Darren LeBlanc

I have gotten a few questions as to why I’m not on staff at Calvary Lighthouse any more. Also, I get questions on where I’m going to church now, etc. These are questions and I suspect, may have been a source of confusion for one or two of you. So, lets explain:

As you know, I have been working like a dog on Anthem of Hope. It is very time consuming. There hasn’t been a week that I put in less than 30 hours in quite some time (and there are 13 of us working on this at some level each week). Of course I also have a full time job, and I keep mandatory daddy/daughter time each night when I’m home from work. So basically, I’m up very late each night after she gets to bed. This schedule leaves no time for being employeed anymore at a church. I stepped down a few months ago from my position at Calvary. There were absolutely no hard feelings. I want to make that clear because anytime someone leaves a church there are always rumors. Upon stepping down I decided it would be nice to visit the churches within driving distance that prayed dilligently for Misty. On off weeks from doing that, we (me and Livi) visit one of my local churches (that’s why many of you local folks see us popping in every once in a while).  Not sure where we will settle down, but for now, that is the plan.

Anyway, this weekend was wildly productive for Anthem of Hope. We had a casting call yesterday for a series of videos we are doing for Anthem of Hope. That went perfect. Then today we had a voice talent in the studio to record readings of one of the sections of our scripture disc (The Encouragement Disc).  

PS…my friend Jana Bova is in the hospital ready to have a baby. I’m praying for her tonight.

A few days back I got a couple thought provoking questions in response to my post on God being quiet. 

1. How can we not hear from him, we have his written Word.
2. Do you think that God sometimes keeps silent because he wants you to make the decision and trust him for the outcome.

So, for #1..
Yes, we have God’s word, the Bible. And in theory, the Bible is a speaking everyday, we just need to read it. In my life, however, there are periods of time that I have experienced less through reading than I have at other times.  It is in those times that we feel our prayers aren’t even being listened to and that we being to doubt things that may have been second nature only days before. Philip Yancey writes ” Any relationship involves times of closeness and times of distance, and in a relationship with God, no matter how intimate, the pendulum will swing from one side to the other.” And in that time of quiet and apparent distance to God, we have room, increased room, for growth. God uses these quiet hours to mature and perfect us in many ways. I love how A.W. Tozer calls this the “ministry of the night” denoting that in that dark time, there is yet a work being done.

And for #2…
Absolutely. This is of course my opinion, but  my understanding of God’s character (how minimal that understanding may be) does lead me to expect he very well might seem to be “quiet” in a time that he wants us to trust him. For me, there was a period of time that Misty and I did not fully trust God with her life…in those times, he was so quiet. It was painful to begin to doubt everything you once believed. But it was coming out of that time and begining to finally trust him that we experienced growth beyond what we’d have imagined. It took Misty to a place where she could look death in the face and smirk while just sking her head agreeing that God is in control.

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 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.

I deleted a comment from yesterday. I don’t do that often. There was nothing offensive or anything, but there was a link…to a site to pray for a girl Abby. First, I need you to know that I am  100% in support of praying for Abby, and I encourage you to continue that. But I took the link down because I am not sure I agree with some of his statements. I do not have the time to read this whole site and respond to everything, so I have pulled the link. Please email me links if you would like them posted in the future.

I, unlike the writer of Abby’s blog, believe that your prayers can affect the outcome in a situation. And as such, I ask you all to pray for my friend Nicole. She has a pretty significant surgery coming up (most likely monday) and I’d like to lift her up. She has a pseudo-tumor that causes her eye sight to black out. Her surgery will hopefully save her vision. To give you a little background, Nicole lives in Detroit and our paths had never crossed until she emailed me a few months back about heping me publicize Misty’s story (while we were still expecting a miracle). Well, one thing led to another and Nicole ended up being the Marketing Director for Anthem of Hope. She has quickly become a great friend and a major driving force in AoH. I hope you can join me in praying for her today. You can visit her and leave a comment at:  http://nicole-lifeadventures.blogspot.com/

PS…On a completely different note: I was thinking something nice about someone today, so I just told them out of the blue. It made a difference in their day. Hmmm…we should do that more often :)

Last January I wrote this: 

Dear Abby,
I’m addicted.

It’s been a few years really; I’ve been hooked ever since the drug was first so casually, yet so ubiquitously, pumped into communities across America. As with most drugs, the more you feed it the worse it gets. Increased heart rate, cold sweats, mild euphoria and insomnia are just a few of the very real effects I have experienced. I find myself lying awake at night knowing I need to sleep, but just needing one more dose. One more is never quite enough.

The good news is that availability in my region is limited, so I’m able to manage my addiction moderately well. I find myself only able to use for a few days out of a year. A few days and I’m through all the DVDs I get from the dealer…then I have to wait for the next season of 24 to come out.

Sincerely,
Addicted in Long Branch

Well, the next season of 24 starts tonight. Good luck to all of you addicted souls :) As for me, I’ll be hanging with my Olivia till bedtime, then working on Anthem of Hope. That’s the routine lately…and unfortunately there wont be room for my favorite vice. However, this post is of utmost importance, beacuse while I’m not participating in the weekly revelries, I do intend to fully overdose on the DVDs at some later date in my life.

So… don’t tell me what happens!!!

Ok, first I need to thanks Shannon for posting those pictures to facebook. I really got a kick out of them. They were from my 6th grade trip to PEEC (pocono environmental education center). It was 1992 and apparently baseball hats were “in”. I had a black Chicago Bulls hat plastered to my head for a good two years (I was ashamed of my curls back then).

And thanks to Colleen for bringing up the fact that at least 6000 people around this globe have told me I look like Justin Timberlake. Here is me in 6th grade and him in the mickey mouse club:

And no, Misty wasn’t in the first picture. She and I unfortunately didn’t meet until high school (and we went to separate schools).

I don’t know what it is, but I get an uncanny amount of people telling me I look like one person or another. It’s really quite odd how often I get this and how varied the comparisons. I made a list a couple years back of all the comparisons people have made – I’m going to try to find it. It was quite amusing.

In the mean time, I’ll leave you with a couple recent ones (within the past year) that are pretty comical. These are 100% true comments I have gotten from people:

1) Fidel Castro (when I wear my green hat)
2) Mr Tumnus (the fawn-man in chronicles of narnia)
3) The “free-credit-report-dot-com guy” (the one that sings)

Oh there are so many more…

ps…i need to create a category called “if you have anything significant to do, don’t waste time reading this post”. This will be the first entry :)

Liv and I had a visit tonight from my old friends Kristi and James. They came in from PA for dinner. It was really nice. 

Anyway, James is a fellow musician and is working on writing songs for a new record with his group Wakeup Sleeper (Kristi, by the way, is a top shelf marketing mind), so we ended up talking about songwriting and inspiration and the such. SO it got me thinking. Toward the end of Misty’s life I was reading a ton. I was listening to audio books and reading the Bible everyday. At any time during that period, I could have preached a sermon on no notice and probably convinced anyone that it took a month to prepare. I was growing so much myself and learning so much, that the impartation of that knowledge was almost inevitable. Now, I’m too busy again for personal growth…and it probably shows but the frequency of really significant posts you all read on here.  It reminds me of when I was a youth pastor. I had many things going for me – I truly loved the students for one and that let me earn the right to be heard (which with teenagers is 90% of the battle), but I look back and I know that I wasn’t really as strong of a teacher as I should have been. There were times, it would take me till the very last minute possible to finish writing a sermon. The problem was that I was working full time for the dept of defense, and then on top of that I was working 45 hours a week for the church. In the middle I tried to be a good husband, have a web design business and play in a touring worship band. So yes, I didn’t do a great job of personal development – and it probably showed in my teaching.

In talking with James, the conversation was more focused on art rather than teaching. We realized that we each could reach back in our lives to the times when we were growing most – those were the times when we created the best art. The times when we learned the biggest lessons in life, yielded fruit in our art. We often focus on the skills needed rather than the self needed. We put emphasis on learning how to preach, or how to  paint, or how to write songs – but we neglect learning about who we are. We neglect studying ourselves; our passions, our ideas, our strengths and especially our weaknesses. In growing as a person, we will inevitably be better suited to tackle any area of life.

My goal is to listen to one audio book a week. For me right now, it’s going to be a theological piece, but at other times it has been a leadership development book or any other thing like that. I think next on my list is The Confessions of St Augustine.

When I was writing a lot of music, I often caught myself working on a new song that resembled something already written. I’d throw those tunes out. Coldplay must have forgotten that step as this tune totally poses off Joe Satriani’s “If I Could Fly”. This is probably one of the top 3 rip offs I’ve heard.

I have a friend who stopped buying presents on Christmas…because this time isn’t supposed to be about us. I’m not moving to that extreme, but it makes me consider what I want Olivia to grow up expecting out of the Christmas season. Will she see this as the time of year she gets the biggest gift of the year, or will she see this as a time to remember the birth of Jesus. What did you see it as growing up?

Here is a little video that brings another perspective: