It’s been quiet around here lately. A few things have been happened over the last week:

• Found myself a job! I’m working at Images in London. I’m working on web and print design. So far it’s only been one day, which included 90 minutes of shoveling snow. Fun.
• Tried to finish the portfolio. I ran into some major issues (thanks Internet Explorer). Hopefully will have those worked out soon. I’m learning a lot from this design, so hopefully the next redesign will go a bit quicker.
• Finally unpacked. I’m kinda sick and tired of packing and unpacking, and hope that this will be the last time for a while. I don’t mind packing for traveling, but when you’ve got 3 guitars+equipment, furniture, clothes, a bookshelf of books, etc - not as fun.
• Started a new design for this blog. Don’t expect to see it too soon, but I’m already a little bored of this one. When I get closer to finishing the redesign, I’ll be sure to include a post as to what works and what doesn’t in this design.
• I am getting more and more eager to play music. Talked to some people about that. Things could happen in the next couple months. Keep your eyes pealed.
• I checked out North Park Community Church in London. The service wasn’t as “pro” as I had expected. They also had some guy come from New York who I described as “the Christianer/fatter version of Enrique Iglesias.” I didn’t say that to his face.
• I moved my gym membership to a London club. Hopefully get back into that again soon.
• Bought a new pair of pants. When I started this whole “getting fit” thing in December, I was 265-270 lbs with size 40 pants. Today, I am about 230-235 lbs with size 34 pants. Take that, Jenny Craig.

I will try harder next week to be here. In the meantime, go to my twitter. It’s hot.

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I forgot to mention something a couple of weeks ago.

As I’m sure many of you know, my blog was featured on cssmania.com a few weeks ago, generating a much higher-than-usual visitor rate. This was really great for exposure, and I am pretty sure led to my blog being featured at smashingmagazine.com’s article “45 More Excellent Blog Designs.”

Well, the massive spike in traffic put, as you can probably guess, a huge dent in my bandwidth, so much so that by February 21st I had gone over my limit of 1 GB/month.

Now, I have to tell you something about my web hosting.

A few years ago I was just starting out building websites, primarily for my band. Back in those days, there were several web hosting companies that provided free, ad-free hosting. However, very quickly into my web designing journey, these started phasing out their ad-free services. This forced me to make a decision: deal with the ads, or somehow find a way to afford web hosting (I was in high school at the time, and all my money went to cafeteria food and guitars).

I posted my situation on a website called christian-web-masters.com, an online community of Christian graphic designers. A user by the name of Nexonen (Andrew) had a small web hosting company he and a friend had started over in the UK. He offered to give me 10 MB of space, with 500 MB of monthly bandwidth, all for free. I was so blessed to receive this offer, and set up my site on his server.

Over the years, every time I had a technical problem, or needed any support of any kind, Andrew was always courteous and helpful. After a year or so, I had run out of space (we hosted mp3’s on our site back in those days), and Andrew bumped me up first to 20 MB, and eventually 50 MB of space. He also increased my bandwidth to 1 GB/month, which really helped out a lot.

When I first began my blog, the only people who read it were friends and a few people who found their way through Google or other searches. However, this quickly changed when my blog started being featured on several different sites, including CSS Mania and Smashing Magazine. Very quickly, my 1 GB of bandwidth was no longer sufficient for my site.

I sent Andrew a quick message asking if there was anything he could do to help. He was not sure whether he was even going to continue in the web hosting business, so I knew that this may be the last straw before my free hosting was up.

However, to my great surprise, Andrew increased my monthly bandwidth to 20 GB/month, perfect for the increase in traffic and readership. I was so blessed to have someone who was able to provide for me in this way, and do so quickly and efficiently. My site was down for a total of about 5 hours, which was only because I didn’t find out until about 4 hours in that I had even been featured.

So, all of this to say that there are some really great people in the world, and Andrew, my friend from the UK, is one of them.

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I went to the dentist today. A couple months ago I had gone for a check-up in Orillia, and was told that I’d need two root canals, and have my 4 wisdom teeth removed. In the midst of all of my life-transition, I had to put it on hold. Finally, today I was able to start the process of fixing up my pearly whites.

I went into the dentist expecting one of two things. The first was simply to get some newer x-rays taken, and then scheduled in for a future appointment to tackle what needed to be fixed. The second was that I would have the x-rays done, and then have at least one if not both of the root canals completed.

What ended up happening was that the x-rays were taken, and then the dentist started the root canal on one tooth. After doing a bunch of drilling, the dentist added a temporary filling and that was that. I didn’t feel any pain, and was glad to be on my way to getting the work done.

That is, until the freezing started to wear off…

For a solid two hours tonight, I laid in my bed, writhing in pain. It actually felt very similar to when I was assaulted, as there was a small amount of numbness sensation left, while the rest of my face felt like someone had stomped on it several times with a boot (which, in the instance of the assault, had actually happened).

Hopefully tomorrow some of the pain will subside, and I’ll be able to continue on with my job search.

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So, you may have noticed over the last couple of weeks a lull in my blog activity. Not only that, but the launch of my portfolio has been delayed. As much as I wish I could say it’s because I’ve been incredibly busy and haven’t had the time, unfortunately that’s not the reason.

Two weeks ago I was working away at a design, when I noticed the charging indicator light on my macbook power cord wasn’t on. I figured somehow the connection had been knocked out of place, so I checked the wall and found the plug still in place. I wiggled the cord around in my computer for a while to no avail.

Once my computer had run out of juice, I brought it and the power cord to an Apple Reseller, where they determined that indeed, my power cord was pooched. They said it was under warranty and should be no problem to be replaced. They put the work order in and told me things should be good to go in 3 days.

That Thursday (5 days after the first visit) I went to the store and was told that my warranty was up. Apparently I did not register my macbook when I purchased it in July 2007, and so the purchase date was still set for December 2006. Because of this, according to Apple my computer was no longer under warranty. I was told that this could be rectified if I fax my receipt from Future Shop to Apple, and have them re-set my purchase date.

So, I went to Future Shop to get a new receipt (I have now moved 4 times in the last 2 months… I’m not quite sure where my original is). They printed off what looks to be a copy of the Future Shop warranty (which does me no good), so now I have to find my receipt, or just buy the cord. But, it’s kinda expensive. So, in the next two days we’ll see…

I’m starting to realize that pen and paper don’t require power cords…

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Yesterday Sara and I went to visit Cindy at the hospital. I was a bit nervous before going in, as I wasn’t sure what to expect. However, when I first saw her, I felt a huge sense of relief. Her face has healed from the surgery so well, she looks as good as new. Aside from some tubes, casts, and a neck brace, she is looking really really great.

She seems to be having some short term memory loss. She’s feeling pretty lonely (as she’s normally very outgoing). It was hard to see her cry when they took the trachea tube out.

She sat in a chair for the first time since her accident, and even though she was uncomfortable, she seemed to be doing well. She is going to see a speech pathologist today to help with her talking. Once the trachea tube was out of her throat, her throat was very weak and it was hard for her to speak.

I’ve been so blessed to have a friend as amazing as Cindy, and she was so amazed at the love and support that a lot of you have been showing. She didn’t know about the 50+ people that had come the first few days, she didn’t know about the fund created in her name, she didn’t know that literally thousands of people have been praying for her. She was so appreciative of all the friends she has.

She has asked that I come back on Saturday, and hopefully I’ll have some more updates then. Thanks for all your continued prayers. We aren’t through yet.

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One of the passions that has continued to grow inside of me over the last 12 months has been a passion to lead worship through music. One of the struggles I’ve faced, though, is trying to remember that my identity isn’t found in being a worship leader. It’s found in being a worshiper. One of the easiest traps for anyone who works or serves in their local church to fall into is the trap of confusing our identity in Christ with what we do for Christ. I know that this has been one that I have fallen into, and still find myself struggling with even though I don’t work at a church anymore.

As weird as it may sound, one of the things I plan on doing over the next 2-3 months is “nothing.” My plan is to find a local church in London that I can be fired up about, and then simply do nothing. I’m not going to try to join any teams, or offer to lead worship, or do anything like that. What I plan to do is start focusing on relationships within my new church. I don’t want to be known as “Pat the worship leader.” I want to be known as “Pat.” I won’t disguise my passion for leading worship, or music, or anything like that, but I don’t want it to be the focus. I want to grow my relationship with Jesus, to really lean into him and find out who he is creating me to be.

This month I turn 23, and even though I am someone who likes to make as little noise as possible about my birthday, I do like to use it as a marker in my personal growth. This year I want to become more like Jesus, and to love him more. I want to love people, not for what they can do for me or my ministry, but because Jesus is for them. I want to open up more, to be more transparent and authentic. I want to admit both my failures and my successes, my wins and my losses. I want to live in community, and invite others into the community.

So, I will not be leading worship for a while, but not because I don’t want to, or because I don’t believe that’s what God wants me to do, but because I want to know the God I am worshiping more, before I can lead others to know him too.

I don’t know what this year will hold, but I am excited still. The last month has not been much fun, but God has been faithful. And I cannot ask for more.

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I got this in my inbox tonight… I am so amazed.

(Cindy) has been awake and saw all her kids today. She has 12-15hrs of facial reconstructive surgery tomorrow. She has been communicating by mouthing words to the kids. Now that she is more alert she is in more pain. Really smiling each time she sees the kids and very thankful that they are ok. Will update after surgery which may not be until late tomorrow

Amazing.

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Just got this in my inbox this morning. From Nadine Russell:

Not sure if you heard but Cindy opened her eyes 4 times today in response to her sister talking to her. Mandy believes that she is responding to Mandy asking - if you understand and know that I’m here open your eyes, and she is. She also moved her leg a bit as well. Her vitals are good, and she is progressing as she needs to be. The doctors are still saying it’s 50/50 but today was a very good sign. She rested well last night. She is still on track for surgery on Monday.

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Hey everyone,

First, a great big thank you to everyone for praying. Both those on facebook, and also those who were at the hospital. There were about 35 people at the hospital, and it was so awesome to see the church rally around and really lift up a good friend.

Over the night the doctors performed surgery on Cindy’s arm. There were bones that had broken out, and they needed to make sure her arm didn’t get infected. The doctor said when he saw the damage that it was the worst he had seen. Some parts were just dust, with nothing to work with. After a lengthy operation, some metal plates were put in, and the doctor came out of the surgery genuinely optimistic. He said that it will be a lengthy recoup, and if things start to stiffen up then they will have to replace her elbow.

They are now focused on the bleeding in the head, the neck, and the shoulders.

Cindy’s kids stayed with close friends at a hotel. We are definitely continuing to pray for strength and grace for them.

Anyways, thanks everyone on behalf of the Morris family and the Connexus family for your prayers and love.

Take care everyone, Pat

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I just received news that my good friend and the Assistant to the Lead Pastor at Connexus, Cindy Morris, was in a car accident this morning. She was flown to the hospital and is still in critical care. No one is sure of the extent of the injuries.

There is enough craziness going on this week (which I will post later this week) that this just sucks. If you could, please pray for Cindy and her family (3 kids), and for the Connexus community that they will pull through.

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