Congratulations to my friends at Higher Trails as they have been nominated to yet another great award. I was blessed to be able to produce their live CD, Higher Trails Live. These guys are great and I hope for them the best. Stay tuned to their website for updates.

Higher Trails is pleased to announce that we have been nominated for 2011 Christian Country Artist of the Year by the United States Association of Gospel Entertainers and Musicians (USAGEM).  The 2011 Awards Show will be held November 12-13 in Nashville, TN and we will be performing on the awards show.

In order to make it to work on time I had to be laced up and walking out of our front door at 5:30. That early these days is darker than dark but it had to be done. I woke up several times in anticipation for the projected 10 miles as I really didn’t want to miss the opportunity to burn 1200 calories and get it out of the way!

Out of bed. Contacts in, teeth brushed. Dressed in the dark. iPod, check.  Garmin watch, check. Tenth of a mile walk to wakeup and stretch. Press start on my watch. Press play on the iPod and I’m off. One step at a time. A Matt Carter message and about 3/4 of Jeremy Camp’s Speaker Louder Than Before album. About 1.5 hours later I am more sore, more thirsty, more spiritually minded and back at my starting point.

Very enjoyable and challenging run. No personal records (PR) on this run but a great one for sure. It has been a while. Here is a snapshot from the run as displayed by my Garmin watch’s training software. I plan on making this a semi-permanent to permanent change. Yay!

We can be in great physical shape one day and crippled the next. The places we live throughout our short life and the decaying structures we live in. Our jobs. Our cars. The ups and downs of markets and values. The money we make just to send back out on bills or spend it on stuff that breaks. Life of the people we love. All of it temporal and all of it seems to increasingly cause grief.

I don’t know about you but man I have ups and downs, highs and lows and in-betweens. I struggle with consistency even when surrounded by the great things that I have been blessed with. An awesome family, good job, comfortable house, more than enough, yet my desires to achieve and push harder to grow are typically weak and insufficient. Mentally crushing at times. I think that maybe I struggle in this area because I focus too much on the physical. My moods are temporary and increasingly cause grief.

As I grow older I am learning. Actually, I am practicing what I’ve heard, learned and known for a long, long time. That these things ARE temporary and CAN NOT satisfy the itch of everlasting peace and contentment. It’s all way beyond physical and mental. We are spiritual beings. We are much deeper than a physical body and a mind that processes decisions. We have to pour into the Eternal One. GOSH why can’t I grasp and hold tight to this! It is like I know it and embrace it and go to bed with a heart focused on this truth and then wake up with some sort of amnesia!

In a Philippians study that we are doing in community group, Matt Chandler made a statement that these temporal (and therefore disappointing) things are gifts. Gifts to remind us that this world is not our home. What a great reminder. So, if this world is not my home, why do I continue to be troubled and misguided by it? Why do I waste some much time and stress on these things that we know are empty and temporary? One of my buddies Justin gave an example about a fresh scratch on a new van that he and his wife Kate have. He said that it is easy to move into frustration with it being marred or even spend lots of time and money trying to get it fixed, but what does it matter? He then finished his thoughts with the profound and eye opening statement of “Why should I care? It’s all gonna burn!”

The truth that this world is not our home brings a huge sigh of relief and comfort to all of the instibility that surrounds me. Disaster, dispair, depression, all soon to be banished. I am so thankful for His provision. It also helps me to focus my eyes on the author and perfecter of my faith. There’s no place like home. It’s eternal and causes joy.

Philippians 3:20

But we are citizens of heaven, where the Lord Jesus Christ lives. And we are eagerly waiting for him to return as our Savior.

I watched the documentary FOOD INC. the other day and it really stirred some concern. Its a great, informative video and back-stage view of the food industry and its control. I actually spent about an hour after it was over in a daze. Big business endorsed by our ever protective government [cough] has really changed today’s food from what it was when we were growing up.

The thing that saddened me the most about it was the way it seems as though the “all about the dollar” mentality ends up hurting fellow human beings, real people. From the mass of farmers that struggle over the decision to make a paycheck or putting their ethics aside and give in, to the immigrant workers that are involved in most of our food preparation and packaging getting penalized and tossed to the side as disposable, to the health consequences for you and me consuming products that are  genetically modified, fed weird diets, or tainted due to the lack sanitization laws and animal civility for the sake of more, faster, cheaper, we only ending up hurting ourselves in the end.

One story that really caught my attention was about a lower income family who could easily convince themselves that it was far more tasty and economical to support the Dollar Menus than buy fresh and healthy produce from a supermarket. Wow isn’t this so true. They also said that it was cheaper for them to buy this cheaper, less healthy fast food AND the medications (that were now required probably due to long term eating of these foods) than to buy healthy foods. How sad is that? I was telling Traci that it’s as if the food industry was owned and operated by the pharmaceutical giants to produce this weird imbalance backing people into this same spin and therefore inducing type 2 diabetes, obesity, clogged arteries, etc. just to make a profit off of medications, off of fellow humans, you and me. All for the dollar.

In lieu of this, we are seriously considering some big changes in what we eat. As runners we typically eat very healthy. Lots of grilled foods, brown rice, juices, and vegetables are a norm for the Dixon’s. Rarely do we eat out and even rarer is it for us to eat fried-anything. We have been discussing portion size a lot and have been doing a good job at limiting awesome things like ice cream, to just enough to get a good flavor fix from it instead of filling up on these super tasty yet less-than-ideal calories.

The next step is coming. We love farmers markets and will increase our shopping there this month. Not for sure how extreme we are going with it but we will definitely be doing the organic thing ASAP. Many say organic is too expensive and as I do agree (as it is a fact) that legit organic food is more expensive (really due to lack of demand) to buy in the store over non-organic. However, if you team up portion control with organic foods it can really offset the cost. Actually I do believe that it will end up being cheaper in the long run. Especially if you can avoid those prescriptions and hospital stays. We are definitely going to start spending our dollar even wiser than before as you really do eat what you pay for.

Any thoughts out there on this? Any suggestions or research you can share? Anyone make the change and can tell a difference? Any cool stories? Please share.

–These comments posted via FaceBook–

Growing up my little bro and I were blessed with the opportunity to go on many family trips and stay at all kinds of cool places similar to the Arkansas setup. We loved theses trips growing up and my parents always made them fun for us. Plenty of swim time, mini golf, chill time, site seeing, exploring, etc. and we always had a blast. Many great memories for sure.

It’s interesting – these family vacations now that I am in the parent role. Seems as though Traci and my desires were not about us, but what we felt our babies (yes, they’ll always be referred as such) would want to do. Weird how easy and self-less it was for us to plan it this way! Our main goal was to squeeze as many smiles out of those precious pumpkins as possible. Swim every day! No, no – swim twice a day, every day! Yippie! “Can I have another cookie?” “Heck yeah! Here’s TWO extra cookies!” I actually feel semi-awkward at how much I stared at their little butts while frolicking in the kiddy pools this week. I loved it and already miss the ever passing time we have with them in this stage. Family vacations are about the family which really is about the happiness of the kids which really is to increase the joy of  the parents… interesting revolution there. We didn’t get a lot of rest and didn’t come back with a renewed sense of “go get em” but enjoyed the time with these angels. Priceless.

You can check out some pics of the trip at Traci’s blog. Peace!

Yesterday I opened the box, poured my bowl and took a bite. Processed the flavor, texture, similarities and contrasts to the real version and then proceeded to dump my bowl in the trash. Nasty!

This morning Kamryn wanted cereal. I poured her a bowl and she took a bite. Processed the flavor, texture, similarities and contrasts to the real version and then proceeded to dump her bowl in the trash. Nasty! She knew, just as I did that something wasn’t right. It just was not what we knew. The 90% full-box was quick to make the trash can too.

Sometimes we fall into the lure of the imitations, the cheaper brand, the seemingly better deal. However; when you find the best most fulfilling things in life, there is no substitute to the Real Deal. Funny how this seems to be an ongoing life lesson for us (and the rest of humanity since the beginning of time). Not funny is the truth that most people tend to waste their life, time, focuses and hope on the imitations.