Thomas Umstattd Jr.

Grace and I live about an hour away from each other. Grace works in Austin an hour from her home and mine forming a giant one hour triangle of doom. I call this triangle of driving "a middle distance relationship." We are to far to see each other daily and to close for week long visits. This causes unique challenges. (more…)

So, what is courtship anyway? How is it different from dating?

Grace and I get this question a lot. Here is our official answer. (more…)

I am unaware of any generation at any time in the last 6000 years that has done as poor a job at marriage as the baby boomer generation. They have the most staggering divorce rate in the world. So why do we listen to their advice when it comes to our relationships? (more…)

I am setting of on one of the biggest, most exiting and dangerous adventures of my life. And I am not talking about my trip to Ecuador.

Grace Chambers and I are now officially courting. And by official I mean Facebook official. After several meetings with her dad he asked her if she was interested in starting a relationship and she said “yes.” If you don’t know Grace yet I’ll just say you’re missing out on an amazing friend.

I don’t really know much about courtship having only observed it from a distance. In other words I have no idea what I am doing. It is fun though, in that top of the roller coaster looking down afraid for you life kinda way that is..

You know when you are about to jump out of a plane and your realize that 10,000 feet is a lot farther down than you thought? You know that as soon as you step off that plane you will feel sheer terror and then either either a happy landing or splat.

Splat is not an ending of the relationship. Splat is dishonoring God. We don’t want splat.

I want this courtship to be fun and God honoring. I don’t think those things are mutually exclusive but blending them is a challenge. We live between two cultures. One values hedonistic pleasure over holiness. The other looks down on others with contempt and pride and sees most pleasure as some form of sin.

I will be blogging occasionally on what I learn as we go. Maybe you can learn from us and avoid our mistakes.

Risk
One thing I do know about relationships is that they are risky. I think the guy especially needs to take risks and that can be hard. When it doesn’t work out it can hurt, a lot. A good friend of mine took a risk in courtship and it didn’t work out. And while he honored God he is still in a lot of pain.

If relationships were easy would we value them as much? Or does the risk and the danger make them special?

Grace and I officially started courting on Wednesday March 12. Since then Grace has the flu and I am leaving for a different continent. The challenges of long distance relationships has just been multiplied by a factor of $2 per minute phone rates and 3000 extra miles.

I can’t wait to get back to Texas