birfday

whelp... another year older. i'm now the ripe old age of 26. i had a pretty good birthday i suppose. i spent most of it at work until about 5 or so and then went with Asiah to Lonestar. my parents and her parents and brothers drove to meet us there. it was alot of fun. they made me stand on a chair while the whole restaurant sang happy birthday to me. you know me though, i just played along.
plus for my birthday, my lovely wife got me a tube preamp and a condenser mic because i want to start recoring some ideas soon. it was a total shocker, let me tell ya. she's so awesome! here's some pics of what i'm talking about. enjoy... i know i will...

a book on the shelf

sometimes i feel like i'm being wasted
like maybe i'm not doing enough to help
i wanna be used so bad
in such a powerful way
but i just sit here
pushed aside to be used another day
i feel like my tasks arent big enough
what i do or how i'm used
doesn't come remotely close to matching
the love that i have for you Lord
maybe i'm just wise in my own eyes
or great in my own perception
or useful by my own observations
but i'm anxious to be used
i want to do so much for you
out of my love for you
let every waking moment
be useful to building your kingdom
let every word i speak
bring a smile to your face
let every thought i have
be consumed by you
here am i
i refuse to be comfortable in complatency
or to be satisfied with inactivity
use my every breath
my every heartbeat
every second of my short life
to bring you glory

faithful

all the chisels i've dulled carving idols of stone
that have crumbled like sand neath the waves
i've recklessly built all my dreams in the sand
just to watch them all wash away
through another day, another trial,
another chance to reconcile to one who sees past all i see
and reaching out my weary hand i pray that you'd understand
you're the only one who's faithful to me

all the pennies i've wasted in my wishing well
i have thrown like stones to the sea
i've cast my lots, dropped my guard, searched aimlessly
for a faith to be faithful to me
through another day, another trial
another chance to reconcile to one who sees past all i see
and reaching out my weary hand i pray that you'd understand
you're the only one who's faithful to me

you're the only one who's faithful to me

:)

glasses

just a funny pic from our honeymoon in LA. sometimes when life takes your joy, maybe all you need is to look through a different pair of glasses.

purdy new wife...

whelp... i'm married! yay! the ceremony was really wonderful. we couldn't have asked for a better day. we prayed for good weather and God came through! she was so beautiful walking down that aisle and then looking up at me at the alter. *sigh* God is so good to me. he has blessed me with an amazing and beautiful wife. i'm so excited about the life that he has planned for us together. she is a compilation of so many answered prayers. i have no doubt that she was completely tailored to match me perfectly. i have honestly never been as happy as i am right now.

maxima en flambé!

back by popular demand... following a request from Tamara... this is my car as it looks now. there was a fire in my building in the parking garage and my car was one of the lucky 12 that they pulled out that were toasted. there were over 100 cars in the garage and they said that all of them had at leas smoke damage, alot of them had heat damage, and some others were burned pretty bad. it happened wednesday september 7th. i woke up from a sound sleep at about 5 am. i was like "God... why did you wake me up? i have nothing on my heart to pray and no direction. why am i awake?" then i smelled the smoke. i got up and looked outside and saw a fire truck in front of the other building so i thought "maybe the other building is on fire" because there were no fire alarms going off. after debating going downstairs for 5 or 10 minutes, i heard someone in the hallway yell "fire!" so i threw on some jeans and a tshirt, grabbed my phone, bible, and a water and headed out the door. when i opened up the door, the hallway was full of smoke. so i walked to the stairs at the end of the hall (keep in mind that i live on the 14th floor). i opened the door to the stairs and the stairway was full of smoke. i started down the stairs and then covered up my mouth with my shirt. i make it about half way down and doubled my shirt over because i was still breathing in smoke. the stairs were hard to see because of the poor lighting (they only had lights on every other floor) but i slowly made my way down. when i got down around the first floor, the smoke was so thick and lighting was so poor that i couldn’t see the steps anymore and i couldn’t see the exit door. luckily, i had come down the stairs once before when the elevators weren't working so i had an idea of where the exit was. i had to get about 6 inches away from the door before i could see it. i pushed on the door and coughed and hacked my way outside. the funny thing is, when i was outside, i joked over the phone with asiah that it would be crappy if i found out that the whole time i'm saying "man... that would stink to have your car set on fire" it could have been my car. then 2 days later i find out that my car was one of them. another funny thing is that i just switched my car insurance to PLPD minimum coverage at the beginning of the month. talk about ironic. but i find that i have an amazing amount of peace that everything will work out just fine. peace beyond all understanding. in fact, i find myself comforting other people around me that are freaking out about it. i trust completely that God had a great plan worked out for me already and it’s already in motion. i know He will always take care of me. i don't just say that... i mean it. i know it deep inside. i will always be well taken care of. so praise God for this time of trouble and suffering because i get to see him move. because of my trials, i get to see a little more of how God works and other people around me get to see it too. my troubles can be used to bring God glory! how exciting!

nerd up

thanks to a neat reply from tamara to wally, i now know my nerd quotient:

i am nerdier than 6% of all people. are you nerdier? click here to find out

thanks tamara!

wuv...

1 Corinthians 13:4-7 Love is patient and kind. Love is not jealous or boastful or proud or rude. Love does not demand its own way. Love is not irritable, and it keeps no record of when it has been wronged. It is never glad about injustice but rejoices whenever the truth wins out. Love never gives up, never loses faith, is always hopeful, and endures through every circumstance.

John 13:34-35 A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. By this all men will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.

Romans 13:8 Let no debt remain outstanding, except the continuing debt to love one another, for he who loves his fellowman has fulfilled the law.

1John 3:11 This is the message you heard from the beginning: We should love one another.

1 John 4:7 Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love. This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him. This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins. Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. No one has ever seen God; but if we love one another, God lives in us and his love is made complete in us.

this message of loving one another is really heavy on my heart this morning. Christ says that the greatest commandment is to love God with everything you've got and then to also love everyone else around you. by sticking to this very simple principal, so much heartache and stress and problems and negativity can be avoided. it is a recipe for peace and happiness... and the only ingredient is love.

mmm... asiah!

i don' think that it would be right of me to have this site of random writings without including something about asiah. asiah is my lovely fiancée and she is the wonderfulest, purdifulest, bestest, adorablest person in the whole wide world! i love her so very much and am terribly excited to marry her! i feel absolutely complete when i am with her. so much so that when i'm not around her, i ache inside because a part of me is missing. i never ever ever could have possibly imagined that i could care so deeply about someone and that they could feel the same way about me. it is completely by the hand of God that we are together and i will thank him and praise him for her for the rest of my life. so many times, God has used asiah to bring me joy. it seems like every day. i am amazed by her constantly. the way she smiles at me and looks at me. the way she loves me and holds me real close. her complete trustworthiness and her ability to cheer me up with one phrase: "i love you, troy." i am so deeply honored that God would entrust her into my care. i know i sound all mushy, but so much of the world has a negative view on love and being in love. i want to be someone that stands up and says that love is the most amazing feeling and that true love can only come from God. i don't deserve her at all, but i will cherish her until the day that i die. just a little peek into troy's heart.

ja son up ton

jason singing "where is tamara? where is taaamara, o father?" : P

i know... it's been a week since this happened, but i wanted to at least mention jason upton. last friday, asiah and i went to see jason upton in elkhart. it was really good. i was a little surprised though, he mainly played new songs (which i don't care for as much as the older ones). the temperature of pretty much the whole concert was deep, mellow worship, which i enjoy, however i was expecting higher energy. God had a different plan i guess ;) anyhoo, when the first song started he was just kinda lightly tickling the keys and then started singing "enter in" over and over and within 10 seconds, the hair on my arms and neck stood straight up (its doing it right now as i retell this). the spirit just fell, right then and there, within the first 10 seconds! the rest of the concert was pretty good, but i was having a hard time staying focused. its easy for me to get distracted when things aren't high energy around me. i get bored pretty easily. darned sanguine personality! but overall it was good. he did sing the tail end of the song "teach me how to pray" which i was hoping he would sing that one, its one of my favorites. i sang along to that one. it was overall very nice. jason is a very personal, caring worship leader and you can see the love of God just radiate from him. he is certainly blessed and anointed for what he does. i highly recommend him to anyone that loves spirit and truth worshiping like i do. no gimmicks. just worship.

eat your hash browns!

funny story... the other night, asiah and i went out to eat at a local place, whose name i will omit to avoid personal embarrassment. i ordered a breakfast with eggs and pancakes and hash browns and, of course, bacon! when the food came, the hash browns were like brown rubber soaked in grease. i was like "ew" and asiah told me i should say something about them but i wouldn't. so when the waitress came, asiah showed her the hash browns and explained that they were yucky. i told the waitress that if the kitchen was still open, to have them make me some new ones but if they weren't, just take them off the bill. this whole process was quite confusing and finally she brought a plate of new hash browns. i'm not talking just any plate here either... this was a big plate with a mound of hash browns on it. by the time it came, i was getting pretty full so i did my best to eat some of them but i couldn't. asiah told me that since we made a big deal of getting new ones that i had to eat them. i said "im stuffed... what am i gonna do?" then she gave me the idea to put them in my napkin and throw them away. brilliant! that way, it would look like i ate them! so i scraped this mountain of taters into my napkin and rolled it up. then i went to the bathroom and, for some reason, thought it would be best if i just flushed them down the toilet. so i threw this hashbrown log into the toilet and pressed the lever. it swirled around and around and i was praying "God, please let it go down" cause i didnt know how i would get it back out of the toilet if it didnt. finally it went down in the hole and i was like "whew!" but then... the water started to rise! up up up it went towards the top of the toilet. i said "aah! oh no!" and i ran out the door and back to the table. i looked at asiah and said "we gotta go right now." she said "troy... what did you do?" i said i would tell her in a minute but we had to go right then before they figured out it was me. so we paid for our food and got out of there as quick as we could, trying not to laugh the whole time. moral of the story: some things start out with the best of intentions, but stupid ideas with the best of intentions are still stupid ideas.

hellooooooo

man that took forever to get through that enrollment process! i'm not real sure but i have a funny feeling that all those user names and location names were'nt all really taken. i think someone is spying on the new people so they can steal their good names. uh huh and i think that with all of mine they were like "mmm... that's a good'n" and they stole it to make it their own. that or theres a chimp named Bingo sitting in a big high-backed leather chair with a big red button on the desk in front of him. when you submit a name he smacks the button and a big buzzer goes off and its rejected. EEEHHHH "user name is unavailable." it's all about beating Bingo. if you can get past the monkey: you're in. dang, he's fast! Bingo really gives a bad name to the rest of the nanner clan. leave it to one monkey to ruin it for all monkeydom. man that monkey makes me mad. stupid stupid monkey.