The 30 [Week] challenge. Week 3: My First Love.

My first love?

The Bible talks about how we fall away from our first love - that our first love is Christ whether we knew it or not.

I have been blessed in that I knew this before I started dating. I gave my life to Christ at the age of six. I didn't start living in a way that showed it fully until the later years of high school, when my friends and classmates treated my as their go-to guy in Religious Education classes for thoughts and reasons on and for different things people experience and how it was all related to God. I was the only known Christian in my year - a year group of about 200 or so people - so this made me want to do the best I could to answer these questions. It pushed me to read about questions I might get next week or to look for an answer that I couldn't give this week. I grew a lot in that time and it was because I was preparing to defend my faith and give an account of what I believe and why. It was a great time!

But before that I lived a semi-regular pre-teen and early-teen life. I wasn't drawn to drinking or sleeping around as most of my friends seemed to be. I guess that was God protecting me. I never saw the attraction. Of drinking, anyway. Anybody who is anybody can attest to not having sex being a difficult thing to do. Or not do. These two things I held onto - sometimes as the things themselves, rather than the reasons behind not doing them. But I did hold onto them. I could never quite let them go and I think that it helped me a lot in my faith. When there were times I wanted to forget everything or whatever, I didn't want to break this record, if you will. But God uses that. I look up to my dad who is an incredible man and has never been drunk. It's something that most of my friends can't claim, yet he is twice their age. He's an amazing guy and it's something that I want to emulate. As for sex, the first time I did that was June 4th, 2010. The night of my marriage. I can safely say it was more than worth it. I can't quite describe how much more than worth it it is, but let me make it known that God honours those who honour Him. With their finance, with their minds, with their actions, with their bodies. With their lives.

Humanly speaking, my first love was a girl called Samantha. We were primary school girlfriend and boyfriend. Even when girls were gross and boys were smelly. We would have dated forever if we hadn't gone to different high schools. Fortunately, that mindset changed for me later on in life as my wifey is from Arkansas; 5,000 miles from where I grew up. That's a God thing. If there's no week for that, I'll tell you the story anyway.

Samantha and I got married several times in the schoolyard, played Tig nearly every day (Tig is the same as Tag for you, American) and spent a whole lot of time at each others' houses having lunch and playing with Mighty Max and Polly Pocket. I think we played Yahtzee once. She rolled all sixes on her first go when I wasn't there. I never got the lead; not for the whole game.

We grew up and went our separate ways. The relationship is now what any relationship is like 14 years after it stops. Nice memories, though.

My wifey is incredible. I will love her for the rest of my days. She completes me and complements me. Sometimes compliments me. Zing. My love for her is overflowy. But I love God so much more. And so does she. This is why we work. This is what keeps us together and holds us tight.

My first love is my last love. That's how I'm made. That's how we're made. Sometimes we forget and sometimes we just need showing in the first place. Your first love is God whether you know it, whether you've said it, whether you've been told yet. Until you have it, it's that feeling of something missing. It's that pull for something more. It's that still, small voice that calls out your name in that direction you're unsure of. Until you follow it, you won't realise that God's been there with you from the beginning. That's a dangerous thing, because a lot of people want to try and tell you that that feeling is something different; that it can be made quiet by living a certain way or that it can be satisfied by doing certain things. Whether that's taking something, looking at something, doing something, listening to someone or something or even refusing to listen to someone or something. There's a lot of stuff out there that tries to fill the hole in our lives that only God can fill. Just be wary. He wants the best for you.

So that's it. My first girlfriend was from Churchtown - same village as me. We grew up a bike ride away from each other. We were in the same class (RH, 1H, 2E, 3H, 4K, 5M and 6B), parting ways after that. She went to Stanley High School and I to Tarleton High School. She had a tamagotchi for a while but it kept dying; I had mice.

That's what I can remember at the moment, anyway.

Peace.

The 30 [Week] challenge. Week 2: My Blog name.

So it's the second week of this challenge. I'm enjoying taking my time - over at danfairweather.blogspot.com I'm posting once a day so the change of pace here is refreshing... Even though I'm posting twice today.

The reason behind my blog title is pretty simple, so this post isn't going to be huge.

"Dreaming dreams, chasing chickens". It's simple, so I feel the need to draw it out somewhat.

Dreaming is important. Dreams give us drive and they push us to achieve more than we thought we could, even if only slightly more. Other peoples' dreams inspire us and challenge us. To dream dreams is to think bigger than you currently are and to look towards doing something greater in the future. I love dreaming. Whether it's looking forward to an event three weeks from now; imagining what it'll be like and what you want to do - to thinking years in advance and picturing where you'll be, who you'll know, what you will have done. And the great thing is that it's limitless. In two ways - one, the only thing capping your dreams is your own imagination and two, it doesn't just have to be about what you're wanting to do; it could be about where you want to go, what you want to have, etc.

Two of my dreams - I want to have an action figure of a character I've created. Not the cheap, Dollar store/Poundland figures that look like they've been carved out of a bar of soap by a guy with three fingers. In the dark. On a boat. In a storm. Not that type; but the type that I avoid looking at for long periods of time because I don't want people to think I'm a geek. Even though I am. The sort that look like they've been pulled straight out of whatever game or TV series they're from, you know? I really dig that sort of action figure and if ever I buy one, I'm going to take it out of the box right away. I don't care. And yes, I said dig.

My second dream is to own a Jeep Wrangler. A short-wheel-base yellow one with a fabric roof; floodlights; a winch; a big ol' guard on the front; big, fat wheels on an improved suspension, a snorkel and a license plate reading "THE BRIT". Nothing specific, like...

But that's the beauty of dreams. They can take you to where you want to be so that you can imagine looking back and seeing how you got there. I can't wait.

And chasing chickens? Well, when I was creating my blog my mum had just got chickens. They didn't care when she was around, so she could just grab them and hold then with no trouble. Everyone else had to chase them round the pen. Like headless chickens.

Dreaming dreams, chasing chickens.

As for my URL - obsessivedrawingdisorder.blogspot.com - the idea behind that is on the right side of my other blog posts. When I was two years old, the only way my mum could get me to come to the table to eat was to have a pen and paper next to my plate. I haven't really stopped.

I've enjoyed this. I wrote more than I thought and it didn't feel like it took a long time. I like it when that happens. For now, though, I'm off to tidy the house.

Peace.

The 30 [Week] challenge. Week 1: Introduction and 15 facts.

It's meant to be the 30-day challenge, but I thought I'd modify it somewhat and enjoy a leisurely challenge with my wifey. Over the next 30 weeks, we will be updating our blogs with different topics and telling you things about different aspects of our lives. This blog contains my aspects and thoughts, my wifey's contains hers.

So I present to you Week 1: Introducing myself and 15 interesting facts.

I am Dan. I'm 25 at present and I am living in America. I graduated from the University of Central Lancashire in June 2011 with a Bachelor's in Games Design and was fortunate enough to be granted a scholarship for my Masters, which I will be starting in September 2012. My wifey and I are as involved with church here as we can be at the moment, after doing the same back home in England last year and as we're looking forward to doing again when we move back later this year. I have drawn for as long as I remember - my mother telling me that the only way she could get me to come to the table to eat was to put a pen and paper beside my plate. It's what I have always enjoyed doing and it's what I dream of doing for a living. I'm not sure how much of what I could tell you about myself here would qualify as facts about myself, so without further ado; here are my top 15:

1. I am a Christian. Not the religious, hymn-singing, hypocritical, unbeliever-hating, more-lofty-than-thou Christian. At least I hope I don't come across that way. I'm a live-it-out, singing at the top of my lungs, broken, fallen, struggling, people-loving man who is doing his best to honour his Lord and Saviour. I struggle as much as the next Christian and I fail to live up to this calling just as frequently. It's not that I'm a hypocrite and tell people that they should live like me when I'm not living right; it's that I have a set of morals and principals that are unaffected by politics, that are above change, that are earless to governments and I strive to change the way I live in order to bring my life in line with them, fully knowing that they are easily overlooked and sometimes hard to live by.

2. My best friend is my wifey, Melissa. We've been married for 20 months, one week and two days at present. Third best decision I've made in my life. The first being to follow Christ, the second being to ask Melissa to marry me. She's incredible. I would need to learn a whole vocabulary's worth of words to even get close to describing how much she means to me. She's my Honeybee, my Queen, my Fluffyhead Pumpkinsnuggle. I love her.

3. I was born in Southport, England. A small town that's been around for about 220 years.

4. I went to a fairly big primary school (elementary school) called Churchtown Primary School and for most of my junior years, I was in the Yellow House. It was pretty much a point system based on what tables we sat on, and I just happened to find myself in the Yellow group for three or four years.

5. I am named after two friends of my parents. Daniel and Guy. I don't know much about either - even less about Guy. Daniel is the son of the family doctor and was a soldier.

6. I have four siblings. One older sister and three younger brothers.

7. The states I have been to at present are New York, New Jersey, Massachusetts, Oregon, Washington, Oklahoma, Missouri, Arkansas, Illinois, Kansas, Texas and Pennsylvania. Although some of those I counted because I had a layover there...

8. I had an eyebrow piercing for three months before it grew out. I got it caught on my T-shirt once while I was getting dressed in a hurry and can't quite describe the shock of that feeling.

9. When I was little I started to choke on a boiled sweet. This was remedied by my dad picking me up by my feet and shaking me up and down.

10. My best male friend is a man named Tim. We've grown up together and we've never had a falling out. Some people say you're not good friends if you've never fallen out, but I can say after 21 years of growing up along side each other that that's poop. He was my best man at my wedding and I love him a whole lot.

11. I am fairly good at picking things up by watching them being done and I remember things better when I write them down. A bit of a Jack-of-all-trades.

12. I have blue eyes. They've been described as sea-blue, shining blue, sky-blue and bright blue, among other things.

13. I love fishing; especially over here in the States. Fishing in England is now very expensive indeed and I got fed up with the amount I had to spend to even fish on a water, let alone buy everything I needed for a day on the side of a pond or lake or whatever. Here, I buy my license, buy my rod/reel combo and a few lures and then I'm good to fish any public water I can get to! I love it.

14. I have never been hunting and it's something that I want to do so much. My to do list with hunting is as follows (still counted as this fourteenth point):

- Bow hunt deer.

- Black powder hunt deer.

- Modern gun hunt deer.

- Bow fish (probably Alligator Gar).

- Bow hunt frogs.

- Blowgun/blowpipe hunt squirrel.

- Rifle hunt squirrel.

- Noodle.

- Hand-catch frogs.

I think that's about it. It's not that I'm cruel and like killing things for sport. Everything I hunt I will prepare and eat. It confuses me how people hunt for sport and it confuses me how people like eating meat but don't want to think of it as having being killed at some point.

15. I'm right-handed, but I chop wood left-handed.

That was easier than I thought. And very enjoyable.

I hope there's something interesting there for you to read. It was good fun thinking of them and writing them down. Next week won't be as big a post, but still fun.

Thanks for reading. I really appreciate it.

Peace.