so i’ve been jumping back and forth between domains and platforms over the past couple years. this all started on blogger back in 2005. then it went to wordpress.com somewhere along the way. now it resides on a wordpress site that i host myself. the mattkeithdesigns.com domain used to be the home of my portfolio when i freelancing right after i graduated from college. now some of my design work and my personal blog will all reside in once spot.

please update my bookmark in your browser or rss reader of choice.

thanks!

i have shared with a good number of people, but i thought i would use post to make the announcement to everyone on the inter-webs. no, magan is not pregnant, as several people have asked when telling them the news. you may have been able to deduce using some facebook/twitter reasoning as to my announcement. okay, enough on the suspense/unnecessary hype already.

i have accepted the call to get on mission full-time with journey church. starting today, i am the production and technical director for the church.

i am SUPAR hyped and still in somewhat a state of shock. the opportunity presented itself a little over a month ago. magan and i prayed about it and sought out counsel from family and our close friends and knew that this is what God has called me/us to for the here and now. i say us because there’s no way i could do this without the awesome support from my amazing wife!

my time with s&a cherokee was great. i don’t take any of it for granted. God had me there for a purpose. i’m thankful that they took a shot on a green/fresh web designer 2 1/2 years ago. i learned a great deal technically, but also picked up a lot of people skills along the way. i will miss the friends i made there.

i won’t get into the whole story in this post. i’d like to spread it out over a couple of posts as to keep myself from only being the occasional blogger (like smooth accused me of being).

until then i thought i’d share a blog post that i came across that made me laugh pretty good. check it out. now i know what you’re thinking (that is if you know me very well), matt keith probably has a monitor like that. my monitor at work is similar but not quite that outlandish.

i hope to post again soon. until then you can check out my wonder wife’s recent blog posts. she writes much more often that i. have i mentioned recently that she is absolutely amazing? well she is!

on the busyness scale, november has been a ‘moderate’ month. magan and i have traveled less this month than october. we haven’t slowed down any though. i think busy has just become the norm. we did get to spend this past weekend in boone which was absolutely amazing! boone is a special place to both of us and it was great just to get away for the weekend and catch up on life with each other. could boone be a future home for us? we dunno. we love it. there’s just something about it.

magan and i feel that God is calling us to something larger than what we’re doing now. He has us in knightdale right now for a purpose, but the next page in our story is completely blank. we don’t know what’s next, but we know it’s something more than what we’re doing now. there’s more to life than what were doing now. we’re praying through it.

we got the chance to hang out with biscuit and kendall this month as well. they are traveling the southeast visiting friends and family raising support to move out to california to serve on staff at south bay church. we are super excited for them! it’s amazing to see the hand of God in our friends’ lives.

thanksgiving is coming. means tour de north carolina. we’ll stuff our faces with food and spend time with family. it’s always a good time to stop and reflect.

until next time, you can follow the tweets.

matt

He is jealous for me,
loves like a hurricane, I am a tree,
bending beneath the weight of his wind and mercy.
when all of a sudden,
i am unaware of these afflictions eclipsed by glory,
and i realize just how beautiful You are,
and how great Your affections are for me.

and oh, how He loves us so,
oh how He loves us,
how He loves us all

yeah, He loves us,
whoa, how He loves us,
whoa, how He loves us,
whoa, how He loves.
yeah, He loves us,
whoa, how He loves us,
whoa, how He loves us,
whoa, how He loves.

we are His portion and He is our prize,
drawn to redemption by the grace in His eyes,
if grace is an ocean, we’re all sinking.
so heaven meets earth like a sloppy wet kiss,
and my heart turns violently inside of my chest,
i don’t have time to maintain these regrets,
when i think about, the way…

1 John 4:10 says,

“This is real love – not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as a sacrifice to take away our sins.”

God’s love for His children could be described using so many various adjectives, but sometimes words do not suffice.

oh how He loves us!

i know this has just been some mindless rambling, but i like to write every now and again. wish i had the chance to do it a little more often. maybe then i could write something with some more substance.

rest well,

matt

worthy is the Lamb Who was slain
holy, holy is He
sing a new song to Him Who sits on Heaven’s mercy seat

holy, holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty
Who was and is and is to come
with all creation i sing praise to the King of kings
You are my everything, and i will adore You

clothed in rainbows of living color
flashes of lightning, rolls of thunder
blessing and honor, strength and glory and power be
to You, the only wise King

holy, holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty
Who was and is and is to come
with all creation i sing praise to the King of kings
You are my everything, and i will adore You

filled with wonder, awestruck wonder
at the mention of Your Name
Jesus, Your Name is power, breath and living water, such a marvelous mystery

holy, holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty
Who was and is and is to come
with all creation i sing praise to the King of kings
You are my everything, and i will adore You

if you don’t own this song, i recommend you pick it up on the quick.

“Teach those who are rich in this world not to be proud and not to trust in their money, which is so unreliable. Their trust should be in God, who richly gives us all we need for our enjoyment. Tell them to use their money to do good. They should be rich in good works and generous to those in need, always being ready to share with others. By doing this they will be storing up their treasure as a good foundation for the future so that they may experience true life.”

1 Timothy 6:17-19

if you don’t remember anything else, here’s a quote that stuck with me; “trust in the Source, not in your stash.” if you’d like to check out the entire series, visit www.takeajourney.org. it is definitely worth your time.

for about the last six months i have been getting my feet wet with a cms that is new to me. everyone pronounces it a little differently, dependent upon where your from on this planet. to this north carolina native it’s, “druple.” in actuality, it’s drupal.

i was introduced to this open source cms about six months ago at my 9-5, s&a cherokee. the list of possibilities with this cms seemed endless. we could now build sites on a platform that they were truley meant to be built on. for awhile, we built non blog oriented sites on the wordpress platform. don’t get me wrong, i love wordpress, but it is truley meant for blogging and we were strectching it and using it in ways that left us restricted and sometimes frustrated.

back to drupal. the learning curve for drupal wasn’t terribly bad as i look back on it. i have never been a css whiz and don’t claim to be one now, but working in drupal has forced me to step up my skills in css coding, specifically for building themes. at times i would get frustrated with drupal, but now realize i was frustrated at myself for not knowing css as well as i should. i have to give much props to a great firefox extension, firebug. it has helped me so many times. if you’re a web designer/developer and you’re struggling with coding, download it and give it a shot.

i could go a lot more in depth into drupal, but right now i’m running short on time. i’ll try to make it a point to write about it more in the future for those who are interested. until then, check out the latest site we’ve built at s&a cherokee on an iteration of the drupal platform named webexpress publisher from our partners over at global media solutions. it is the site for nc magazine, the official publication of the north carolina chamber.

i came across iamsecond.com a few months and recently it was on the collide magazine blog, so i took some time to check it out again. here’s the description of the site from the about page…

“i am second is a movement where significance in life is a shared value among people of all kinds. actors. athletes. musicians. business leaders. your next-door neighbor. people just like you. their authentic stories here on imsecond.com provide insight into dealing witht he typical struggles of everyday living. you’ll meet people who overcame destructive lifestyles. plugs you’ll discover those who’ve tried to go it alone and have failed, yet still found a life full of hope, peace and fulfillment.”

the site has some really great video content. they are very strong stories protrayed in video format. the videos have a unique look and site is pretty slick as well.

if you have some time to sit and watch, you should check it out.

on a side note, it has the amazing story of josh hamilton, a fellow journey church member.