Rick Nier...Woo!

I am more than halfway through the last year of dropping one of my children off at school. It's my eighth grade daughter, for anyone keeping track of my family.  See, next year she will be at the high school, and her brother will drive her. He says that it's not cool for seniors to drive their freshman sister to school, but I bet it's cooler than being dropped off by your mom in a minivan.  So rather than groan about this daily responsibility, I've been reminiscing about what the drop-off line used to look like, way back in elementary school. Once our children were about halfway through their elementary years, the drop-off line became a test of patience.  Do you know which group you do not want to get caught behind in the parent drop-off line at an elementary school? The kindergartners. These little ones are barely able to walk, but now we put them in the high-pressure situation of trying to unbuckle their seat-belt, grab their backpack (which might be as tall as they a...

So I have joined the non-envious group of those who have caught their personal share of the pandemic. That’s right, I joined Club COVID.  Now, don’t worry. I’m not here to discuss whether or not we should wear masks, social distance, or isolate forever. I think you know better than to come to this blog for such weighty matters.  Per usual, I’m here to share my thoughts, perhaps some feelings, and just maybe highlight something of importance.  ALL BY MYSELF First of all, from first symptoms to end of isolation, I’ve been in my room, alone, for roughly 482 days straight. The wife has slid some medicine underneath the door from time to time. The kids have adjusted to a one-parent household just a little too nicely.  I can hear their laughter across the house, no doubt as they discuss how to divide my belongings. The joke’s on them. I am still in the process of applying a recent sermon from my pastor, so I have a lot of excess they’ll need to clean through.  But the...

So, I haven't posted in a while...again...it's not corona, it's life keeping me busy. But I have something for you today, but it wasn't written by me. It was written by my wife, Jennifer. When she talks, I listen. Be encouraged! Dealing with Disappointment Is anyone else feeling it?  Day 17 of quarantine.  Social distancing.  Stay at home.  Church online.  School canceled.  Events canceled.  Spring Break trips canceled or put on hold.   This spring break my family had a big trip planned, which hasn’t happened for us in a very long time.  It’s our oldest daughter’s senior year of high school and we wanted to make it special and take a trip we’ve never taken before.  Flying to Orlando (which my children don’t remember ever flying as they were ages 6, 4 and 1), and fun in the sun for an entire week.  We booked the trip 8 months ago and have planned, planned and planned u...

Here we are. It's 2020! Of course you know what that means, right? It's time for YMCA's, gyms, and other workout facilities to offer deals for everyone who resolved to get in better shape. This is the Black Friday for those places because we've all spent the last month over-indulging and telling ourselves we'd get back to a disciplined lifestyle after the holidays.  The holidays are over and do you want to know how many official resolutions I have made?  None. Zero. Zilch. Just like the amount of cookies I am going to let you smack out of my hand, I am not making any new resolutions. Why? Because resolutions are for those who aren't already awesome. Listen, I'm not saying I don't have things to work on, like humility .  Really, no resolutions? via GIPHY I told my kids that instead of making resolutions for myself this year, I would be making resolutions for them. They were super excited to hear that.  I should confess this id...

Certainly someone somewhere has spoken up against travesties in these trying times. It is the great crisis of our day, where innocent people are hurt, and bullies are allowed to continue their abuse.  I am, of course, talking about people who pass off gluten-free options as if they were real food.  via GIPHY Nope! I'm sure there are more qualified people than me to address this situation. (Gordon Ramsey comes to mind.) But until I am assured that our top people are working on a solution, I'm going to operate under the same rules we have for keeping our schools safe; see something, say something. If you can bear to read on, here's my own harrowing story of survival.  It was a night at home like any other, which is to say it was the one night all week without any meetings or high school sports. Plus, it was taco night. That's right! This was going to be a good night. Who doesn't love shoving yummy ingredients into a warm taco shell and allowi...

My kids are all teenagers now, but I can still recall the bedtime routines we had when they were younger. It was pretty much the same routines you have likely had. Brushing of the teeth, reading of books, last hugs and kisses, and mooing like cattle from the living room to the bedroom. via GIPHY What, you never did that last one? Hmmm, ok. I guess that’s a story for another post.  Now that my kids are 18, 16, and 13, the routines have changed. For instance, on nights without school, I’m the first to go to bed. But I digress. One routine has remained. And it happens because of my youngest child asking for it every night before she goes to bed.  Will You Pray With Me? It’s prayer. Every night she asks us to pray with her. Now I’m not saying she’s more spiritual than her siblings. She would say that, but I’m not saying that.  In fact, the manner in which she sometimes asks us to pray reveals it. Feels more like her ticket to sleep than an actual desire ...

I have told a few people about my family’s word of the year. You know about this trend, no doubt. Equal parts resolution and trendy reminder to oneself of something you want to achieve. For my family, it came almost as a whim. We had chosen the word adventure the year before. It fit within the context of what we were going through.  Honestly, the adventure hasn’t ended, but I felt a need for us to grow in the place where this adventure had taken us.  Extra.   It was fun to me because of how my teenagers were using the word. Extra. If someone is doing anything they view as unnecessary or over the top, they are considered extra. You'll have no problem imagining that my kids see me as extra several times every day. If you want to see extra, come and watch a teenager react when you tell them something they don’t want to hear.  But we chose the word  extra . We said we wanted to engage in life more than we had before. We wanted to represent C...

If you will indulge me, I will be honest with you. To say last year brought about a little bit of change would be like saying the Titanic’s first voyage was a bit of disappointment. Or that Tom Brady has found a level of success throwing around a football. Or that millenials communicate better through memes than words. Yeah, the changes were big. If you weren’t sitting around, just watching me live my life, let me give you the Sparknotes version; My wife and I each got new jobs, after having worked in the same building, together, for 15 years. After a couple of months of unemployment, my wife got a new job at a new church. After a few more months than that, where I dabbled in construction and pretended to enjoy substitute teaching, I got a job in marketing. All of these changes have left me thinking plenty of thoughts about who I am, what I do, and just how I have come to find myself where I find myself. Be assured, this isn’t about gratitude. I love the story I get to share about ...

Like so many people, I end each year thinking about the year that was, and perhaps even resolving how I want the new year to go. But I guarantee you, no matter how much time I put into thinking last December, I never could have guessed how 2017 was going to go . For starters, here's a couple of sentences I never thought I would speak. I’m dropping the kids off at youth group.  I’m ok being without a job for a few months.  Both sentences go together, because as many of you know, I told the church I had youth pastored at for 15 years that God was telling me it was time to go. Now I know that when someone invokes the voice of God into a decision, it can sound like they're passing the blame onto the Deity. After all, who's going to argue with the voice of the Lord? I imagine people largely fall into 2 categories on this matter. Group #1 imagines the youth pastor just wants a change, but doesn't want people to dislike him for making the choice to leave. Group ...

I have a fool proof system which tells me when I am being annoying. It’s my teenage daughter. Level one annoyances might merit a smirk from her. Level two gets the eye roll. But when I am full on annoying I get the eye roll plus a loud “Oh my goo-ood-ness." The goodness is exaggerated and elongated to include more syllables than the word actually contains, so there is no confusion on my part.  As her dad, I understand there is a balance of being a parent that cares what she thinks and being a parent that knows she'l thank me later. But there is also another continuum, where as an inquisitive mind, I stir the pot and see how much I can push her before I start to get eye rolls from her mom. I've had plenty of time to learn the non-verbal communication system from the wife. "Oh my goodness" doesn’t just come out when I’m an annoyance. It comes out whenever the teenage daughter is annoyed by anything, which could be dumb drivers who chose to leave their house 5 mi...

It's true, we can find ourselves doing the wrong thing. As I have been in the midst of searching for what's next, I have looked at various opportunities for work and tried to imagine myself doing those things for 40+ hours a week, for the next several years. Because while every job might not be comparable to a day at an amusement park, it beats searching for a job. I asked myself what a youth pastor does when he's no longer vocationally pastoring youth. How do the skills of a pastor translate to a world outside Sunday morning? One such opportunity, a very temporary one, seemed to garner attention from those who know me. They seemed concerned, though not necessarily for me. One such friend was talking with my wife, heard the word construction and immediately asked why anyone would let me build something. To be fair, it's a good question, only bested by, why would anyone pay  me to build something? That's right, people heard I was doing construction and they w...

As I shared last week , the Nier household has been in full-on celebration mode. The Nier children have completed the first week at schools they didn't think they'd be attending. We are not moving from a house we thought for sure we'd be selling. And my wife is happily getting settled in at her new job. Many congratulations were given (thanks, friends!) but several asked me the inevitable question. So what does this mean for you? Believe me, that is a question I have been asking myself since I first announced I was resigning . And since June, the question has loomed like a large cloud over every one of my days. From certain people, I could hear the questions they were perhaps too afraid to ask out loud. Are you trained to do anything besides play with teens and work one day a week? I write that, tongue planted in cheek, but don't be fooled. I've asked it of myself. What does a guy, who has only ever wanted to be a youth pastor, do when he is no longer a yout...

Seven months ago, I never saw this coming. We had just told our kids that we were going on an adventure , one that began with informing the church we'd been a part of for 15 years that God was moving us elsewhere. We told our kids that we didn't know yet where we were going, but that we would trust God to lead us where He wanted us. We acknowledged there would be difficult parts of this adventure. We knew saying goodbye to friends would be hard. My wife and I prayed about the transition and what impact it would have on our children. There were parts of this adventure I'd have preferred not to have experienced. There were hard conversations, doubts, lots of prayer and more conversations. I've shared some of the experiences here , here and here . Actually, there's a few more, but you can find them for yourself. I wouldn't want to be accused of over-linking. The entire time, whenever I prayed, I told God an answer would be a good thing, because He would rece...

Here is the advice I gave to my wife yesterday morning.   Happy Leap Day wife!  Yes, I often call her wife.  It's February 29. This only happens once every 4 years. So take advantage of it. Live it to the full. It's a gift from God.  But if you feel like you need to correct somebody who comes to you expecting a little too much from Leap Day, then feel free to remind them that today is not actually an extra day. That's right! Today is not Leap Day! How can you say that, Rick? It's Leap Day. This day only comes along once every four years.  Assuming we are all going to survive this year, and yes I realize that's an assumption, today is not the extra day. For all of us living this day, we would have lived this day even in a non-leap year. We simply would have called it March 1.  If every year has 365 days, then the extra day we are given this year will be the 366th day. That would be December 31. So the extra gift is not coming our wa...

I am currently in the middle of a teaching series with my youth group on Romans 8. Wow, does this chapter have a bunch to say. Here's a small taste of something I shared and the scripture that went along with it. Pregnancy is a funny thing. A woman gets pregnant for the first time and she is normally excited. This is a married woman. An unmarried woman gets pregnant and she is cursing and panicking, which is why we save sex for marriage. I digress. A married woman is excited. She can’t wait to tell her friends and family. Then something happens over 9 months. She goes through some changes. In the first trimester she experiences something called morning sickness. She’s puking, she’s sick and it’s not even flu season. In the second trimester, she is beginning to show a baby bump, which means certain clothes don’t fit, but her appetite is back. She has these cravings for certain foods. The husband happily obliges. Then the third trimester shows up. Jabba, I mean, the wife, just wants ...

Do you want to know the best way to be ready to return to work after a vacation? I've discovered it. Consider this. You've worked for a while (perhaps a long while) to save up money to get away. Family vacations are nice and all, but going anywhere is going to cost you some cash. And for the sake of argument, let's assume you added some extra time off. You won't be at your destination all that time. You just added a few days at home, in order to get some stuff done. There it is. You just gave your wife unfettered access to your skills and labor around the house. That garden won't weed itself. The thorough cleaning and reorganization of a kitchen needs a partner, right? For us, it was cleaning out the garage. Because when you clean out any other area of the house, the garage becomes the new catch-all. Let's just put this stuff we don't want to look at in a bin in the garage. Cleaning it out later became cleaning it out now. When moving the vehicle a...

I changed a spark plug on my lawn mower and got the lawn mower working again. For people who know me, that statement will cause them to be amazed, in more ways than one. Some will know how my talents in all things mechanical are quite lacking and they will be impressed, Others will wonder how a grown man got to my age without ever having accomplished this before. Let my naysayers talk all they want. I won't be deterred. The facts are that I have other talents. I can do other things. Some of those other skills are even needed by other people. The 6 year old inside of me wants to say, 'so there.' It's not for lack of effort on my dad's part. He tried. He really did. He fixed everything we owned while I was growing up. He invited me out to learn and to help. It turned out the best way I could help him was by keeping the flashlight steady. But now that he's gone and my stuff won't fix itself, I have to learn a few things. So I googled. Yes, I google imag...

Who do you call on when the wife and mother are sick and the family still needs to eat? Normally I'd say my good friend Papa John. But we'd already called him. The illness lingered on and the children demanded to be fed more than once in a week's time. (Remind me to write about this demanding entitled generation, wanting to eat every single day.) So anyway, back to the original question. Who do you call when the wife is sick and stuff still needs to be done? That's right! You call the dad! So I decided to go grocery shopping. I could have made the list myself, but my wife thought I might not always make the best decisions. I'm not sure what she's talking about. Keebler is a quality product, am I right? List in hand, I trudged alone into the aisled wilderness. And I wandered. And wandered... Recognizing products that were often found in my kitchen, I threw them into my cart. Was there backtracking due to a poorly organized list? Maybe. But don't...

I am teaching a series on prayer to my youth group this month. Here's part of what I said to them. I want you to know God even better than I know my wife.  Let me tell you what happened the other night. She had a phone call the other day that didn't go well. Once she gave me some details of what happened, I told her why she was upset.  That sounds weird, like why didn't I let her just talk? Seriously Pastor, you don't get enough time to talk? Now you tell other people what they're thinking and feeling? Do you have any useful superpowers? I wanted her to know how much I understood her. After 18 years of marriage, I wanted her to get that when there is no one else in this world who gets her, I get her. I understand.  Whether or not I actually received any awesome husband points, I don't know. Not that I'm worried about that kind of thing. Having someone who you know understands is important. On top of that, having someone you know cares ...

I am reposting this to celebrate my wife, who celebrates a birthday this weekend. This is one of many posts about my wife, whom I love to write about. Without further adieu...  I was not happy, to say the least. My wife's words devastated me. What could she possibly mean? Was she trying to be hurtful or did she actually believe the words she was letting spill forth from her mouth? We may need to get a new alarm clock. I know, I know. I should have warned you so you could put the kids in another room to protect them from such filth. I'm sure you are feeling a bit woozy as I did when she uttered that despicable phrase. I gently reminded her that this alarm clock had been with me since August of 1987. That was the summer my dad decided that my sister and I were old enough to be getting ourselves up in time for school. Here's a picture... But I followed my wife, presumed guilty until proven otherwise, back to our bedroom to see what was wrong with this alarm clock. Su...