An Explanation:
A few years ago David Crowder had a devotional book called Praise Habit: Finding God in Sunsets and Sushi. I'm sure that the book is phenomenal since most everything that Crowder does is fantastic, but the only thing that seemed to really sink in my mind was the flow of the title and the meaning that it had behind it. The desire that Mr. Crowder had put into words about wanting to find God and praise Him in everything stuck with me and has never seemed to leave me to this day. So flash forward some months after I had absorbed this title and I am standing up to leave church when I realize that I am wearing a nice pair of khaki pants, a nice button down shirt and a tie. Which may not be that big surprise to many of you, but as it was winter-time I was about to put on my Carharrt jacket to go venture into the frozen tundra that is Northern Alabama from about the second week of December until about the 17th of February. Now many of you may not know what a Carharrt jacket is so I'll take a second to explain. Carharrt is a company that makes quality work wear; jackets, pants, overalls, etc. They make really good apparel and every good Southern boy tends to own at least one of their jackets. Now to get the right image in your mind, these jackets tend to go everywhere. I wear mine everywhere from class on campus to the deer field and everywhere in between. They can stand up to anything less than an F4 tornado or a pack of rabid wolverines and the more you wash them, the better they get. I say all that to lead up to this. Here I am dressed fairly nice by most standards, about to put on this jacket that has frayed cuffs, some blue paint splashes, a scratch down one side from where I had to track that deer through the briar patch and smells like a combination of hay, grease, sweet feed, cedar tree sap, and wood smoke. As I realized what I was wearing, I laughed to myself and thought "If David Crowder finds God in sunsets and sushi then I'll find him in a Carharrt jacket and khaki pants." The name stuck in my head and has now manifested itself as the title of this blog, so now you know where the name came from. A Subtitle:
I couldn't fit the entire title that I wanted in the space provided, so really it should say Finding God in a Carharrt Jacket and Khaki Pants: A Southern Boy's Life and His Walk of Faith.
A Goal:
My main goal of this blog is pretty simple: to be honest. Other than that it is to share some of my experiences/musings about my walk with Christ, church in the South, life in the South, and whatever else I can think of. I realize that eventually I will forget some things that have happened in my life and I want to get them down so I can go back and look at them later. I also realize that at some point someone that isn't from God's Country of the Southern United States might be reading because some weird Google search dumped them here and they were so enthralled by my writing skills that they decided to start reading from the beginning, so I'll do my best to explain things that are typically a Southern tradition/oddity including but not limited to the following: bluegrass music, noodling for catfish, bowfishing, banana pudding, pecan pie, Sweet Tea, hog jowl in black eyed peas and turnip greens, moonshine, cornbread, dinner on the ground, decoration sunday, homecoming (both at church and the football game), the Iron Bowl, dressing up like you are going to church when you go to your college football game on Saturday, snake handlin' churches, dirt roads, and the ever favorite past time of many people around here- Shooting or blowing blowing up things that aught not to be shot or blown up.
Some Background:
I was born in a city called Decatur located in North Alabama. A few days after that I would be moved by my parents Lloyd and Anita to their house where I would spend the next 19 years growing and maturing into the fine specimen of a true Southern man that I am before heading off to college at Auburn University. I basically lived life in three places growing up. My parents house and land outside of Somerville, my Grandfather's dairy farm 1.5 miles down the road and church. Growing up on a dairy farm is something that I treasure. Where else does a child have to opportunity to spend time around large animals, get paid a quarter for every pigeon that he shoots at the silo with his BB gun, learn to drive a 1 ton flat bed truck with 4 on the floor at 10, and eat his grandmother's fried chicken 3 times a week? At my parents house, I spent time with my older brother romping around playing cowboys and indians and generally being boys on the 30 or so acres we have. I learned to fish, shoot squirrels, skin deer, lay shingles, run a shovel like a champ, and handle large animals all within about 3 miles of country road. If you didn't grow up like me, I'm sorry. It was fantastic and I want to make sure that my kids get the same thing.
As far as my parents are concerned our relationship is a little odd compared to most people my age. We're friends. I've always gotten along well with my parents and genuinely enjoy being around them most of the time. They have been married for 36 years and raised us as best as they knew how, which turned my brother and I into two very quality southern men. In my humble and unbiased opinion.
I grew up in church and always knew who Jesus was, but when I was 12 I acknowledged the fact that I was a sinner and accepted that Christ was my savior. It wasn't until I was about 15 that I really began to understand that recognizing Christ as my Savior and making him my Lord were two different things. So this began a journey through high school of hot and cold faith in between trying to figure out girls (Still working on that) and living life. After graduation I was able to grow in my faith more as I was given more responsibility at the church I was attending, but still lacked the realness of what a life totally dependent on Him was. After I moved to Auburn to go to school in 2008, God wrecked my world and everything in it. And it was the best thing that ever happened to me. 3 years later here I am, still in Auburn, and closer to God than I have ever been. All I really want to do is be back in North Alabama, teaching History and life to high school students, and farming a little on the side. But I know that I have a few more months here on The Plains and some things that God needs me to work out before I am done here. In the mean time, I've always wanted to write a book and since I doubt I'll ever make the time to do that I figured I would start a blog that no one will really read or take seriously. I hope that you, the reader, don't take this too seriously. I know I won't. I just want to put some of my story down on digital paper, and get some of my thoughts out of my brain. If you have read this far, let me say thanks and that my later posts will be a little more interesting (I hope).
See you when I see you,
RW
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