of football, pizza, and fellowship.

It might be a bad sign that it's 11:30am and I'm already on my second espresso. More so, I'm not at church right now on a Sunday morning. Truth is, I'm getting myself ready for a very long day. It's time yet again for another huge Cedarwood event, the yearly Grey Cup Party I've been putting on since 2000 or something like that. Once again there will be food- lots of food- and lots of screaming and yelling- and hopefully good times by all.
I have many amazing memories from this yearly tradition; setting up "surround sound" with Reid one year, a very young hyper Allan running in circles around the room with every Bomber touchdown, TJ's general craziness, Kenny hoisting guys up on his back to run and celebrate, me using a shovel to clean up the mess of food off the carpet....the list goes on.
In reality though, there is so much more behind this tradition than just throwing a party. It honestly breaks my heart to see what a "good time" has become in our culture, and specifically among the age of guys I care for. It hurts me so much to see a picture of a teenager with a bottle of hard liquor in his hand on facebook cause I've seen so many guys over the years who have grown up to care about nothing more than finding that next drink (or hit) for an artificial feeling of happiness, even though the next day only seems to bring self loathing and sorrow.
As much as I sometimes just want to scream out that there's so much more, I guess I've learned that sometimes it's just better to show what it means, and this yearly tradition is one way. No one can tell me that there's anything more fun than what we experience when 30-60 Cedarwood guys get together for food and fellowship in the way that we do. It's a way of demonstrating that living a life honoring and loving God isn't in any way boring, and doesn't in any way stop us from having fun.
In a few minutes I'll be heading out to pick up the rest of the food and to start setting up for the day ahead. I don't have any real expectations for today- just the prayer that everyone will leave encouraged by the time we had together and with the knowledge that God's love is real and tangible and alive.