I understand from some of you (Heather Earnhart, Sherri Stone, Denise McCoy, Robin Williams) (no, not that Robin Williams, he's funny) that having a blog means keeping up with it. So for my four avid readers (to me, it is avid if you look at this sight once a quarter), I will again promise to keep up with this blog. Also under threat of removing useless items from our website, I have renewed my efforts to blog (as if a quarterly blog is considered useless, look, a hundred years ago people thought a quarterly blog was good enough, but not now). So there. Ok moving on from the whining and crying which I tell my kids not to do, a lot of things have been happening around here besides employees quiting all the time. I will get to all the news next time (Monday, not Labor Day).

Snow on Easter?! The Final Insult.

2008-03-24T07:41:00.000-07:00

Ok, a white Christmas I get. Even snow on Martin Luther King Day or President's Day or New Year's Day. But snow on Easter?!! Come on, this is just getting ridiculous. A few blogs ago, I wrote how I was sick of winter and ready for spring. Well, a few weeks later and it is cold and gray and it is almost April and there is no sign of spring. I guess Mother Nature and Mr. Winter got together and decided to have the last laugh and extend this cold winter for another month. When I am out in the cold for a few harsh minutes pumping gas, walking 50 feet to work, or going out to get the paper off my driveway, I think I can actually hear Them laughing at me in the biting wind. Ok, look, I realize that our forefathers, pilgrims, pioneers etc., would look down on me and consider me soft for complaining about being cold as I go from my heated home to my heated car to my heated workplace, but times have changed. They felt lucky to be alive come springtime, I want to be warm and start playing golf. So maybe I am soft and weak and I never would have survived 200 years ago. I feel lucky to live in this time, but I bet George Washington and Thomas Jefferson would complain about this cold winter too. Complaining about the weather is kind of like a past-time in itself. It is what we do, so here I go, I am sick of winter. Now it will be cold until May.

"The Kingdom belongs to such as these"

2008-03-14T07:19:00.000-07:00

Madeline Mitchell is the newest addition to the CFS family. She is the first child for Jodi, one of our social workers. As you can tell by the picture, she is really cute and really happy (for the moment).

Look at me!

2008-03-13T10:23:00.001-07:00

Hey! Look at me, I figured out how to put pictures on my blog without the help of Robin, our resident genius. I thought I would try to make my blog more interesting, so what is more interesting than a picture of me hard at work. I took a picture of myself at my desk while I was on the phone with someone. Now that is multi-tasking. So here are my observations about myself on the phone. I seem slightly interested in what the person on the other end is saying. I seem distracted, probably because I was taking a picture of myself. I have a very short haircut which I give to myself about every two weeks. I hold the phone in a very manly fashion. There. I should get back to work now taking more pictures of myself and others around the office. See you soon.

Hello! Blog, where have I been?

2008-02-27T12:33:00.000-08:00

Wow! Has it been a month? Where have I been? My apologies to my blog. It's not you, it's me. I know that I left you alone for a month, but I have had a difficult time getting through these groundhog days of winter. I feel like I have been in a daze or a haze or something that feels like a fog. Everyday was cold and gray and my system was sun-deprived. I feel like I just woke up and February was over. Well, I am awake from my long winter's slumber now and I am looking forward with great anticipation to SPRING! I went outside today and stood in the sunshine for a few minutes. I had forgotten what that felt like. I felt very hopeful. Spring is a welcome transition that brings hope with it. We have had a lot of transition around CFS these past few months. We have a new executive director in Steve Awtrey. He is doing a fantastic job! Honestly, I am not saying that just because he is my boss and he reads this blog. (Hey Steve! You are the greatest guy in the world!) We have a new staff member in our social work department, Miquilaue. She has a beautiful name, and is young and smart, two things that I used to be. Another WOW! (as we call it) has been the addition of Erin to our office staff. She braves the Metrolink everyday to work here, and usually has a good story to tell about her experience riding the train. Wait until you see what she has done with our new website coming soon. Transition always brings hope, and I am excited about the coming spring. See you next week, blog, I promise.
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Staff Day

2008-01-11T13:23:00.000-08:00

We just had a annual staff day where we close the office, get away from the phones, and look ahead to the new year. Here is what I got out of it, I really like our staff! What a blessing it is to like, love, and respect the people that you work with. We had a time during the day where we all shared some things from our personal life and spent time praying about those things. What I learned is what we all know, that we all are battered, bruised, and scarred from this battleground of life. We come to work at CFS with a passion and a mission to help the hopeless and the helpless, but we also come with our own burdens and baggage. We have stress, health concerns, families to worry about, financial concerns, the list goes on. We come to work as people wanting to help and needing help ourselves. Jesus once said to Peter, "Satan has come and demanded permission to sift you as wheat. But I have prayed for you that your faith will not fail, but when you do fail, turn and strengthen your brothers". The call of this life is not to avoid failure because we can't. The call of this life is to do something with our failure. It is what we do here at CFS. We help the fallen, because we are the fallen.

My best Christmas moment.

2008-01-02T07:54:00.000-08:00

Despite all the hassle and hubbub (is that a real word?) of the Christmas season, I found a moment that made all the work worth it. It was the afternoon of Christmas day. We had a big breakfast with our family plus Grandma and Grandpa from Arkansas, and we had finished with opening all the presents. There was a moment of calm, and my daughter, Madeline, realized she had forgotten her surprise that she had been telling me about. Her school allows the kids to "shop" on site for presents for their families. Items are donated, and the children pick out gifts for their parents and siblings. Volunteers then wrap the items for the kids to take home for Christmas. So on this day, she suddenly remembered her gifts and ran upstairs to get them. She passed out the gifts to her family. I got some golf balls. She gave her mom some cookie cutters, her little sister a book, and her brother got a hot wheels car that was probably his favorite toy of Christmas. Each gift was perfectly tailored to the one receiving it. I was filled with joy watching her give these good gifts to those she loved, and I teared up a bit when I realized that this was a small step on her journey to become just like her Father.

CFS Christmas Party!

2007-12-20T07:47:00.000-08:00

On Tuesday, we had our company Christmas party. We had a fine time! We played fun Christmas games, had pleasant conversation with people I like, and played the always fun gift exchange where someone can steal your gift. That game is the one time that the employees of CFS can let loose and be naughty. Steve Awtrey dresssed up as Santa and made us all laugh a lot. A little of the laughter was that uncomfortable feeling of having a grown man dressed as Santa and I'm not a kid anymore. So enough of the niceties, here is the real story of rage and anger behind the scenes. Before the party fun, there was chaos boiling inside my home and my mind. My wife is a brownie girl scout leader for our daughter Madeline. We had 11 brownies at our house for cookie baking with billions of sprinkles. It is a very difficult task to sweep up round sprinkles, they just roll for days. So after the furious cleanup, we scramble to get ready for the party. We are about to leave when our son notices POOP ON THE CARPET! Yeah, that's right, POOP! And it wasn't one of our own kids. It was from one of the little siblings of a brownie girl scout. Our son noticed it because someone had stepped on it and smeared it around the living room (or pooping room). So I had to clean up the mess, this made us late to the party. Of course, when you try to get someplace fast, you always get behind slow drivers. We got stuck behind a car doing 40 mph on hwy 40. I guess they got confused. So we get to the party very late, and I am in a full Christmas rage. Merry Christmas!? I don't think so. Luckily, I was able to eat down my anger with good food and a chocolate dessert which is the cure for most of my ills. So there you have it, a tale from the darkside of Pleasantville. Eric

My very first blog.

2007-12-14T12:32:00.000-08:00

I am 41. I went to college when we didn't have computers readily available to us. We still had to use the card catalog in the library to do research for a paper. I can actually remember hand writing a paper. There were people that made money typing papers for students. My first paper done on a computer was my senior year of 1988. It was done on a Commador 64 made by Radio Shack (I think). Most kids won't know what a card catalog is. On the other end of the spectrum, I am not familiar with all this blog business. My six year old daughter can already do a power point presentation on an I-mac. I can't do that. Someone, (thanks Jason), had to help me set up this blog. So look at me now, I am blogging. We (and by we I mean Jason) created this blog in hopes of telling our story here at CFS. Not just the stories of the counseling and adoption agency, but our stories, the stories of the people that work here and dedicate themselves to the mission of CFS. I believe.... we believe in what we do here. We as individuals may not be good or important, but the work of CFS is, and we are grateful to be a part of this. I have wanted to work here full time for a while. Now the dream has come true. This is the vision that I have for my life. This is what I want my children to know about their father - that I loved my wife passionately, I loved them faithfully, and I loved their God. I want them to know me as a counselor, someone who cared about and worked to help families and marriages. My life is full at CFS.