Darren LeBlanc

I’m obsessed with perfection in art. It has been this way for quite some time now. In college I remember spending time nearly every night for 8 months working on the lyrics to a song. The message was something I valued and so I invested time to make sure it was as potent and poetic, as pen could write. If you have been a regular on this site for a while, you will recall the ridiculous amount of time I spent to get pictures of some landscapes in Maine recently. I really just wanted to be able to capture the beauty there and be able to pass it on.

Lately, my obsession has been shared by the Anthem of Hope team.  There 6 of us working on the website (to be launched in March) and the prerelease of the Encouragement Disc (April or May). We want things to be excellent because we so believe in the need and the cause of bring hope to people in the midst of illness. If I dug deeply I might find a hidden desire for AoH to be excellent because it in some aspects represents the purpose of my Misty’s suffering. So, in a sense, our dedication to the excellence of each piece of this whole movement, is a compliment to Misty. A tribute of some sorts…

But this post is not about Misty. This is about us. As creators, we want our created art to be representative of us. The shaping and the molding that takes place to bring our handiwork up to our highest held standards is time consuming and painful. I’d venture to say that God is likely as obsessed with his creation, as we are with ours. While I can write a song, he created the ears that hear it and the mind that understands it. While I can snap a picture, he created the flowers in it, and clouds that bring the rain to water them.

But we…we are his magnum opus; his greatest art. As such, we should expect shaping and molding to be a very real part of our lives as God forms us into a creation representative of the creator. For me, that long sharpening process has been, and I fully expect will remain, a painful. C.S. Lewis denotes this as the Intolerable Compliment – we are esteemed so highly that we are destined to suffer pain to as are lives are being perfected.

I am kinda laughing to myself about this…Tonight is the second night in a row that each of these following things has happened:

1. I sat through an uneventful meeting all day
2. I drove into Boston
3. Had dinner with a friend from college
4. Met my friends new spouse
5. The friends I met were significantly involved in a non-profit organization
6. The non-profit organization exists to help kids in Africa

Ok, so last night it was Ryan and Katie Keith…you met them.

And tonight it was Katie (yes another quincidence – both couples have a Katie!) and Andrew Bauer (no relation to Jack). Katie and Andy are part of Kupenda for the Children. You can check out their site at: http://kupenda.org. Katie & Andy are also very close to my heart and I’d love you to pray for them and for the organization. Like Forgotten Voices International, Kupenda raises lots of money each year and is doing great things with it.

So yea, kinda funny how that worked out. Unfortunately, there is no video tonight. I had wanted to, but we were too wrapped up in discussing how the only possible fun thing to do at Messiah College on weekends is to go to Walmart…so I completely forgot :)

Ryan works full time as the president of forgottenvoices.org

Here are some images I snapped while working in Arizona a month or two back. Click the picture to go to the gallery.

Olivia and I had some visitors tonight; friends of mine from college. Chad and Michelle are youth pastors in central PA, and they made the drive out to meet up for dinner. It was nice.

Speaking of church youth pastors…I just wanted to highlight how many of these people give so much of themselves to help our kids grow and make good choices. If you want to be proactive about your kids spiritual growth, a good place to start is to meet with the youth pastor and discuss how you can partner together. As parents, we are undoubtedly first and most influential in our kids lives, but a unified support system from different areas is pretty powerful. So, if you are a church-type person, call you youth pastor aside after church and ask her to dinner. Even if you aren’t creative enough to figure out good ways to work together, an invitation for a meal will certainly make her feel appreciated (a feeling people in that arena rarely experience).

 Anyway, Chad and Michelle are heroes of our faith. They love the students so greatly and invest so much. I wish their were more people like them floating around.

Click HERE for some pictures I snapped while they were here:

Today was a great day for Anthem of Hope:

1. 2 of the 3 hired voices for the Encouragement Disc are on now on contract and working.
2. We finally got our job listing posted for actors for the video campaign we are doing. This was the first day it was us and we got around 200 resumes and headshots…so thats great!
3. I had an initial consult with freelance writer, Kami Rice, who will be writing my bio.

So I’m excited! It also was a good day cause Olivia and I had dinner with some great friends – the Zieglers. I’m exhasted though, so I’m off to bed early.

PS…just went in and checked on my little girl. Sometimes I just sit and watch her when she is sleeping. I’m so in love with this kid :)

I don’t know about you, but sometimes I try to talk to God with just no results. Sometimes, if just doesn’t feel like there is anyone listening.

Well, from the final events listed in the Old Testament (ca. 424 B.C.), up to the earliest references in the New Testament (ca. 4 B.C.), there is window of over 400 years. This is 400 years where, we have no record of God saying much of anything to anyone. The lack of prophetic word in this period has led some people to call this the “four hundred silent years”.

Well, perhaps God was silent…but he was not inactive. He may been biting his tongue, but he was hardly sleeping on the job. The history of these years precisely follows that laid out in the book of Daniel. So while his voice was silent, He was still very much involved.

Sometimes, I forget this my own life. I will pray and pray and feel like there must not even be a God listening to my ramblings. But, as I step back a bit and remember the course of my life, I can’t help but come to the conclusion that even in those times when it feels like He doesn’t exist…no, especially in those times, God is a close as ever.

Updated: the video is now in flash format and should play for everyone.

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A few of us spent the day doing some video stuff. Below is a welcome video I just posted to http://anthemofhope.com 

Happy Martin Luther King Jr Day.

And to celebrate..I put a new banner up! Hope you like it.

(ps..no my banner has nothing to do with Martin Luther King Jr…but it’s cool, and he was too)

Started writing this the other night…

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I had a series of fortunate events today:

1. I guess it all started with the blackberries. They were on sale. Marked down to a price lower than I’ve ever seen in this part of the country. My mother-in-law had Olivia and decided she was going to buy herself a boatload-sized package.
2. Olivia, in her usual fashion, devoured the majority of the blackberries, but in the process she managed to get a nice chunk of dark purple lodged nicely in her platinum blond.
3. This purple stain, of course needed to be washed out, so I planned on getting her a bath when we got home.
4. A slight delay put us at home late – just in time for our friend Heather to show up and cut our hair (this was olivia’s second cut with our world famous stylist friend).
5. By the time Heather left it was late and we didn’t have time for her normal bath…so I just quickly jumped in the shower with her (I do this with shorts on…sorry, parental nudity doesn’t sit right with me)
6. Now just before we got in, Olivia turned on the radio on my alarm clock (which is on the floor of the bathroom because I have been sleeping in the hall outside Olivia’s room this week while working on my room).  For about a year now, she has known that the little sleep button makes the radio come on and the snooze makes it turn off. She loves putting it on and off and on and off – and of coursing dancing to it the entire time. It was set to some classic rock station.

So anyway, my random bathroom located alarm clock is playing us classic rock. It’s late at night and we really need to get her in bed…but just before we turn the water off, the DJ announces a song that I know all to well. It’ s Eric Clapton, Wonderful Tonight. There I was, with the new object of my affection held in my arms…dancing to a song that I’ve only danced to with one other person. One other person, who happens to be the onlyother person I could truly ever call the object of my affection. It was beautiful to me. I squeezed her tightly and quietly cried. She was too busy trying to get water in her mouth to notice…but its probably better that way for now.