tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-273398162024-03-07T03:57:30.995-06:00Clay FeetClay Feethttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15811502760379647181noreply@blogger.comBlogger683125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27339816.post-43500310697260516542014-05-11T10:03:00.001-05:002014-05-11T10:03:21.041-05:00Mother's Day
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<br />
Today is Mother's Day here in America. It is probably a good thing
because we need at least a yearly reminder to intentionally draw our
focus back to being more appreciative of our mothers, our wives and
even many of the other women in our lives.<br />
<br />
<br />
I have not been known for being adept at conveying appreciation or
knowing how to show affection very well. Unfortunately, like some
clumsy husbands I tend toward perfunctory fulfillment of expected
traditions at such times, maybe more to prevent disgust from others
than from genuine spontaneity. That is not to say I have no feelings
or desire to be more effusive in my affection. Rather it is a symptom
of my own brokenness and lack of mentoring that now needs much
remediation. But God is working to repair all of that and I am
seeking to cooperate more readily.<br />
<br />
<br />
Since once again I have backed myself into a corner by failing to
purchase the obligatory Mother's Day card for my wife this year, and
running into town at the last minute would cost far more than the
card itself, I decided that a more meaningful token of appreciation
might involve something requiring more effort anyway, as well as
expressing more fully how I really feel. So I will try my hand at
writing out my memories and recollections and thoughts that are
meaningful and important to me related to the wife and mother that I
am married to today.<br />
<br />
<br />
When I look at old photos of my wife hovering over our children
when they were young, I am reminded of how beautiful she is, which of
course is one reason why I was attracted to her in the first place.
She has always been deferential in this regards feeling that she is
far less attractive than she really is. But after observing other men
over the years openly seeking to win her attentions even knowing she
was married to me has been a reminder of what a special person God
gifted to me.<br />
<br />
<br />
Of course it is not just her natural external attractiveness that
is important but much more valuable is the internal beauty that has
so long emanated from her spirit that draws the attention of not just
other men but many people in general. As an example, over the past
couple weeks she has been caring for an elderly lady who was dying
and finally passed to her rest. During this time many of the people
of that family along with even the physician repeatedly complimented
and thanked her for her spirit of kindness, gentleness and personal
considerate care that she gave their mother over the past few months.<br />
<br />
<br />
My wife has the gift of kindness and a natural knack for
understanding the elderly that goes beyond the average. She has been
in the caregiving business since before we were married and this too
was likely one of the reasons I was drawn to her. Her gentleness,
kindness, thoughtfulness and sweet disposition while caring for those
around her has captured the attention of many over the years. Of
course there have been times when her health has become worn down as
a result of all the long hours and excessive work required from her
by exploitive employers; and she has at times become very discouraged
and even suffered severe health problems. But her tendency to want to
be cheerful and to rebound in her spirit, even against great odds at
times, has been an inspiration and even rebuke to me. She is a woman
to be admired, respected and honored by her children, her husband and
likely many others who never express their gratitude openly.<br />
<br />
<br />
Over the years as we have grown closer and matured together in
marriage, I have increasingly realized how her influence has affected
my own journey. God knew that I needed someone who had an inherent
desire to hum or sing and carry a more positive attitude than me many
times. Countless times when I have been depressed or just out of
touch with my own heart, I have been reminded by her soft whistling
of some pleasant tune or her sudden breaking into a cheerful song
that I was being reminded of an alternative to the naturally darker
mood in my own mind. The spirit of cheerfulness even when she is
tired and hurting has definitely affected my own healing process over
the many years we have been married and I become more motivated to
change myself.<br />
<br />
<br />
But of course, this is Mother's Day and I have hardly mentioned
the special bonds that she has with her own children. Maybe I am not
the one to best express what that is since it is beyond my ability to
understand this well myself. Providentially God has given me a woman
who is far better at listening and caring and nurturing than I have
ever been. I shudder at what might have happened to our children if
she had not been around to buffer and soften and modulate my less
than positive influence. Not that I have always been a harsh father,
but because I grew up feeling very little love from a father myself,
the wife God provided for me has been an influence to attract me to
want to be more than the product of my own upbringing.<br />
<br />
<br />
That is not to suggest that my own parents did not love me. I lost
my birth mother not long after I turned sixteen and I now struggle to
remember much about her this many years on. But I do recall her
seeking to relate to me significantly differently than how most of my
siblings had been raised previously relying primarily on the popular
approach of severity more than gentleness. By the time the last two
of us arrived on the scene, I am told that my mother urged that maybe
it was time to try a different approach, to seek to use love more
instead of simply demanding strict compliance through intimidation
and punishments.<br />
<br />
<br />
This decision of my mother to experiment with a new approach to
raising her children did not go over well either with my own dad or
with my brother who was the oldest child. To this day my brother
insists that our mother became infected with what he believes was a
false idea of the times pushed by Dr. Spock who insisted that
children needed more love instead of strict control. That was a very
unpopular message to some in that day but one that I believe was and
still is sorely needed. But because my dad really wasn't in agreement
with her desires to experiment with a new method for motivating her
children, the mixed messages I received from them tended to produce a
spirit of rebellion, resentment and defensiveness on my part that has
left me struggling for years since then.<br />
<br />
<br />
God is in the business of repairing all who are willing from the
extensive damage caused by all sorts of sins passed down from
generation to generation. Sadly, by the time I began to realize that
my childhood contained many seriously unhealthy elements that were
destructive to me, I had already passed too much along to my own
children, treating them similarly to how my own dad had dealt with
me. This of course, has brought me a great deal of regret as I now
discover that the ways of God are nearly opposite to what I thought
was normal growing up. I wish I could go back and raise my children
differently than what I did, but the past is locked in the past
except for the power of God to redeem it and to repair damage
wherever it is found when He is given access. So I leave the damage I
caused in God's hands and focus my attention on how powerful His love
is to overcome all the effects from the past.<br />
<br />
<br />
In my own early years, the dissonance between my own parents led
me to play them against each other. I took advantage of what appeared
to me then as the weakness in my mother's ways which I now see was
really an awakening in her to the truth about God that only in recent
years have I begun to discover myself. Feeling increasingly
resentful, bitter and angry as a result of my dad's harsh treatment
in his attempts to force me into compliance with the 'standards of
truth' as he saw them, I found my own heart hardening, withdrawing
and sealing itself against any attempts from my mother to reason with
me, to love me or to help me to be changed by love at any level. At
that time love was more torment for me than it was to be welcomed.<br />
<br />
<br />
Given this background, I now realize how providential it is that
God led me to the wife that I married. My own life at the time was in
emotional chaos and I had very little social skill for relating to
women in general. (Many would agree that I still have very little
social skills and I would have to agree.) But given the turmoil in my
life when I met this woman in college I am amazed that she even
allowed me to get to know her, much less start wooing her to marry
such a messed up guy.<br />
<br />
<br />
Yes, I am aware that she was herself a product of emotional and
social problems and that her family had its own set of dysfunctions
that led to her having gaps in her life in need of healing. As we
came together in marriage we of course brought to the union our own
unique problems inherited from our dysfunctional families of origin.
Over the intervening years those deficits of character from childhood
produced a new blend of problems in our own home resulting in yet
another family struggling to raise children with little experience of
what love looks or feels like. But we made a brave attempt
nevertheless and as I look back from a vantage point many years later
it is easier to trace the hand of God working at various times and in
various ways to steer us in a better direction.<br />
<br />
<br />
Like so many others, both of us entered marriage assuming we could
eventually shape the other person to become more like what we wanted
in a mate and we spent too many years trying to do just that. Of
course we were told this would never work, but the human heart can be
quite stubborn nonetheless and we tried to force each other to fit
into our preferred mold – something on my part than hers I suspect.
Throughout those years of financial struggle, emotional tensions and
spiritual growth together, we somehow continued to bond together and
began to learn how to accept our differences and to even respect and
appreciate some of them. And although our personality types in some
respects seemed too similar (we both tend to want someone else to
make the hard decisions and hate to confront conflict), I now can see
that in other key areas we were designed to compliment each other.<br />
<br />
<br />
These complimenting characteristics are becoming more evident as
we grow older together. I have learned that I am far too left-brain
oriented even though my heart has had very intense feelings over the
years. Because of my intense fears of being shamed or punished when
growing up, I have tended to suppress emotional expression or to be
open about what I really feel inside. As a result I have lived life
primarily from my intellectual side where most other people operated
when I was growing up. My wife similarly has felt unsafe to be open
about what is deep inside of her and given the modeling from our
respective upbringing we both struggle to communicate honestly about
what our hearts long to express.<br />
<br />
<br />
The woman I married and who did most of the successful raising of
our children had far more compassion and tenderness and solicitude
than I ever felt capable of having. As a result our children now feel
more open to relate to her much better than with me. I do not say
this to their discredit but because it is a symptom of my own damaged
heart that never knew how to love and relate the way she can. My
children can have a conversation with me, but when she is on the
phone they can feel safer to be more open which is something I long
to be able to enjoy with them after God does more extensive repair in
my own heart.<br />
<br />
<br />
In the end, I sense that the real hero on Mother's Day is not the
mothers that we tend to honor and praise and appreciate Rather the
real hero is our loving Parent in heaven who is drawing every mother
and father into an improved life of love for each other, for their
children and for everyone. At times like this I find it problematic
to refer to God as only a Father, for I have come to realize that God
is never to be constricted by our narrow gender bias in our
perceptions. God is neither male nor female but is beyond even both
of those combined, yet at the same time God is the epitome of both of
those.<br />
<br />
<br />
Over the years God has brought into our family influence other
young women who have functioned as daughters in our lives. One of
them in particular had previously suffered under severe religious,
emotional and other types of abuse growing up to the point where she
wanted nothing to do with Jesus, the name utilized as the reason for
much of her abuse. As a result she was looking for meaning wherever
she could find it outside Christianity. Her damage though caused her
to drift somewhat when it came to her ability to be honest with
people. She tended to say whatever she thought people wanted to hear
which of course created problems in relationships that caused
problems at times. But one thing that caught my interest was her
desire to relate to God as a Mother instead of just a Father. And
this was more surprising because her own mother was one of the
primary abusers in her life.<br />
<br />
<br />
This concept though has intrigued me for years even before I met
this young lady. I realize that many strict fundamentalists recoil in
horror at such a thought, but I believe there is support for this
concept in the Bible. Insisting that God should only be viewed in the
male gender mode is a product of the patriarchal mentality of most
religions rather than truth that I find in Scripture. There I find a
God who created humans as a binary reflection of God, not a
hierarchal structure designed for top-down authority and control. God
is love and love is very different from the way we run our world now.
By what I have been discovering lately this means that God is just as
much feminine in character as He is masculine if not more so. We just
find it more convenient to use male adverbs because our language
doesn't accommodate anything else readily and because tradition has
forced us into this mentality.<br />
<br />
<br />
As I think of it honestly, God is the real Father as well as
Mother who is the only one who can lead us, mentor us and salvage our
hearts and lives back to that original design that He created in the
beginning. Salvation is not so much about getting us to stop sinful
behaviors or for getting us into paradise as it is about restoring us
to be the Mothers and Fathers and siblings and children that we were
designed to be in the first place. To become godly is to become all
that God is – kind, loving, gentle, compassionate, solicitous,
caring, forgiving and encouraging. From my experience most of these
attributes tend to show up on the women's side of humanity more than
the men's side. Maybe that is why Jesus came as a man – not because
He wanted to reinforce male dominance in our world but because He
needed to redeem the male psychic from the severe damage it has
suffered and to model to us what He originally wanted males to look
and act like.<br />
<br />
<br />
As I learn more of the real truth about what God is really like in
sharp contrast to the views of God I grew up with, I realize that
much of what is considered normal for males is actually rooted in
misapprehensions about God that now are embedded in what we consider
normal male behavior and thinking. Many accepted male characteristics
promoted by religious and non-religious people alike are more
reflective of false views about God than they are reflective of God's
design for husbands and fathers. As a result it seems that mothers
and women in general are more reflective of the kind of person that
Jesus revealed than do many men. That has a lot of potential for
serious consideration.<br />
<br />
<br />
So, what does all this have to do with Mother's Day? In all my
left-brain meanderings and musings and rabbit trails, what I want to
say here is that I appreciate what God has done, is doing and
continues to do in the mothers that surround all of us, and
particularly related to the one that I married. I want to be a more
caring husband and she is seeking to help me learn how to do that. I
also long to be a more connected dad with my children, and although
she may not be able to lead the way fully to what that looks like,
she already keeps the connection open and is praying and encouraging
me as my own healing heart slowly learns how to reach out for better
relationships with my children.<br />
<br />
<br />
Most of all what I appreciate about my wife and the mother of our
children is that she is open to the leading of God's Spirit in her
life. Like me she at times struggles to be consistent in responding
fully to that Spirit, but I shudder at what my life might feel like
if she were one who had little or no interest in knowing God herself.
My life has been made far easier than many connected with people
antagonistic to their desire to follow God. And although we struggle
to be more transparent with each other, we are learning how to be
more open, more vulnerable and how to avoid exploiting each other's
vulnerability. For this I am deeply grateful and appreciative and
thank God for giving me such a woman.<br />
<br />
<br />
<i>Her children arise and call her blessed; her husband also, and
he praises her: "Many women do noble things, but you surpass
them all." Charm is deceptive, and beauty is fleeting; but a
woman who fears the LORD is to be praised. Give her the reward she
has earned, and let her works bring her praise at the city gate.</i>
(Proverbs 31:28-31 NIV)<br />
Clay Feethttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15811502760379647181noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27339816.post-83585365040839317722012-01-25T09:31:00.000-06:002012-01-26T09:33:15.641-06:00Forty-one Years Ago<br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
Forty-one years ago this morning was a
significant day, a turning point in my life. I still remember it
rather well because I had come to an impasse in my life, not only
spiritually but emotionally as well. But a little background needs to
be explained to make sense of that statement.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
I grew up in a conservative religious
environment in the sense that I had been led to believe in a very
strict, arbitrary, demanding God who expected everyone to keep His
rules perfectly or face punishing. Very likely this was because that
was the way I was generally treated by my parents, particularly my
father who was not adverse to using corporal punishment whenever he
felt it might be useful to force me into more obedience. Thus my view
of God increasingly was filled with fear and intimidation.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
As I entered my teen years my heart
began to rebel more and more against this kind of life. But at the
same time my conscience had been trained to always be honest, to try
to be good and to seek for holiness as far as I could figure out what
that meant. I now realize that this is the double-mindedness that
James speaks of in the Bible. And as I learned all too well,
double-mindedness always leads to instability.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
The religion of my childhood in many
respects resembled the cultural religion of America in those days, a
culture where authority demanded implicit, unquestioning obedience
and every infraction of the law was met with stern retribution. But
as I was approaching adulthood in my early teens things were changing
in our country; the Vietnam war was raging and coming to a climax and
young people both there and at home were chafing under the abuse of a
country exploiting them and using them essentially as cannon fodder
in a far away land.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
Protests began to break out, but not
just over a stupid war that was going nowhere but in reaction to
increasingly abusive authority here at home. Hypocrisy was on the
rise among the older generation and the youth were hungry for more
authenticity, for something that addressed the real issues down
inside instead of just repressing everything for the sake of keeping
up appearances. Out of this environment the Hippie movement was born
with a rather colorful history and mixed reviews.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
Whatever you might think was going on
with the Hippie movement (which was slightly before my time in some
respects), it was truly a mix of reactions to the abuse of power, not
only by the government but by religion and adults in general. Some of
the young people in that movement were honestly seeking for real
freedom, to explore uncharted waters not unlike Columbus who had
'discovered' America long ago, and they also wanted to a better love
and learn to real. As with any revolution there were also those who
took advantage of the uprisings to express their selfishness by
exploiting others and causing havoc. But it cannot be denied that the
repressive atmosphere of abuse by those in charge brought on this
massive movement not unlike what we are seeing all throughout the
Arab world today.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
My own life was being lived out in an
even more restricted, protected environment. I was carefully shielded
from nearly all outside influences such as popular music, movies and
most other cultural activities that were considered worldly in
society. I am not saying that this was all bad but simply stating
that this is what shaped my thinking and perceptions during my
formative years. But because of the intensity of the pressure to
conform to the rule of law both at home and in my church as well as
in society at large, I found myself increasingly chafing under the
pressure for conformity and started having my own urges to revolt
myself.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
As I mentioned previously, my
conscience had been trained quite intently to act as a guard against
my straying too far into off-limit activities. I had great ability to
heap enormous amounts of guilt and shame on myself whenever I felt I
had sinned. The problem was that I had very nebulous ideas about just
what sin really was and this was part of what fueled my confusion and
growing resentment against authority. My conscience had become very
sensitive, but without experiencing real love I increasingly lived in
growing terror of losing my soul if I did not 'confess' every last
little 'sin' that might still be lurking in my past or present.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
I came to believe from the
teachings/threatenings of well-meaning religious instructors that
God, who could see all things even in the deepest recesses of my
soul, was always looking over my shoulder waiting to condemn me to
burn in hell if I did not perfectly conform to every last
requirement/demand expected of me. To make matters worse I never
seemed to be able to determine just what demands were from God and
which might just be petty demands of those in authority. For it was
not unusual – in fact it was the popular method in even secular
culture – to make up rules more for the convenience of those in
charge than for the good of those under their authority.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
So in many ways I entered my own
'Hippie movement' in my own way, but not necessarily at the same time
as the one going on outside my home. And even though I did begin
indulging in listening to forbidden music on a radio I discovered in
my house, which raised the friction level between me and my parents
significantly, the pop music I listened to was more reflective than
instructive in my life.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
During this period in my life I began
to experience an internal conflict that I can only describe as
resembling schizophrenia. Because of my very dark views of a
demanding God waiting to punish me reinforced by a father who was
very similar, and an overactive conscience that did its share of
condemning me as well, I found myself in essence 'doing penance' that
increasingly consumed more and more of my waking hours. During this
period of time when I was around 11-13 I took on my first job as a
paper-boy for a Chicago newspaper and suddenly had access to far more
money that the pittance my parents had given me for an allowance each
week. That gave me resources to do many more things but not
necessarily all beneficial for me. But pervading my conscious mind
through whatever activities I found myself involved in, and like a
computer virus running behind the scenes consuming more and more of
my mental CPU, was a mantra of sorts that ran over and over and over
and became more and more obsessive and compulsive.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
This virus that increasingly took up
more and more of my waking moments was a cycle of confessing whatever
violation or past sin I might be able to imagine or remember and
begging God to forgive that sin so I would not face punishment for
it. However, even this activity brought very little relief for I had
no way of being sure that God had relented and chosen to wipe that
sin off my records in heaven. Thus I would find myself repeating the
same confessions again many times because I still wasn't sure if I
had gotten it right and removed it from the list God was using
against me for the day of Judgment.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
This may sound very bizarre to some but
may resonate a great deal with many others. Whatever the case, this
was my situation and no one around me had any clue that this was what
was going on inside my head nearly every moment I was awake. Things
progressively got worse though, for my overactive conscience pushed
me harder and harder to comply with the expectations of religion as I
perceived them, which meant that I was also supposed to close my
eyes, bow my head, kneel down and fold my hands whenever I prayed.
But since this cycle of fearful, compulsive 'penance' was happening
during many of my waking moments, increasingly it was impossible to
do all of those things at the same time. That of course, brought up
the potential that I was adding even more guilt to the list of sins I
was trying to whittle down with all my frenzied, obsessive praying.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
I can remember riding my bicycle
through car traffic in town trying to recite my penance routines and
feeling compelled to close my eyes in because I was praying but with
dangerous results. Finally I had to just keep reciting my mantras
without doing any of the outward physical requirements just to stay
safe but in turn that only increased the weight of guilt I was
already feeling. My condition could easily be compared to the
situation of Christian in the story Pilgrim's Progress by John
Bunyan. He is described as having an incredibly heavy burden fastened
on his back that he could not escape. That description of the
Christian life truly resonated in many ways with my own journey
toward God.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
This obsessive-compulsive habit that
was developing in my internal world finally became so disruptive that
people must have begun to wonder about me, yet no one ever bothered
to ask or to allow me the freedom to share my fears and confusion
with them. The only thing I got from the adult world were more
expectations and ever-increasing requirements that I needed to
conform to in order to be accepted as well as prepare my life for
heaven.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
With this background explanation it can
be more readily understood why I felt the way I did when I woke up on
my sixteenth birthday and lay in bed pondering my predicament that
cold morning. A number of things crossed my mind that began to
inter-relate to each other. One thing was the popular notion that the
age of sixteen may be some sort of magical transition point in life
from which the expression “sixteen and never been kissed”
emerged. And while it was true that I had never been kissed by a
girl, being the pragmatic sort of mind I was, I rather disdained such
notions. But that morning I began to ponder that just maybe there
might be something significant about turning sixteen that was outside
my frame of awareness. I began to wonder if something might
potentially be different for me that day, something that might
surprise me, that might cause me to take a different direction in my
life. Little did I realize that I was indeed about to turn one of the
most significant corners that would affect my journey for eternity.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
As I lay there in bed pondering whether
there was anything to this sixteen business or not, another thought
began to emerge more forcefully from my heart. My resentment had been
building up for years against my internal picture of God who demanded
impossible levels of penance and expected me to live such a
dysfunctional existence as I had been experiencing for several years.
My heart was so suppressed and squashed by all this abusive internal
frenzy that I was finally ready to consider throwing in the towel so
to speak and giving up on all of it. Maybe this religion was too
crazy for me, and certainly it was becoming clear that the direction
I was heading was untenable. It was impossible to live much longer
with this compulsive obsession sapping more and more of my energy and
it was interfering with my relationships and even my ability to
concentrate on normal activities. It was only increasing my levels of
shame, guilt and fear rather than diminishing them and it was
starting to become clear that this must not be the right road to
heaven. The way things were going I would soon have a mental
break-down rather than a breakthrough into holiness.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
As I lay there and thought back over
the past few years of my life in connection with this obsession, I
decided to make what felt like a very dangerous decision that
morning. In the light of the pain and dysfunction this obsession was
bringing into my life, I decided that for at least that one day I was
going to attempt to suppress this compulsive urge to confess and
grovel every time it presented itself no matter how insistent it
might feel. Only if I obviously committed some egregious sin would I
choose to try to make it right, but for all the other real or
imaginary sins that seemed to never go away anyway, I decided that
for this day I was going to fight back and refuse to obey this
internal dictator any longer.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
As I made this decision I felt a threat
emerging from the demon (I now see that is really what it was) that
was driving me to live this way. I could hear him threaten that I
would surely burn in hell if I didn't continue to obey this
obsession. But in response I decided that it couldn't be much worse
to burn in hell than the miserable existence I was already
experiencing. And somewhere deep inside I felt just a flicker of hope
suggesting that maybe, just maybe what I had been doing was not
really God's plan after all. And if that was true then maybe this
decision might possibly open me up to a better option than the one
religion had produced in me thus far.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
That day became one of the most
significant turning points in my life up to that point. Because of my
choice to begin to turn away from desperately dark pictures of God in
my head and move toward a more healthy picture of Him, my life has
been on a different track ever since. I am not suggesting in any way
that it was the intention of my parents or religious guardians to
lead me into such insanity. But nevertheless it was the product of a
legalistic approach to religion that always results in malfunction
and a loss of peace in the heart. And peace is one of the most
important ingredients for a Christian to experience if they are to
grow and thrive and mature.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
As I thought back on this day that
changed my life 41 years ago this morning, I couldn't help but feel
again that I am in some ways continuing that choice again today. I
find myself in the middle of even more intense questioning of my
dark pictures of God, pictures that still pervade the thinking and
teachings of most of those around me in religion even today. The same
atmosphere of fear still pervades not only my own church but every
brand of religion throughout the world to some extent. Only recently
have I begun to discover that the real truth about God is even more
radically beautiful than I could ever have dared to imagine that day
I turned sixteen. Now here I am still processing and rejecting faulty
opinions about God so many years later and wondering how much longer
it will take before I can be free of the inhibitions and rebellion
that all of those lies instilled into my psyche during those
formative years.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
I made a decision back in those days
that I was going to take the harder road than many of my friends were
choosing. Rather than throw out religion as being worthless or
impossible or a fraud as many others chose to do, I decided that the
real problem was that I didn't have a correct perception of what was
really true about God or religion and that I needed to figure out
what was really true in contrast to what I had been taught all my
life that made me so terrified of God. That choice has shaped the
rest of my life up to this day and continues to be the basis by which
I live my life.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
I am now more convinced than ever that
the real problem, not only in my life but with all of us, is that we
have grown up in an environment so saturated with lies about God that
unless God intervenes to show our hearts the real truth about Him
there is no hope of us every figuring it out. But on the other hand,
if we allow Him enough respect to give Him a chance in our hearts, He
will begin to share with us a love and will ravish our hearts in ways
that cannot be matched by anything else we could imagine. The human
heart was designed to be satisfied by only one thing, and that one
thing is the passion of the God who created it to start with. But the
thing that keeps us from embracing that love are the myriads of lies
we still believe that prevent us from trusting Him with our hearts.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
Religion has miserably failed to
present the real truth about God, not just to the world but to its
own adherents as well. Religion still insists that God operates
primarily through laws and even so-called liberal theology is
obsessed with resolving our legal standing with God. What I have been
discovering is that God is far more intent on winning my respect and
my affections than He is on me achieving perfect conformity to a list
of demands. Trying to fulfill a list of rules actually diminishes my
ability to love, yet love is the only thing that prepares my heart to
live in His presence. The only way I can live in love is to lay aside
my obsession with rules and first learn to appreciate the real truth
about what He is really like in contrast to all the lies religion
and/or culture has foisted on me. Then as I come to know Him more and
more intimately my life will naturally begin to gravitate toward
being like Him without me obsessing over whether I have offended Him
or not.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
I still have a long ways to go to get
rid of the many lies that still lurk deep inside me and get triggered
from time to time. But God is faithful and His love is everlasting
which is the only thing I can depend on when it comes to my
salvation. The more I focus on knowing who He really is the more I
sense my own heart beginning to heal and to increase in its capacity
to respond with reflective love back toward Him. And this, I am
discovering, is the real preparation for heaven that my heart has
been longing for all along.</div>Clay Feethttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15811502760379647181noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27339816.post-33864748062865625862011-07-14T14:50:00.003-05:002011-07-14T15:30:11.220-05:00Temporary Beach Bums<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg1_I9ZxCfxIHxwVhhA60ZB8cqmsy3LeV4wIyHUni1xc3MU2O2O9gfGfZrZ7ggPWWQM7-iwgsY_RpwOBOV7VF_B1e17Lrc9mtarvqyF6AtOrPGoXCepsNncATJLiqwThVm3CfnV/s1600/IMG_5620.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg1_I9ZxCfxIHxwVhhA60ZB8cqmsy3LeV4wIyHUni1xc3MU2O2O9gfGfZrZ7ggPWWQM7-iwgsY_RpwOBOV7VF_B1e17Lrc9mtarvqyF6AtOrPGoXCepsNncATJLiqwThVm3CfnV/s320/IMG_5620.JPG" width="320" /></a></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjbHq5WsCrq2WwOo0fFh786isjyndkKf7omdjil59QEBlgSLVmA-SIinQ6LIcexMcNXUZFYFzuF16CmVpvSeDXwuYJigcWHtBzi2nQI0mNxV2rwXhVh4RA-ApQUZ2X82bwgad7H/s1600/IMG_5595.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="150" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjbHq5WsCrq2WwOo0fFh786isjyndkKf7omdjil59QEBlgSLVmA-SIinQ6LIcexMcNXUZFYFzuF16CmVpvSeDXwuYJigcWHtBzi2nQI0mNxV2rwXhVh4RA-ApQUZ2X82bwgad7H/s200/IMG_5595.JPG" width="200" /></a>Leaving behind the sweltering heat of the midwest, wifey and I flew out to chilly Northwest Washington last Monday to visit with our daughter for a few weeks and see some of the beauties of this region. Knowing how little pictures really convey what needs to be seen and smelled and experienced firsthand, I sometimes fail to take enough pictures. Yet they can serve as reminders of the fuller memories of cherished experiences for those who participated in what the pictures represent.</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEizfeL7XhyphenhyphenLOj2YIuZfE3KsWrx38L588KK5tg1CVgMMiskNH4ZV5KopO9AXTjhiMjxSIajYbQUS1sm9Ye_k_sWU6NtP0Pse8pwXLcJQDciEGtLc82D7yYGnXY12fCFh4D2vHSJW/s1600/P1000204.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEizfeL7XhyphenhyphenLOj2YIuZfE3KsWrx38L588KK5tg1CVgMMiskNH4ZV5KopO9AXTjhiMjxSIajYbQUS1sm9Ye_k_sWU6NtP0Pse8pwXLcJQDciEGtLc82D7yYGnXY12fCFh4D2vHSJW/s200/P1000204.JPG" width="150" /></a></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi02V26d6Pe7X5vKHjFdYylX_LNMtryEYlR-FBn3lUU7gDsVM1m9cq1C5YdjcA11ei7xesXgucouSJQZ6SyIedksYZECvn84NsFDO3dom7dqNrJ3LWewZF4mCvFFkZcbV9Bch6Z/s1600/P1000200.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="150" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi02V26d6Pe7X5vKHjFdYylX_LNMtryEYlR-FBn3lUU7gDsVM1m9cq1C5YdjcA11ei7xesXgucouSJQZ6SyIedksYZECvn84NsFDO3dom7dqNrJ3LWewZF4mCvFFkZcbV9Bch6Z/s200/P1000200.JPG" width="200" /></a>Today we went out to the 'ocean' such as it is in the straits of the sound. I can see how I could very quickly get addicted to just spending weeks strolling the beaches exploring the millions of kinds of life in the tidepools available here, smelling the scent of the sea and soaking up the peace inherent in nature as God designed it. I missed seeing the Bale Eagle on the branch that my daughter caught with her camera, but we did finally come across some amazingly beautiful creatures in the tidepools before retreating ahead of the returning tide.</div><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjO4AcHtu0v-1WuhMKx9QPyCaDZc4ygDPrcJYo9PpVtltVWaoQWeiMvycTG4yEDg1fLoAHu0HflI3v4TjxebwMoLRT8TEWUR95BI_cOd9ldjJ4kOGgWvm80EQwL9zsIVp6T6DR_/s1600/IMG_5608.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjO4AcHtu0v-1WuhMKx9QPyCaDZc4ygDPrcJYo9PpVtltVWaoQWeiMvycTG4yEDg1fLoAHu0HflI3v4TjxebwMoLRT8TEWUR95BI_cOd9ldjJ4kOGgWvm80EQwL9zsIVp6T6DR_/s320/IMG_5608.JPG" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Sea Anemone</td></tr>
</tbody></table><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiKMs6VP-ipvKzkxD9ntPjJpuqQqN2i44kC4P1v52LB-85DULzaPpZfIolpv8-8cTxESx6Ii0gg7rP0x5bcjJFp8lJDPxICHettgdw9W47p2uetnfkduEcXnD3p5NXpDHKUq8H-/s1600/IMG_5625.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiKMs6VP-ipvKzkxD9ntPjJpuqQqN2i44kC4P1v52LB-85DULzaPpZfIolpv8-8cTxESx6Ii0gg7rP0x5bcjJFp8lJDPxICHettgdw9W47p2uetnfkduEcXnD3p5NXpDHKUq8H-/s320/IMG_5625.JPG" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Starfish</td></tr>
</tbody></table><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjwlYN1JcsMgl5_ILKUikgE70v4IQHfsVHNFli5ocUMmi7BZYi7UlWoa_neyV8aIA0TKhtTxKfscltpKEnIN4HAnKU5ibKiQ7SccV2pTxyBFQAiJoWcXfrblSWqCu1z82saJQ1j/s1600/IMG_5617.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjwlYN1JcsMgl5_ILKUikgE70v4IQHfsVHNFli5ocUMmi7BZYi7UlWoa_neyV8aIA0TKhtTxKfscltpKEnIN4HAnKU5ibKiQ7SccV2pTxyBFQAiJoWcXfrblSWqCu1z82saJQ1j/s320/IMG_5617.JPG" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Sunflower Starfish</td></tr>
</tbody></table><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">At the risk of boring those who find this commonplace, I will share a few pictures of how our morning transpired today. It sure beat the baking sun of Illinois but did require that I wear a few more layers of clothes than I am used to having this time of year.</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiCfaiY1R9Y0lSN6sBs4hw8a9hdC8h-2dA1YxCXGEK1iik9qgE52NUKAzFagRu5hrWzDpEdtjs-e3V6DmE1RR_kDl7UDwxKzODsFaMc5sXaWxGic_x8PO7rykEQxiNCcV6QTXeD/s1600/P1000216.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiCfaiY1R9Y0lSN6sBs4hw8a9hdC8h-2dA1YxCXGEK1iik9qgE52NUKAzFagRu5hrWzDpEdtjs-e3V6DmE1RR_kDl7UDwxKzODsFaMc5sXaWxGic_x8PO7rykEQxiNCcV6QTXeD/s320/P1000216.JPG" width="320" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh24Yaw7qfTKJHKsktAVx_LpmYT4aN9-0Zyi22roa8ZhZXfhW7pyRGsfbs4IN0uVEoumr6WgKKlDC-k-jeoQLhvS4Z_yiVK_kc3Db5z2wgwdc3H4p22ZflEhOsfnrB0Sc3TS_td/s1600/IMG_5618.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh24Yaw7qfTKJHKsktAVx_LpmYT4aN9-0Zyi22roa8ZhZXfhW7pyRGsfbs4IN0uVEoumr6WgKKlDC-k-jeoQLhvS4Z_yiVK_kc3Db5z2wgwdc3H4p22ZflEhOsfnrB0Sc3TS_td/s320/IMG_5618.JPG" width="320" /></a><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgAkv0TPRtFiUEr_gLxbtNrFtnTMCjOkmkjaN-ObJBZvIOu5zAKLiprSnhv-E07psEBXb9iFwv-Xyxj9vqJKIDGRl5Lz-bz42WkwUvXF1sOUgfA0EVpQAl1baUx0rAuimS5SobX/s1600/P1000225.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgAkv0TPRtFiUEr_gLxbtNrFtnTMCjOkmkjaN-ObJBZvIOu5zAKLiprSnhv-E07psEBXb9iFwv-Xyxj9vqJKIDGRl5Lz-bz42WkwUvXF1sOUgfA0EVpQAl1baUx0rAuimS5SobX/s320/P1000225.JPG" width="320" /></a></div><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg4-rvQ2UwhH4_zyNRZtzxITqbhxBGXrPw8n_xf3uDbtmmJzX8aButq3XNiYarhVi86tLo7w7FaPyVakQHn23rneWEyO02Y3-3dPN3kW4n-WlqxFdE3MtaeYEIYV5ZXS6jY3bou/s1600/P1000227.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg4-rvQ2UwhH4_zyNRZtzxITqbhxBGXrPw8n_xf3uDbtmmJzX8aButq3XNiYarhVi86tLo7w7FaPyVakQHn23rneWEyO02Y3-3dPN3kW4n-WlqxFdE3MtaeYEIYV5ZXS6jY3bou/s320/P1000227.JPG" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Multiple Starfish of bright colors</td></tr>
</tbody></table><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhrYAnrwxdkJzYKStoT1smCjbzYpHrOm1WcvTQdLR1jGhKkpUkKxm1cR-zhYverLrOKNHNbujrLxM-WwtZ7t1d-ezr0QD6ttbwjw84pClcV-5AX8jnaeGLjU61RqyrufqaxVSWM/s1600/P1000232.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhrYAnrwxdkJzYKStoT1smCjbzYpHrOm1WcvTQdLR1jGhKkpUkKxm1cR-zhYverLrOKNHNbujrLxM-WwtZ7t1d-ezr0QD6ttbwjw84pClcV-5AX8jnaeGLjU61RqyrufqaxVSWM/s320/P1000232.JPG" width="240" /></a><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgiDpMe3WLvghKL1hrKsNy_7CPaH-DfYVVm9P-oPvsnA7GACGq5n0fivXXP_PfBXsIIeTDk0uPukp5kbgOZNEz4F2eRv0P6vESePpXjDbfQzUZ8yiPYiSj8GTJty8flBNLTTwIA/s1600/IMG_5629.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgiDpMe3WLvghKL1hrKsNy_7CPaH-DfYVVm9P-oPvsnA7GACGq5n0fivXXP_PfBXsIIeTDk0uPukp5kbgOZNEz4F2eRv0P6vESePpXjDbfQzUZ8yiPYiSj8GTJty8flBNLTTwIA/s400/IMG_5629.JPG" width="400" /></a></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div>Clay Feethttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15811502760379647181noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27339816.post-82880647289947367602011-06-22T09:15:00.002-05:002011-06-27T09:29:26.603-05:00Upcoming Director<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">A week ago my wife and I went to the last practice of the Barbershop Chorus I am a part of before their annual show last weekend. Since I was not singing in the show we decided to sit in on the dress rehearsal which would be the next best thing to attending. At the end of each rehearsal every week it is a tradition worldwide for Barbershop choruses to sing the anthem of the society, “Keep the Whole World Singing”. Our director usually selects someone from the group to direct it and the chorus usually pays close attention to that director to follow whatever they might do in their leading of the song.</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">In the past when I have been chosen I have usually made the song rather unexpected which requires the men to watch quite closely to my directing. Since I have not been to practice much over the past couple months I suspected in my mind that he might select me to direct the song. I said to myself that if he chose me to do it I would get my wife to do it in my place.</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">Sure enough, the director asked me to lead the song so I turned to my wife and invited her to lead it in my place. She was extremely reluctant and embarrassed to be so assertive in front of so many people, but upon a little physical coaxing and encouragement from the men she finally stood up to direct.</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">Since she has never done anything like this before and had no idea of what is involved in directing a chorus and didn't even know the song, she asked me what she should do. I told her to just wave her arms around and see what might happen.</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEguhnwyTCAa1gaV5L7CF6P8oEYtXlLKBzPVjxHTHh-SEGZn9ooDX3qSVcd-Qd8q__EaGFiX2sRcZHfCu51JCj2lWqL7ZvDYeA7vRNuY3zU2wSp7RDc-SKQFZuvd1WmUvJBbXuB0/s1600/TaniaDirecting.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEguhnwyTCAa1gaV5L7CF6P8oEYtXlLKBzPVjxHTHh-SEGZn9ooDX3qSVcd-Qd8q__EaGFiX2sRcZHfCu51JCj2lWqL7ZvDYeA7vRNuY3zU2wSp7RDc-SKQFZuvd1WmUvJBbXuB0/s320/TaniaDirecting.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">Sure enough, as soon as she began moving her arms the men began singing the song according to her gestures. She seemed rather shocked and sometimes just stood there while they were stuck holding a note. I had to encourage her to keep moving her hands so they could finish the song. It was all very interesting and after the song we all gave her a standing ovation. (Well, they were all standing anyway)</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">If any of you like to sing I would encourage you to check into finding a Barbershop or Sweet Adelines (the female counterpart) chorus in your area and at least listen to a practice or concert. These societies are open, relaxed and have a lot of fun together. Its also a great place to make friends and improve your musical abilities. You don't have to feel obligated to be a professional but if you want to learn they are always teaching skills that can help you learn how to be a better singer.</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">For more information or to find a chorus in your area you can visit their worldwide web site at Barbershop.org.</div>Clay Feethttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15811502760379647181noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27339816.post-1345050989528739782011-06-04T20:10:00.002-05:002011-06-04T20:43:10.096-05:00On That Note<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
We are blessed to be able to live out in the country. Because of that we are much more aware of the rhythms of nature, and this year is one of those rare moments that only happens every seven years. This is the year we get to enjoy the serenade of the cicadas.</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjJ8wI71fwpFkfP0taRkEDJA3mqpJY9gJsD3u53xZQgtvNT7KrqvluX8iF8qf45OgntOOkgI4gWLfhMGqMBCCF2Nbg8zYY89K7NzG3z7c0VIqurcPbgxr2Beh9Jzzlmk3-gXc_g/s1600/cicada-sam.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjJ8wI71fwpFkfP0taRkEDJA3mqpJY9gJsD3u53xZQgtvNT7KrqvluX8iF8qf45OgntOOkgI4gWLfhMGqMBCCF2Nbg8zYY89K7NzG3z7c0VIqurcPbgxr2Beh9Jzzlmk3-gXc_g/s1600/cicada-sam.jpg" /></a>It began with many small holes suddenly appearing in the ground around our yard. It almost looks like someone fired at the ground with a large caliber machine gun in places. The cicadas emerge from their underground hiding places once every seven years to take over the surroundings by storm. I have recently heard stories about campers being overwhelmed with cicadas covering their food within minutes after placing it on the picnic table. We have not seen near that many here, but our dog has enjoyed a few as tasty morsels on his daily walks occasionally.</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiChL3ahx5t4cjPL62bjk45HMTqaqypzocDvV0B-nuao5J-Gqrpm-SCwQZRx9rFFlyv-tKGp97TSmD6yihiYG-Daksi7drVVNxLlhaJx2qX6R7iIDIBKiT4GDr9Lc4EpCAX9iKm/s1600/cicada+cluster.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiChL3ahx5t4cjPL62bjk45HMTqaqypzocDvV0B-nuao5J-Gqrpm-SCwQZRx9rFFlyv-tKGp97TSmD6yihiYG-Daksi7drVVNxLlhaJx2qX6R7iIDIBKiT4GDr9Lc4EpCAX9iKm/s1600/cicada+cluster.jpg" /></a></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">The other morning as I listened to the constant singing of these cicadas I decided to guess what note they were singing, what pitch they were using as they all sang in close unison all through the surrounding woods. I guessed that it might be the note A, but after checking it on the piano I discovered it to be E instead. So much for perfect pitch on my part, huh.</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiLBW-hPgA5hW786x51rmHCy1mW3SNHfIYglcuoIR0hIWZY5wf2HeYv1soo1gX31nzJUgRgaMzCDt29C5K7XT5s9klcdcHFPYVSl5e2h27cjsTTSqwT4vmk3HEm4cJzTrB-t-FL/s1600/tree+frog.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiLBW-hPgA5hW786x51rmHCy1mW3SNHfIYglcuoIR0hIWZY5wf2HeYv1soo1gX31nzJUgRgaMzCDt29C5K7XT5s9klcdcHFPYVSl5e2h27cjsTTSqwT4vmk3HEm4cJzTrB-t-FL/s1600/tree+frog.jpg" /></a>Today we noticed in the times we spent outside (though it was a very hot day) that there is another competing, or complimentary, chorus in concert with the cicadas. The tree frogs have their own symphony going on that is different than the constant note of the cicadas. Their song intensifies and diminishes in a cycle with no distinct note like the other background song of the cicadas.</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">It reminds me of the truth that “all nature sings and around me rings the music of the spheres. This is my Father's world...” I am gladdened by the songs of the birds that arrange their wake-up chorus of intense praise early in the morning, though we don't hear it too well with the windows closed. The cheerful expressions and colors of the Oriels when they come to the hummingbird feeder brighten our day on occasion and the buzzing and chirping of the many cute hummingbirds and their occasional dive-bombing over our heads when we walk by are reminders of a Father's love for beauty and variety.</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">Of course there are uncomfortable things in nature that remind us that sin has marred many things. The deer flies that attack us when we walk the dog present daily challenges to keep our head covered while still having to flap our arms around gracelessly as we walk down the road. But it is still better to be close to nature and away from the many distractions and isolation from much in nature that those living in town experience.</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">This year we will enjoy the cicada's songs for as long as they last. I'm not sure how long they sing for, but it is not very often that they come around so we will enjoy them and remember them after they are gone in anticipation for their next grand appearance in another seven years.</div>Clay Feethttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15811502760379647181noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27339816.post-66897531598594472162011-03-04T08:37:00.001-06:002011-03-04T08:37:06.204-06:00Fading Winter<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">Due to setting up my other blogs and mainly focusing on those topics I have not been very good about keeping this one up to date as far as my own activities. Some things happen that I intend to post about but by the time I get around to it it seems so far after the fact that I just don't bother. Like the singing Valentines event where I sang in a quartet all day to surprised women all over town. Of course there is also the fact that FaceBook has nearly taken over the role that blogs used to have for people's expression of their lives. But even there I almost never post anything because of the very public nature that intimidates me. Knowing that almost no one looks at this blog makes it a little easier to post things here than where I am guaranteed that hundreds of people will immediately see it.</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">Anyway, having rambled on about that too long, I thought I might post at little here both in review and in advance. The advance is that we have a concert coming up on March 20 with our Barbershop Chorus. It is our annual Lenten concert where we invite ladies to sing with us in the concert. This year it looks like we might even be outnumbered by the ladies which would be quite interesting. If any of you would like to attend this concert we would love to have you and I know you would enjoy it. I think my wife and my sister who recently moved in with us will both be singing in it this year.</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">As far as what has happened recently, my wife and I spent right at two months during the dead of winter in Michigan with our lovely (adopted) daughter refurbishing her house to ready it for rental. It had not been taken care of much for many years as far as painting and repairs so it took much longer than she had hoped to finish the job. But after spraying all the ceilings, fixing and painting the walls, replacing carpet with laminate floors and cleaning and painting the whole basement it looks better than it ever has since her original family moved in years ago.</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">But even more exciting was the deepening bonds that were experienced between all of us during this extended time we were able to spend together. We have taken her in as part of our intimate family for a number of years now since both of her own parents died less than a year apart, and at times it has been stressful for all of us. But over the past couple years she seems to have gone into a growth spurt as far as maturing emotionally and spiritually which has opened up our relationship dramatically. She is currently attending the seminary which is keeping her very busy and pressured, but then what's new – she is very smart and has always pushed herself very hard in school.</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">She also is keeping her eyes open to see if there is a man for her somewhere while training herself to rest in God's timing and guidance for her life. We are so proud of what she is becoming, the choices she is making to move into deeper intimacy with God and her willingness to take much bigger risks trusting others, especially in her relationship with us as her surrogate parents. She has chosen to be more affectionate, more trusting, more open and more patient which has allowed us in turn to be more open and vulnerable with her as well. What has come out of this while we spent this extended time with her is a much deeper bonding as she has allowed us to bring healing to some of the deep wounds from her past and damage from previous relationships that were less than healthy.</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">Like us, she is learning to trust God much more through this time and is learning how to distinguish His voice from other counterfeit communications which is something all of us need to learn too. Though she is often frustrated she is choosing to be patient, to open up to others and ask for help, for advice, for wisdom which is very brave of her given where she has come from emotionally. At the same time I feel suddenly overwhelmed with the realization that God is providing through her an opportunity for me to practice how to be a better father than how I performed when my children were younger. And though she is the same age as my other grown children now, she is still choosing to relate to us in a trusting way as a daughter which is allowing us to share our lives with her as caring parents and to have our hearts attached to her in a way that is uncommon today even within biological families.</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">Living in Michigan again during the middle of winter gave us time to enjoy more snow than we see back home in Illinois. While we were gone there was a very hard ice storm at home which we missed. Now the weather is finally starting to ease up and make us very hungry for warmer weather as it teases us in fits and spurts. But it was nice to drive in the snow again. I know, many might think I'm crazy that way, but I enjoy the challenge. It's like a game to use cars interactively with snow that can't be done under normal conditions.</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">While in Michigan we also had the wonderful privilege of connecting with some old friends and to tap into the many cultural and religious resources not available where we live. We had some wonderful times of refreshing in meetings, social gatherings and small groups that really enriched our lives and made us wish we could do something similar with people in our area. Maybe someday.</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">Toward the end of last year my sister and her husband moved in with us from Virginia. This means that our house is again overflowing with more stuff, more furniture and boxes and the garage is once again full to the brim challenging us to sort and shuck and make lots of hard decisions. We are remodeling one of the upstairs bedrooms into a kitchen which is nearly finished now. Another one is turned into an office with the intent of allowing them to have their apartment upstairs though they have not started staying there yet. The forth bedroom upstairs is still packed to the ceiling with storage which is not helped by the fact that both our child and their child have left some of their stuff at home for storage.</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">Since we now have found a way to deal with the Early Blight problem in the soil with products from the company I joined, we now plan to have a full-blown garden this year. It helps too that there are four people to help with it instead of just two. We are still trusting God to provide the income necessary to take care of our needs here, but He has been faithful to send us jobs and other things and we have all that we really need. We still are eating food canned by our parents years ago and have had some given to us from others on top of that. We live out in the country in the woods and have a creek running through the property. God has blessed us and we want to become better channels of blessing to others.</div>Clay Feethttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15811502760379647181noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27339816.post-60107841116547053582010-12-25T01:23:00.006-06:002010-12-25T01:23:00.238-06:00Accept His Presents<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEifXCAqDhTj-1LvT7VKsxBlQUVkU8xVRvn9IDaU3wJc6BLX9V8XCGyQeM3XOGnQNa4r8B9YSqflmcz0zblcCBPw04FAE6qdI9TxtI9JtkT03x7FUcec9cKgf2O8NP1INc8Dh4OP/s1600/Presents1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEifXCAqDhTj-1LvT7VKsxBlQUVkU8xVRvn9IDaU3wJc6BLX9V8XCGyQeM3XOGnQNa4r8B9YSqflmcz0zblcCBPw04FAE6qdI9TxtI9JtkT03x7FUcec9cKgf2O8NP1INc8Dh4OP/s320/Presents1.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>Christmas is possibly most associated with the idea of giving and receiving presents. Yes, there are many other traditions connected to this time of year, but presents usually play a very central role in our relationships with others during this holiday season more than at any other time. This tradition has also enabled commercialism to exploit our fears and desires and has produces a whole different twist to the holiday season that is far from what God has in mind for our lives.</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">As I sat watching a program on television relating some of the fascinating things to be learned from the earthly sanctuary given to the Israelites through Moses by God, some thoughts came to my attention that relate directly to our relationship with God. Some may be more open to thinking about these things this time of year more than at any other.</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">One of the hardest things we have to discover is how to maintain a healthy relationship with God in the area of presents, gifts and the appreciation that these are supposed to produce in our hearts. Some have a very difficult time admitting that they ever need gifts from heaven while others take God's blessings for granted so easily that they fail to experience any significant appreciation for the many things God provides for them all the time. Unfortunately too often I fall into both of these categories.</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">As I jotted down notes of ideas as they were coming to me, the very first thing I wrote down was, <b>Accepting His Presents</b>. Several times I have written about this topic and I am still fascinated with the way that God sometimes puts interesting things into the language that I grew up using in ways that convey subtle but important lessons about my relationship with Him. To my amazement, the more I looked into the idea of <i>presents</i> and how it is directly linked to the word <i>presence</i>, the more in awe I am of how these two synonyms tell me what God really wants most to do in my life.</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">God wants me, more than anything else, to come to know the joy of His presence. And the greatest, most valuable and life-changing gift He can ever offer me is His presence – which is His present to me. <title></title><style type="text/css">
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<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">As I have pondered my own desires relating to the traditions of gift-giving, I have come to realize that what I usually long for far more than presents someone might try to offer me is the presence of their heart and person. If someone I care about would offer me themselves in ways that were vulnerable, meaningful and heart-connecting, it would be far more exciting and bonding for me than anything else they might try to purchase to give me instead.</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">Now, I have heard people talk about these kinds of things for years, but most of that talk seemed like so many religious platitudes to me and had little effect on how my heart felt about God. I suspect these words may have the same ring to some who may come to read this as well. But when a person begins to experience the deepening of these principles more at the heart level and the words begin to come more from a taste of the actual experience rather than just an intellectual theory, the experience begins to really come alive and so many other things begin to fall into place that it is impossible to convert many of them into words adequately.</div></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">I have sought to really sense the presence of God in my personal journey to know Him for many years. I have deliberately practiced making myself more aware of His presence, have visited places where I might better encounter His presence. Sometimes I have been disappointed when I discovered that where many people insisted they could feel God's presence readily that in fact they were more likely pursuing an emotional high from intense music rather than really meeting with the true God described in the Bible. Elijah had that problem at times and God had a few words to say to him about it.</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgWPeoUatE_6VQCiO9WCLbtLj2hIB5sSQo0reOjls5zLqC_-KEseCvm4ot_VNG9Z2vsPjcbxADb-2tvKX1fHd909eTKpEJFJD9Qn4DBiRuZiiAjq423QSsNVnp7tMfgLmeIZb2s/s1600/Presents2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgWPeoUatE_6VQCiO9WCLbtLj2hIB5sSQo0reOjls5zLqC_-KEseCvm4ot_VNG9Z2vsPjcbxADb-2tvKX1fHd909eTKpEJFJD9Qn4DBiRuZiiAjq423QSsNVnp7tMfgLmeIZb2s/s320/Presents2.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">Something I learned today that is very important for me to remember in my desire to experience much more of His presence/presents in my life more consistently is my own need to stop agreeing with Satan. It is so easy to think along negative lines, to allow discouraging assumptions, and let the insinuations of the enemy act as dark filters to block me from enjoying the presence of God who might be very close but not affecting me as I want to be affected. Someone has reminded me tonight that along with my need to stop agreeing with Satan's insinuations about God that only reinforce his lies in my life, but I also need to start affirming the truth about how God feels about me and about my true identity.</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">Instead of verbalizing discouraging thoughts, I need to take charge of my expressions and begin to vocalize the truth as it is in Jesus and about how much God really loves me. I can express faith, sing faith, become bold in faith by simply choosing to dwell on those truths in my thoughts and speech instead of falling into my default rut of gravitating toward viewing the faults in others or amplifying problems and difficulties. I can focus on God's goodness, His faithfulness, His everlasting forgiving attitude and His incredible grace.</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">Speaking of forgiveness, I also felt impressed in my spirit that the issue of offense that I have been learning more about recently is one of the main stumbling blocks that can prevent me from embracing the presents of God. When I allow offenses to remain in my heart, I will be quickly sucked into the trap of Satan and there soon will follow darkness, deception, anger, bitterness and all sorts of other problems. With these heavy cloud covers over my life it then becomes next to impossible to embrace the joy of God's presence with me as I can only see the problems in and around me.</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">If I want to live in the <i>presence</i> of God and celebrate the <i>presents</i> that He provides for me so lavishly all the time, I must be willing to become aware of any offenses I may be holding onto against anyone or against God. I must take ownership of the pain caused by those offenses in my heart, releasing the other person from responsibility for resolving them. Then I can in turn give them over to Jesus for release and healing and freedom in my own heart.</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">When I let go of offenses (which is the real definition of forgiveness) I become less and less encumbered and have increasing capacity to embrace joyfully God's presence/presents in my life. In effect, when I lay down the offenses I have been holding onto so tightly thinking they will somehow give me protection or advantage over someone else, I free up my hands to then be able to take hold of God's glorious presents for me and can enjoy the pleasure of His presence.</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div align="CENTER" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><i>Do you think the Scriptures mean nothing? The Scriptures say,</i></div><div align="CENTER" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><i>"The Spirit God made to live in us <b>wants us only for himself</b>."</i></div><div align="CENTER" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><i>But the kindness God shows is greater. As the Scripture says,</i></div><div align="CENTER" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><i>"God is against the proud, but he is kind to the humble." </i> </div><div align="CENTER" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><i>So <b>give yourselves to God</b>.</i></div><div align="CENTER" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><i>Stand against the devil, and he will run away from you.</i></div><div align="CENTER" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><i><b>Come near to God and he will come near to you.</b></i></div><div align="CENTER" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><i>You are sinners, so clean sin </i><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">(resistance)</span></span><i> out of your lives.</i></div><div align="CENTER" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><i>You are trying to follow God and the world at the same time.</i></div><div align="CENTER" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><i>Make your thinking pure. Be sad, be sorry, and cry!</i></div><div align="CENTER" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><i>Change your laughter into crying. Change your joy into sadness. </i> </div><div align="CENTER" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><i>Be humble before the Lord, and he will make you great.</i></div><div align="CENTER" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">(James 4:5-10 ERV)</div>Clay Feethttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15811502760379647181noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27339816.post-16804873042352295412010-12-21T08:49:00.003-06:002010-12-21T08:49:54.681-06:00Where the Terrorists?<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">I had a lingering dream some time before I completely woke up this morning that later grabbed my attention. As dreams often go, the logic of the plot makes little sense to an awake mind, but the underlying concepts that are revealed sometimes are very enlightening.</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">I was dreaming about security lines that people are forced to pass through at airports. Now, I'm not going to comment on my intense feelings about such matters, but to dream about such a thing for so long is rather unusual for me as I don't even remember dreaming about such a thing before.</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">Most of the time in my dream, the lines of passengers were unusually sparse and the activity wasn't exactly as intense as in real life. After a time I actually found myself interacting with the security personal (when they were there) on a more friendly basis than is customary.</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">For whatever reasons I kept having to go back around and around through the various stations as some of the other people sometimes had to do. At times it seemed that the whole area was almost devoid of any people which I found a bit strange. Even the surrounding rails and walls were not all that secure. It seemed like these were more temporary setups, like they were portable or something. It was more like they expected you to honor the system more than forcing you to do so. But that was not the point that really got my attention later on.</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">After some time I became aware of a man who seemed to have been designated to pass through all the security processes in a very thorough way for a most unusual reason. It seems now a bit vague and even illogical, but in the dream it seemed like a bright idea. At this point in my dream it was even starting to take on religious connotations as this man was supposed to somehow function as a stand-in for a number of children that he would be responsible for in such a way so as to eliminate the need for them to pass through all that security themselves. It was assumed that if he could pass security well enough that he could then vouch for those under his care and they could pass on their way with less hassle.</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">Again, in the dream it seemed rather logical, even a great idea. But as I watched him try to implement this unusual idea my dream seemed to bog down. I found myself beginning to sink into a deeper sleep where dreams don't function very well, but then suddenly I woke up to a lighter sleep with a jolt. The following thought then struck me with force and I sensed that there was something very important to learn from this illustration. These thoughts came clearly to my mind about the dream:</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">Man can develop all kinds of strategies and equipment and techniques to try to detect weapons or figure out who might be a danger to others, while the real problem is in the motives of the heart. But there is no way for humans to create equipment or develop programs to scan that part of a person. In fact, as I pondered it after waking all the way up, I realized that the very people who most avidly seek to expose those they label as terrorists, in the very process of looking for them begin to cultivate the very same attitudes and attributes in their own hearts. It is a principle of reality that the very act of looking for faults in others unavoidably begins to develop those same character traits in ourselves.</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">Only God has the 'equipment' to be able to discern the motives and thoughts of the heart. And only those who are willing to come into close fellowship and humble submission to Him will have the privilege of Him sharing with them at the right times what they need to know about what is going on inside others. Only God can see the heart while the rest of us obsess about the outward appearances.</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">A terrorist is not someone who is discovered carrying weapons around but is someone who harbors hate and bitterness inside and seeks for revenge. Given that definition I suspect that most of us could easily be found to be terrorists, especially those who spend much of their time trying to detect them.</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">The real danger in our lives does not come from bombs or guns or any other physical weapons, but it comes in the attitudes that we harbor against others that we think to have less value than ourselves. The whole system of society that we have grown up in has become a mold for inducing terrorists. And the more we try to use force, fear and violence to eliminate or incarcerate those we consider dangerous, the more we create resentment causing others to join in seeking to oppose us and use violence against us.</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">Like attracts like. When we resort to force we activate this universal principle that always operates. When we rely on violence thinking to suppress violence, we only end up producing more violence that will react back upon us. Jesus told Peter that those who take up the sword will die by the sword. The methods that we are subscribing to as a nation now becomes the very thing that produces and proliferates our enemies. And trying to stay ahead of others in the ability to use ever greater force only intensifies and hardens the resolve of those who resist us.</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">By choosing to follow this path in the name of promoting freedom we are actually destroying both the freedom of others and undermining and disassembling our own freedoms. Our government has chosen to reject the principles of freedom that we claim were the foundations of our nation originally. We have been deceived into thinking that we can rely on a different set of principles, weapons and logic of the kingdom of darkness, and still enjoy the benefits of living in freedom. But just like love, when freedom violates others and abuses those who disagree with us, it quickly disintegrates and morphs into nothing more than an empty claim, a thin shell of pretense that covers up the presence of the very same motives as in those who now attack us. All the time we reject responsibility for our own horrific actions against our enemies by blaming anyone and everyone else while we are becoming the true terrorists.</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">I believe it was Winston Churchill that once made a famous statement with so much insight. “We have met the enemy, and the enemy is us.”</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">Only by following the methods and principles of heaven will we be led to living in true safety and freedom. The more we obsess over security for ourselves the more we are destroying the freedom of our own people. The claim that it is necessary to sometimes exchange freedom for security is one of the most successful lies of Satan to enslave free people and throw away all that has been won for them at such a costly price by their forefathers along with the death of Jesus Christ. Security cannot be achieved by denying it to everyone but ourselves while abusing anyone we don't like. That is not real security, it is just plain abuse of power and only serves to corrupt and destroy our souls.</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">It could well be said of us if we were willing to admit the truth that Churchill discovered, “When we meet the terrorists we discover to our horror that the greatest terrorists are in the mirror.” </div>Clay Feethttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15811502760379647181noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27339816.post-57386140984841125002010-11-26T09:58:00.001-06:002010-11-26T09:58:39.036-06:00Washing Dishes With Gratitude<title></title><style type="text/css">
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<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">We are having a time of great interest right now in our lives, my wife and I. We don't know yet where it is leading us, but we sense that life is at a turning point and that quite likely it may look quite different very soon. But let me share how something little might reflect that something larger right now.</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">Because we had no children choose to come and spend the holiday weekend with us for Thanksgiving and had no invitations to spend the day with anyone, my wife called up a church in a nearby town to volunteer us to help out with their Thanksgiving day dinner offered for the public. We chose to arrive there not too long before they were to quit serving figuring that they would likely need more help cleaning up than serving.</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">Of course, when we arrived they wanted us to eat but we had just finished breakfast at home so declined the invitation, instead asking what we could do to help out. We knew no one there so we didn't really know how to fit in well, but we soon found a place at the washing sinks to relieve people better suited to do other jobs in the area. They had a very large sink well suited to washing the large cooking containers being used and then two more sinks next to that that we used for rinsing. I began washing whatever utensils were being dropped off and my wife started rinsing and drying them.</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">Given the ongoing nature of such a project, we spent the rest of the time there processing the containers and various utensils without any backup. From our corner of the kitchen we were also able to observe the interactions between the others and get a feel for the social network in place among these friends. Most of the lunch crowd had already finished when we arrived and so there was not a whole lot of activity going on except for a few meals being served and a number of take-outs made up for deliveries.</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">A half an hour before closing time even arrived it became clear that no one else was likely to show up and so they began putting everything away and cleaning out the big cookers. The servers were eager to go home after many hours of volunteering to leave the cleanup to whoever was left. We actually found it enjoyable to be able to efficiently and quickly clean all of the pots and utensils and dry them; it did not seem like a real burden for us. I noticed that my wife was often humming or singing some Thanksgiving song all through the time there which she enjoys doing this time of year.</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">As the staff dwindled down to just three or four and the decks were cleared, it was evident that there was a lot of mess around the counters and on the floor that no one was too interested in dealing with. I decided to wipe the decks clean and then located a mop and bucket in a nearby closet and thoroughly cleaned all the floor of the kitchen. I remembered with pride how well I had been trained as a teenager how to mop floors in the sanitarium that I worked in as a student by an old German lady who insisted on us doing an absolutely thorough and perfect job. She taught all of her students well and many of them later in life impressed many people as they demonstrated their ability and willingness to do an exceptional job handling a mop. It makes one feel good to know they can do a really good job when others are expecting far less and assume that this kind of work is to demeaning to enjoy.</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">As we left we were showered with appreciation but did not really make any social connections at all. I began to sense during that time that my own motives were not nearly so noble as my wife's and felt a bit ashamed of my selfishness and secret desires to get some benefit for myself out of this experience. I felt convicted that I need to learn to participate in acts of selfless kindness and generosity with no desire for personal gain as part of my training as a Christian. For too long I have focused on my own needs and how any situation might be used to profit me in some way. I have a long way to go to be free of this habit of looking out for myself first.</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">After we arrived back home, my wife shared something with me that really touched me. For the past several months, actually back in August, she was suddenly stricken with a severe condition of pain from bulging and ruptured discs in her lower back that left her crying in pain and lying on the couch 24/7 for nearly two months. Very slowly she has been recovering but it has been an intense time of reevaluation of priorities and heart searching to see how our relationship with God fits into all of this. Of course she had to quite her job and since I have had very little work myself our finances have been very if'y at best. We are finding ourselves forced by circumstances to seek to know much better how to live a life of faith rather than trusting in our own resources to take care of our needs.</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">Last night she shared with me that what was going through her mind as she was helping with the dishes at that church was a sense of extreme gratitude that she could actually once again stand there and do those dishes without the extreme pain that she has been experiencing for so long. She has recovered to the point now where by Thanksgiving day she was able to do this activity for several hours and not even need to rest or feel tempted to complain of the pain. For her, this was a wonderful cause for deep gratitude and she didn't even need to mention it to anyone else. She just chose to enjoy it and praise God for it from her heart.</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">God has given me a wonderful wife who is perfectly suited to meet many parts of me that are sadly lacking. She has been appointed by God to bring suggestions and promptings that, if I am humble enough and willing to pay attention, might save me a great deal of grief and problems. I am a slow learner in this area but am trying to practice being more sensitive and willing to listen and pay attention. I know that God designed each of us to be incomplete without a mate of the opposite sex designated by God to unite with us as a more perfect reflection of the wholeness of our Creator.</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">33 years ago today God sealed us into marriage. She was 18 and I was 22 and she felt like I had nearly robbed the cradle. She was shy and quiet and pretty and I still had enough hair at that time to be attractive. Within a couple years we had our first baby who is now a beautiful young woman with interest in a suitor for her affections. I pray that God will protect and guide her and that she will make Him the highest priority in all of her decisions. We later had a son, formed in our image just as God designed us to do, and now they both live at the other end of the country from us.</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">God is also very busy reeducating us in matters of the kingdom right now and we are seeking to cooperate with Him and be better students than we have been in the past. We are also coming much more into synchronization with each other's hearts more than ever in our union with each other and are finally beginning to experience a level of the love and respect we wish we could have learned long ago. But as the saying goes, 'Better late than never'.</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">We are thankful, but we desire to be much more thankful and have a more consistent attitude of gratitude all throughout the year. We are richly blessed with a house to live in, warmth in the growing cold, cars to drive, food to eat and love to share. We are blessed with friends who open their lives to share with us and who can challenge us to change when we need it sometimes. And most of all we are blessed with dramatic revelations over the past few months from various sources that God has brought to us concerning the real truth about God and how He really views us. We want to absorb and soak up these truths and allow them to wash our brains and our hearts of all the lies that have poisoned us for so long. It is time to live in the joy and freedom of real love for our Father in heaven and with each other.</div>Clay Feethttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15811502760379647181noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27339816.post-9762128794438129182010-11-11T10:03:00.001-06:002010-11-11T10:03:15.342-06:00Revisiting The Shack<title></title><style type="text/css">
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<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">Although I love to read, I find it hard to actually get all the way through any book and finish it. I have lost count of how many books I have started and really enjoyed but that ended up in the pile next to my chair still unfinished even a year or two later. (I am almost breaking my own pattern because in the past few weeks I have actually finished two books.)</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">But once in awhile I either take the extra time or I am so riveted in a book that I actually get all the way through in a relatively short time. The last book I could not escape until I finished it was when I purchased <u>The Shack</u>. I had been told about it by a good friend and it sounded interesting, but I had no idea how close it was to what I am coming to believe about God through my own personal study. This book was both intensely emotional for me and refreshing at the same time. And the insights about God's character were so advanced I was caught by surprise but very delighted. I can also see why there is so much intense opposition to it for it does not support the dark views of God held by mainstream religions.</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">As I looked over the ensuing books available that were ignited by the popularity or notoriety of this book, I noticed another one that caught my attention and I ordered it as well. It is called <u>Finding God In The Shack</u>. It is written by a theologian who wanted to come to the defense of <u>The Shack</u> considering all of the flack that it has received. The reviews sounded interesting so I have had it lying here for several months waiting to get into it.</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">Last night I picked it up and began about a third of the way through from where I had gotten and began to read the rest of it. Again, I was encouraged to discover a thinker who was willing to stand up to the traditional views of God and reexamine the long-held opinions in religion that have made God out to be the frightening terrorist that many teach Him to be. I was quite surprised to find this theologian willing to challenge even the fundamental beliefs held by many Evangelicals and Christians as he presented insights from the Bible few have taken seriously. I highly recommend this book and would even like the chance to dialog with the author myself if that were possible. But only read this book after taking the time to first read <u>The Shack</u> if you have not read that yet.</div>Clay Feethttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15811502760379647181noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27339816.post-68946024487000413922010-10-29T09:36:00.001-05:002010-10-29T09:36:22.985-05:00Freezing Holocaust<meta content="text/html; charset=utf-8" http-equiv="CONTENT-TYPE"></meta><title></title><meta content="OpenOffice.org 3.0 (Win32)" name="GENERATOR"></meta><style type="text/css">
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEicoBE9qnEh7aLIjpa8UegkfzO_c0o7Jit9TbCsvmTNqKsVM0Dl24hjxbUgpo0fqVCOweq0uPfEUxfpmoJ6nLy8Qpz6pDvBquxJyevi7d_C7cPtmWbBnxmU8JGGtcmjKa3PXNKN/s1600/IMG_5300.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEicoBE9qnEh7aLIjpa8UegkfzO_c0o7Jit9TbCsvmTNqKsVM0Dl24hjxbUgpo0fqVCOweq0uPfEUxfpmoJ6nLy8Qpz6pDvBquxJyevi7d_C7cPtmWbBnxmU8JGGtcmjKa3PXNKN/s400/IMG_5300.JPG" width="400" /></a></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">Last night I decided to go out and rescue the last of our tomatoes before the expected freeze overnight killed them off. Because of a new product I used this year on the plants and ground, we have been blessed with abundant tomatoes all the way up to now in stark contrast with previous years where the plants were all dead and gone by this time from a fungus in the soil. This household cleaner that is useful for all sorts of other applications dealt with the blight fungus that normally kills most of my garden and we have been very pleased with the results and the many tomatoes this year.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi1vm0p5SVsaR-8TcNGl5QYxuzUHQPEnjCqRvZCU5vjKbkSM9BeCcDQ18zbRqoBdwbqW_9cs6sLfHxbmaxMVsZoZOC7I7UuoRn65gbtUZeyMbaTnlC1ysmguFayDdWCkUhSEiIh/s1600/IMG_5301.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="150" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi1vm0p5SVsaR-8TcNGl5QYxuzUHQPEnjCqRvZCU5vjKbkSM9BeCcDQ18zbRqoBdwbqW_9cs6sLfHxbmaxMVsZoZOC7I7UuoRn65gbtUZeyMbaTnlC1ysmguFayDdWCkUhSEiIh/s200/IMG_5301.JPG" width="200" /></a></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">I picked all the ripe ones last night, all the ones even hinting at turning ripe and also all of the green ones of any significant size no matter how green. I did something similar a few days ago and set them in the window. They are starting to turn color quite nicely and also have very few bad spots in the process. We are so pleased with this blessing but still wonder how to eat this many tomatoes quickly.</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiy9adDP5EE9iKeNFuvN1twPrwsT11wRUfB12II2BxnG7V-NjPSKlA4XOkgzgyaMqHJSlVqGG5cGGGJB3VVJdqWhSO9dlovYkprIZiKL5DJ33mw-UnV4QlxRkTbEcH6BonzjlWr/s1600/IMG_5303.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="150" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiy9adDP5EE9iKeNFuvN1twPrwsT11wRUfB12II2BxnG7V-NjPSKlA4XOkgzgyaMqHJSlVqGG5cGGGJB3VVJdqWhSO9dlovYkprIZiKL5DJ33mw-UnV4QlxRkTbEcH6BonzjlWr/s200/IMG_5303.JPG" width="200" /></a>As I was finishing up picking two more bags of tomatoes with a flashlight last night I was almost overcome with a strange thought. Here I was, like some diabolical monster deciding between which would go into my bag and which babies would be left to freeze to death in the coming holocaust. I couldn't shake the feeling of guilt even though with my logical mind it was an utterly silly idea. It made me realize how sensitive our hearts start to become the closer we get to viewing things through the eyes of heaven where nothing was ever intended to die.</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEghoixys_lkmZNByDIYrX3yc_iKpuG24Xvd6MD66RzMOCXFpXuwbW16DJnmOtIl_oIkNBeBwDBvDYnFWYq1ppEK8NIzIv20P7JhduVrlyei0SjG8nrHR4plesxAmAAYXKdNjQNS/s1600/IMG_5305.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="150" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEghoixys_lkmZNByDIYrX3yc_iKpuG24Xvd6MD66RzMOCXFpXuwbW16DJnmOtIl_oIkNBeBwDBvDYnFWYq1ppEK8NIzIv20P7JhduVrlyei0SjG8nrHR4plesxAmAAYXKdNjQNS/s200/IMG_5305.JPG" width="200" /></a></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">This morning I went back out and sure enough there was heavy frost on everything. The tomato plants still look normal because they are only in the first stages of death by freezing, but I know that very soon they will wilt and turn yellow and die for the winter. I still felt guilty as I looked at all the little babies that I knew were past saving this morning because all the moisture inside them was frozen hard. What a guilt trip. I'm sure glad its only false guilt though it still doesn't feel very good.</div>Clay Feethttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15811502760379647181noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27339816.post-2971263979890503152010-10-26T18:00:00.001-05:002010-10-26T22:58:19.036-05:00Youth in Harmony<meta content="text/html; charset=utf-8" http-equiv="CONTENT-TYPE"></meta><title></title><meta content="OpenOffice.org 3.0 (Win32)" name="GENERATOR"></meta><style type="text/css">
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<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"> <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjfULKDmI0gDntNVCVYOmTc6YXnz0_AZs7NoI64tfO1TqUxoIsB0jHFbjT0zGRBaKZ-vBm0mwI-ehd9eLR0diI0cF75RBwz1Y8JdIv2wueWEE49q91YpP-i1FRLyZc9L3TTTx7Y/s1600/practice.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjfULKDmI0gDntNVCVYOmTc6YXnz0_AZs7NoI64tfO1TqUxoIsB0jHFbjT0zGRBaKZ-vBm0mwI-ehd9eLR0diI0cF75RBwz1Y8JdIv2wueWEE49q91YpP-i1FRLyZc9L3TTTx7Y/s1600/practice.jpg" /></a></div>Yesterday was a long but quite enjoyable day. I made it even longer by waking up at 12:30 AM and not being able to go back to sleep. Leaving the house shortly before 7 I helped unload risers at the university and then spent the rest of the day singing with around 100 high school boys learning 2 songs with the help of a world-class trainer from Nashville.</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEivsS3cTDlr5Y6fDDep0V7Ymp11uvx810BdPjTQ3XYHLJMnhoMHrl4lB9Jmp8xw6iIsDdXUGlcSXpX98CV3LhEulo1dn8ZUyfwBo1QOt-pKpmI6z7dnTBA2bneY7c3EbFJW-ig3/s1600/018.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEivsS3cTDlr5Y6fDDep0V7Ymp11uvx810BdPjTQ3XYHLJMnhoMHrl4lB9Jmp8xw6iIsDdXUGlcSXpX98CV3LhEulo1dn8ZUyfwBo1QOt-pKpmI6z7dnTBA2bneY7c3EbFJW-ig3/s1600/018.JPG" /></a><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjQ4U2L4ssrdkQcMipM2U4EFt5G1aAjy-sF5s7uZ-dkduHLsKA1DG3uV1xjI_KfuoQK-zwHD0u-MjeqAu-tboxS_CHs4fYVFUx1svsNhlNhDpSXKU9hqNVioRSxAgOoxOUBlh8w/s1600/girls.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="150" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjQ4U2L4ssrdkQcMipM2U4EFt5G1aAjy-sF5s7uZ-dkduHLsKA1DG3uV1xjI_KfuoQK-zwHD0u-MjeqAu-tboxS_CHs4fYVFUx1svsNhlNhDpSXKU9hqNVioRSxAgOoxOUBlh8w/s200/girls.jpg" width="200" /></a>This was the seventh annual Youth in Harmony event put on for all the area high schools who want to participate. This year we had eleven schools send students and teachers to participate with a 15% increase over last year. I believe we had around 350 students attend this year with most of the girls. Then in the evening a concert is put on with the students singing their music for the teachers and parents as well as visiting quartets and a Sweet Adeline's chorus putting on a good show for everyone.</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh2XncUoqySiA7mIHHKYA4J0Im9gkw7KVF7sEeskJ3JyETEVGzVaO_7sAcX6sr3qLVOeG9a1mJ5tzQ09TEQ-Tv2-FlObxtxnJCcIJXOmL-WToxSHzlXttQECp3HqtLwNTrOTxEn/s1600/boys.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="150" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh2XncUoqySiA7mIHHKYA4J0Im9gkw7KVF7sEeskJ3JyETEVGzVaO_7sAcX6sr3qLVOeG9a1mJ5tzQ09TEQ-Tv2-FlObxtxnJCcIJXOmL-WToxSHzlXttQECp3HqtLwNTrOTxEn/s200/boys.jpg" width="200" /></a><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiT0KHvwbvOy2fiI0MX2a_OelrL16cQXneJ7DHgJxVDvjER5gwdQWkYiP1KyXeZ5uyGD0Bu5TBJ6lv8-DVR-3il-0P4GmGAWMJfxrZz3cF116euOvakWj-q17FdmNzFQ0iQHtZ0/s1600/After+Hours.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="150" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiT0KHvwbvOy2fiI0MX2a_OelrL16cQXneJ7DHgJxVDvjER5gwdQWkYiP1KyXeZ5uyGD0Bu5TBJ6lv8-DVR-3il-0P4GmGAWMJfxrZz3cF116euOvakWj-q17FdmNzFQ0iQHtZ0/s200/After+Hours.jpg" width="200" /></a>It was tiring being on risers for hours but the music invigorated us and kept us going. This is the third time I have helped at one of these and it is something that is always quite rewarding. My wife came for the evening performance though with her current physical problems we had to bring her up in a wheelchair. She too really enjoyed the guest quartet's performance as well as all the music that evening.</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
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</div>Clay Feethttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15811502760379647181noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27339816.post-66134018968777469602010-09-19T08:16:00.004-05:002010-09-19T08:31:26.215-05:00Cheek Slap<meta content="text/html; charset=utf-8" http-equiv="CONTENT-TYPE"></meta><title></title><meta content="OpenOffice.org 3.0 (Win32)" name="GENERATOR"></meta><style type="text/css">
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<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><i>The sea began to be </i><i><b>stirred up</b></i><i> because a strong wind was blowing. Then, when they had rowed about three or four miles, they saw Jesus walking on the sea and </i><i><b>drawing near</b></i><i> to the boat; and they were </i><i><b>frightened</b></i><i>. But He said to them, "It is I; do not be afraid." So they were </i><i><b>willing to receive Him</b></i><i> into the boat, and immediately the boat was at the land to which they were going.</i> (John 6:18-21)</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">This is the story that I am studying right now and documenting on my <a href="http://deeperword.blogspot.com/">blog </a>where I record what I am learning. This morning it took on a whole new meaning for me personally.</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">Yesterday I found myself suddenly in the middle of a very intense storm of unexpected, stirred up emotions. I was blindsided, attacked by a self-appointed 'policeman' who loves to enforce arbitrary policies especially when it gives him a sense of power over others. I was caught totally by surprise and it triggered me in some of my most vulnerable areas which immediately caused a great deal of adrenaline to begin circulating through my veins.</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">I knew instantly that I was under spiritual attack, not just from this man who delights in confronting and manipulating others, but much more so by my real enemy who remains invisible but who delights even more in stirring up old emotions and shaming me publicly. I was strongly tempted to retaliate, to defend myself, to counter-attack and I did take the bait for awhile, giving this man some pleasure in being able to jerk me around publicly with his advantages over me. But I also realized that there were other people around us who were spiritually vulnerable and who are influenced by my example and I needed to be extremely careful how I acted and spoke.</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">The deeper issue here was God's reputation, not mine. But the matter was very complex. It was not simply a matter of whether I was following some petty rules made up by a committee in secret that had never been shared with me before. That is what it looked like on the surface. But in reality, there were many facets of this temptation that nearly no one knew about that conspired to lure me into Satan's trap of offense. I knew that instantly and I knew I had to be very careful not to bite that bait too readily or I would fall into that trap of deception and it might take a long time to get back out or recover many things I have gained over the past few months.</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">As might be expected, this incident and all the emotions surrounding it kept my attention the rest of the day. I woke up this morning early and pondered it carefully as I discussed it with God. I realize that I already have many blind spots that set me up to be vulnerable to this attack and I want to receive healing in all of these areas of weakness that play into this. But because a blind spot is not easily discerned it is difficult to even discuss that with God or one's self because it is hard to see clearly to know what to talk about.</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">I try to focus on the areas that seem to have the greatest trigger effect on me. That is almost always a sure way to go after the most sensitive core issues that remain unresolved in such a situation. I know that anytime a person is disproportionately triggered by something or someone, it is almost always because there remains a hidden lie deep in the heart that needs to be exposed by God and replaced with healing truth. When the deep core issue is addressed then future encounters with similar triggering situations have little to no effect on the life. That is when one can experience genuine freedom and can begin to truly advance in maturity.</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">I don't want to get stuck in my maturity growth. I don't want someone else's immaturity to lock me into bitterness or cause me to react in-kind from a desire to get even. It is ludicrous to want to get even with a person who is very immature. To get even with such a person is to copy their level of immaturity, and why would anyone in their right mind want to do that? But that is the nature of temptation in general – getting us to lower our own maturity level. That is why our churches and governments are full of leaders who are very immature. People who thirst for power more than for maturity and integrity generally rise to the top in our culture today. That is what sin has done to our thinking and our social relationships.</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">As is often the case, God arranged for the readings for today to match my situation. Funny how God always knows when something is going to happen and arranges years ahead of time to have that topic covered on that exact day when someone compiles a book. Both of the devotional books I am reading addressed my situation rather eloquently and I accept the messages God is giving me through them.</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><i><span lang="en-US">Watch when God shifts your circumstances, and see whether you are going with Jesus, or siding with the world, the flesh and the devil. We wear His badge, but are we going with Him?</span></i></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span lang="en-US"><i>...We have the idea that we ought to shield ourselves from some of the things God brings round us. Never! God engineers circumstances, and whatever they may be like we have to see that we face them while abiding continually with Him in His temptations. They are His temptations, not temptations to us, but temptations to the life of the Son of God in us. The honor of Jesus Christ is at stake in your bodily life. Are you remaining loyal to the Son of God in the things which beset His life in you?</i></span><span lang="en-US"> (</span><span style="font-style: normal;"><u>My Utmost for His Highest</u></span><i> </i> September 19<span lang="en-US">)</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span lang="en-US">I sensed yesterday that this temptation was designed primarily to steal away my fellowship with Jesus and my sense of His presence and leading in my life. But at the same time, Jesus was allowing this confrontation to expose weak areas of my life that still are in need of repair and strengthening. My problem is that I don't know how to properly respond yet to these situations. Because they are my weak areas I am weak in knowing what to do. I guess the main thing I need to do is to cling to Jesus and not allow anything like this to divert my attention from focusing on God's goodness and faithfulness and His presence with me. That's what Chambers said here. Continually abide with Him in His temptations in my life. It is Jesus being tempted here and I need to let Him handle them. I also need to not forget to keep an atmosphere of praise and gratitude in my spirit no matter what is going on around me.</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span lang="en-US">I still don't know how this is all going to play out. I still feel very raw from this attack but at the same time I realize that I must pray for this man and experience the passionate love of God flowing through me for him. I need to see this man through heaven's glasses instead of my own reactive emotions which is going to be starkly different. And I have to do this at the heart level, not just put on a facade of 'Christian piety'.</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span lang="en-US">There is much more than just my feelings toward one person involved here. Other sore relationships are involved as well. In addition there is also the issue of a lack of respect between many people who are part of this group along with a spirit of arrogance and pride. But then, what's new? Those things are always going to be present among growing believers and it is God's job to take care of those problems, not mine. I am not in charge of growing up other people; I have a hard enough time dealing with my own growth in maturity. Yes, other people's issues and pain and immaturity certainly cause problems for me, but my job is to learn to always see them through heaven's eyes and to respond to them differently than what they expect from those they offend. This applies to everyone no matter whether they hold a position of authority or if they just feel like a peon in society.</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span lang="en-US">I also sense that if I choose to respond to this situation better than 'normal' that I have a wonderful opportunity to move into a new phase of growth and responsibility in my own experience. I have no idea what that involves and don't really want to know at this point. But it does feel good to sense that I opportunity to grow up and not remain stagnant or stuck mature-wise. God meets us where we are but He never leaves us where we are. I don't want to be left where I am and so I am actually grateful for this encounter even though it is very painful initially. Growth is often painful because it requires change. But unless I am willing to change I can never grow.</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><i><span lang="en-US">Father, I choose to cooperate with You through this growing experience. I still don't have the wisdom to know just how to relate to all the facets of this problem and I suspect I may have already made a number of mistakes. But what I most want is to remain close to You, to feel Your presence and to know the value You place on me from Your heart. If I have Your assuring presence then I can feel safe enough to face my faults and the weak, vulnerable areas of my soul.</span></i></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><i><span lang="en-US">Keep me close to You and help me with wisdom and perspective. Fill me with Your attitude. Allow me to both see these people through Your eyes and feel toward them the way You feel instead of with resentment or shame. Help me keep my eyes on You and see Your attractiveness so that it eclipses all other attractions or attacks.</span></i></div>Clay Feethttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15811502760379647181noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27339816.post-51814840720951068792010-09-03T07:03:00.002-05:002010-09-03T07:06:41.842-05:00Meant to Be?<div style="margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi9R3h-4pZITOk5bwphA8PjLXBuFnZzC6__15XZLyryUje6Y41_y4uFALR9BujS5_dGXTYZnRDqUtV7snIe29U1-W7cwjrs4-Aa3lOHI29EI3b26SAULRQUFEaCQ49oShJSk3zx/s1600/Photo_080310_002.jpg"><img alt="" border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi9R3h-4pZITOk5bwphA8PjLXBuFnZzC6__15XZLyryUje6Y41_y4uFALR9BujS5_dGXTYZnRDqUtV7snIe29U1-W7cwjrs4-Aa3lOHI29EI3b26SAULRQUFEaCQ49oShJSk3zx/s400/Photo_080310_002.jpg" width="400" /></a> </div>A few weeks ago I found myself standing near this sign which really grabbed my attention. Since one of my favorite hobbies is to sing in a local Barbershop chorus in Illinois, I thought I would capture this sign and let my directors see it to maybe prove that destiny had me in mind when I came across them a couple years ago. Whatever the reason, I still enjoy making harmony with them and bringing pleasure to the hearts of those whose lives we touch with our unique blend of music.<br />
<div style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://picasa.google.com/blogger/" target="ext"><img align="middle" alt="Posted by Picasa" border="0" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/pbp.gif" style="-moz-background-clip: border; -moz-background-inline-policy: continuous; -moz-background-origin: padding; background: transparent none repeat scroll 0% 50%; border: 0px none; padding: 0px;" /></a></div>Clay Feethttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15811502760379647181noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27339816.post-49597844946288748562010-05-26T15:30:00.001-05:002010-05-26T15:30:09.467-05:00Like Old Times<meta content="text/html; charset=utf-8" http-equiv="CONTENT-TYPE"></meta><title></title><meta content="OpenOffice.org 3.0 (Win32)" name="GENERATOR"></meta><style type="text/css">
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<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">So on a whim while poking around in my garage, I noticed my unicycles that have been hanging from the rafter pretty much ever since we moved here six years ago. I decided to take one down and see if I could either seriously damage myself with no one around to pick me up or find out if I still might have it in me.</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">Well, for an old man I didn't do too bad even if I do say so myself. I never hit the ground (though the cycle did a few times) and for someone who never did really master this skill I managed to stay on for some extended rides much to my delight (and exhaustion).</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgHXOFlXNAxOKpve83l6Hj37bb-6x6qUq_1V65PFAIc9ZCjIcPR76t63jZOdsZ51s3xrkImqVGLJoYJMq8CQuPfZ0FMKJkQadpKDFfkkqZZB97wVPnSWpB5cB1hJYi82CKr2bAO/s1600/IMG_5065.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgHXOFlXNAxOKpve83l6Hj37bb-6x6qUq_1V65PFAIc9ZCjIcPR76t63jZOdsZ51s3xrkImqVGLJoYJMq8CQuPfZ0FMKJkQadpKDFfkkqZZB97wVPnSWpB5cB1hJYi82CKr2bAO/s320/IMG_5065.JPG" /></a></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">Sorry, since no one else is around (I already said that didn't I?), I had to take a picture of it without me on it. So you can believe it or not, but it was fun while it lasted. </div>Clay Feethttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15811502760379647181noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27339816.post-5764728734805949822010-03-24T07:26:00.001-05:002010-03-24T07:26:35.155-05:00Life Getting Interesting<meta content="text/html; charset=utf-8" http-equiv="CONTENT-TYPE"></meta><title></title><meta content="OpenOffice.org 3.0 (Win32)" name="GENERATOR"></meta><style type="text/css">
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<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">Just a note or two about what's been happening lately in our lives. Last Sunday afternoon my wife and I both sang in the annual Lenten concert produced by the Coles County Barbershop Chorus that I joined a couple years ago. We always enjoy these concerts as each year the chorus invites women to join us for the Lenten concert. My wife has sung in it for two years now along with another lady in our church.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhFEPsE7bSshBTSwWgLlCvBHPG3XFD1Go5UpFMoYHzYyONIm_jMJCthfjheqILtcMCWlizfGuLuNPPGktapNBNAL-KwfYPj8kK26EyIPWKKlvREaMQ2rK5FhEnivblmitT90GLF/s1600/Lenten.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="153" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhFEPsE7bSshBTSwWgLlCvBHPG3XFD1Go5UpFMoYHzYyONIm_jMJCthfjheqILtcMCWlizfGuLuNPPGktapNBNAL-KwfYPj8kK26EyIPWKKlvREaMQ2rK5FhEnivblmitT90GLF/s400/Lenten.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">My life has become very busy and quite exciting for the past six weeks as I have decided to become involved in a very profitable but also very stable home business that requires no large investment, no inventory, no sales and no risk. I know, it sounded too good to be true to me too until I thoroughly investigated it for several weeks. But believe me I did some serious homework because of previous bad encounters with home businesses. When I finally decided to give it a test run the results were far better than even I might have expected and without all of the danger to relationships that usually accompany such ventures.</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">I am now quite confident that with this new channel of income provided for me by God as His current way to take care of us that within a short time my wife will not have to work under the difficult circumstances she is having to put up with at this point. I am seeing good success and very positive reactions from nearly everyone I share this with, even those who have been seriously burned by other businesses they have tried out. It is also a very wonderful opportunity to make a lot of new friends as well as re-establish a number of old friendships as I now have a very positive gift to offer them without any of the risks that are usually connected with such ideas. This has been a real growing experience for me spiritually as well as God has been using this to confront some of my old fears and lies from past experiences that were far less stable or socially beneficial.</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">So that is what has been keeping me busy. I would love to hear what is going on in your life as well.</div>Clay Feethttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15811502760379647181noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27339816.post-13696076720426976712010-02-15T10:31:00.001-06:002010-02-15T10:31:59.389-06:00One Provider, Different Channels<meta content="text/html; charset=utf-8" http-equiv="CONTENT-TYPE"></meta><title></title><meta content="OpenOffice.org 3.0 (Win32)" name="GENERATOR"></meta><style type="text/css">
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<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">Our lives right now are in serious transition and things are getting exciting. At the same time a lot of old memories, fears and emotions are also being stirred up that I am having to face and deal with. But I can see that God is in charge of all of this and intends to use my current circumstances to mature me and help me overcome many things that still hamper me from functioning and relating to others the way I need to do.</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">I have sensed rather clearly over the past few months that God is changing channels on me. I learned a few years ago how to relate to finances the way heaven intends we should. This means that I must have as my unequivocal foundation the fact that Jesus has promised to take care of all of our needs irregardless, no matter what I do or how much I tithe or give offerings or anything else. His care for me is a promise not based whatsoever on any performance on my part. All that I need to do is to believe that truth with my heart and mind which then allows Him permission to fulfill His promise to me.</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">When that step is firmly underfoot, then I am prepared to move to the next steps in properly relating to how God may choose to provide for our needs. He does not always use the same channels through which to provide for us as demonstrated in the life of Elijah. He will provide one channel for a while such as a job that I can cooperate in to bring in what is necessary for us to live. But later that job may disappear and it is then that my true belief system will be exposed.</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">If I begin to fear and fret and stress out about my lack of money, it only reveals that I do not have the first step as my foundational belief firmly in place yet. Jesus made it explicitly clear that we are not to be anxious about anything. This is not something we can force ourself to do, it is a natural result of what we believe in our heart. If I don't want to be anxious in obedience to the command of Jesus I have to first have a real trust in His heart that He is taking care of me no matter what external circumstances may appear to indicate. Otherwise I am only attempting to repress my anxiety, not eliminate it.</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">If I do have that foundation in place securely, then I have the freedom to feel even a sense of anticipation instead of fear because I know that God has something else in mind for us. He is faithful which means He has some other channel ready for me to use to receive provision from Him. Elijah depended on ravens and a little brook for his provisions for awhile which is pretty strange compared to the jobs that most of us depend on. But when that provision dried up he trusted God to show him the next channel and God sent him to an ever stranger source of provision – a starving widow in the area that was the center of the worship of the false gods that were at the root of all the problems in Israel.</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">So when my work in remodeling and construction dried up over the past few months I chose to deliberately focus on not becoming anxious but talked with God about what He might have in mind as His channel for me next. As I look back I can see clear indications that He has apparently chosen to introduce me to a new business through a friend I have known for many years and who was in business with me some time back. This friend was a person of integrity that I have admired and appreciated and was probably the only person I would even have been willing to listen to about looking into starting a business like this. But since I knew what he had been through previously and how similar it was to my own experience, I listened to him with an open mind and felt God prompting me to give it serious consideration.</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">As a result I have sensed that God wants me to get serious about doing this business as the new temporary channel of His provision for me until He indicates another change. Part of the important aspect of relating to God in this way is the fact that I need to do my part in participating in whatever it is He is using to provide for us. If He gives me employment with someone else I need to actually go do the work and do it with all my strength. If He gives me a business to run then I need to do it with enthusiasm and integrity. All of these things are not just ways of providing money for my family and needs but are also ways of living out the plans that God has for me to interact with others in more important arenas of life and also for my own personal growth and development of character.</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">As I said, this is also raising a number of old wounds and emotions that I realize God wants to deal with along the way. I am seeking to cooperate with Him as I see Him healing me deep inside where I am not able to reach. Even when it involves having to face very painful areas of my heart, I am actually excited that I am beginning to experience more and more freedom and joy and feel that I am actually learning what it means to thrive. God has a great deal of work to do yet but it is good to see that He is working in every way possible to change my relationship with Him and to bring me closer into harmony with His ways.</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">My wife too is experiencing a great deal of stress and tension in her work. But we keep reminding ourselves that God is our only real boss and that the other people we work for are only temps that He is using that may be there to shape our character at times. If our time is up on that job then we can be confident that He has something even better in mind because He is faithful and He is always good and He is our only real provider.</div>Clay Feethttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15811502760379647181noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27339816.post-40535306309719586572010-01-25T06:51:00.001-06:002010-01-25T06:51:58.256-06:00Catching Up<meta content="text/html; charset=utf-8" http-equiv="CONTENT-TYPE"></meta><title></title><meta content="OpenOffice.org 3.0 (Win32)" name="GENERATOR"></meta><style type="text/css">
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<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">It is that time of year again. We had a reprieve of a little milder weather for about a week and now we are heading back to below freezing temperatures again for the foreseeable future. I won't mind seeing the weather move closer to spring anytime now, but that is what winter is like.<br />
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</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">It is also the time of year for quite a number of my own family's birthdays. My Dad's birthday would have been a few days ago, my sister's birthday was the first day of January and my own birthday is today. This year is a little bit different than the average birthday, at least according to the traditions of the culture in which I find myself. This year, at least according to the opinion of many institutions in this country, I officially turning – yes, it really is true – I am turning 'old'.<br />
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</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">My daughter asked me yesterday if I was really feeling old and I told her that as far as my memory is concerned I certainly can qualify. In other areas I don't really feel as old as the number might suggest, but then I better be very careful what comments I make about such topics because people who are older than me sometimes have rather sensitive and very strong opinions about such things and are not afraid to get defensive about this subject.<br />
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</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">My wife's birthday is next month in about three weeks but she is safely four years behind me yet. She is trying to catch up and as far as percentages go she is getting closer all the time. But according to my sharp mathematical calculations I don't think she will ever be able to catch up – at least as long as both of us stay alive anyway. My children are also fast catching up with us on the percentage side of the math but they too will still stay safely behind us for quite awhile.<br />
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Clay Feethttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15811502760379647181noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27339816.post-43972595118843481132010-01-05T13:06:00.001-06:002010-01-05T13:08:42.287-06:00What is a Garage For?<meta content="text/html; charset=utf-8" http-equiv="CONTENT-TYPE"></meta><title></title><meta content="OpenOffice.org 3.0 (Win32)" name="GENERATOR"></meta><style type="text/css">
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<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">We experienced a moment of history-making last night.<br />
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</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">No, it was not accompanied with a fireworks display or written up in the newspapers. In fact, no one hardly even noticed including myself until I stopped to think about it this morning. But it was a milestone of sorts anyway and I thought I would at least take note of it for the record.<br />
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</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">We moved into this house a little over 5 ½ years ago in a very great hurry. We were not only urged quite compellingly to leave where we were living but also found ourselves greatly needed to occupy my parent's house after the death of my step-mother. My dad was in a nursing home at the time and my mother's death from a car accident left their house unattended and all the affairs of their estate in need of a caretaker.<br />
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</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">The problem was that we then moved into this large house with stuff that not only we had accumulated but the leftover stuff of several other people who had lived with us or had left their things in the previous house we had lived in. On top of that, my parents had taken in my step-mom's mother for awhile before she died and so they had many of her things stored in this house already. So as you might guess, the house was already quite full when we arrived as we began to unload truckloads of furniture and household items here. The only thing we could do under those circumstances was to pack the two-car garage completely full as well as several rooms of the house and the basement.<br />
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</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">Needless to say, it took several years for us to find many of our things and we are still sorting through boxes and furniture uncovering things we have not seen in quite some time. Over the years I have managed to reduce the height of the stuff in the garage to a level where I could navigate around in it and at least have access to most of it. Last summer I finally got enough courage to tackle this job for several days straight and was able to at least go through a once over with most of the items still stored there and rearranged the whole garage in the process.<br />
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</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">A week or two ago I did a small version of that raid on part of our basement area. As a result I hung all new lights (new to us) down there and mounted some shelves and even built a very large clothes hamper out of an old wooden kitchen table to catch the clothes from a new chute I had built into our bathroom upstairs. This greatly reduces the stress of trips up and down the stairs for my wife with the laundry and also makes me feel like I am doing something useful while out of work for over a month.<br />
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</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">Anyway, my wife has been gently nudging me about the possibility of maybe getting the car into the garage this winter. It would be such a wonderful thing to do and would eliminate a lot of time scraping snow and ice off the windows in this weather. I told her that it was a nice idea but that we needed a lot more intense cleaning in the garage before I could reduce the clutter enough to pull that off.<br />
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</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">But then yesterday I got to thinking about it seriously and even though the temperatures were well below freezing I decided to go out there and just see what I might be able to do. I also figured that since it was so cold anyway for the next couple months I would not likely be spending a lot of time in the garage looking through things anyway and so I might just be able to accept smashing everything to the sides enough to make room for the car, at least temporarily.<br />
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</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiUH_8MS2OTrLYDAAS4WSVhces8_QwReJLAwhNgXvqFu0Di7R14bf5I6_knbimoLVH31jIz-MLCKCGbeYdoKYxzkwxjysJ0PuZQh0jh50-zPza08wtv3aSqqX22aGHG4QLxQGuD/s1600-h/IMG_4946.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiUH_8MS2OTrLYDAAS4WSVhces8_QwReJLAwhNgXvqFu0Di7R14bf5I6_knbimoLVH31jIz-MLCKCGbeYdoKYxzkwxjysJ0PuZQh0jh50-zPza08wtv3aSqqX22aGHG4QLxQGuD/s320/IMG_4946.JPG" /></a><br />
</div>That is in fact what I was able to do. I made enough room to get the car inside and still have space to open the doors comfortably. Last night I drove the car into the garage for the first time in over five years and today I laid down some boards to act as alerts to let me know when I have backed in far enough. This same car actually belonged to my parents and is the car that was involved in my step-mom's death. It took six months for the repairs and bodywork to be finished on the care after that accident but it has been a very good car for us, both my parents and now for us after their passing. They actually had been keeping it in this garage all along until the accident happened and we moved in, so this was something sort of like a reunion for the car and its long lost friend and protector, the garage.<br />
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</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">So, hopefully when the heavy snows come and the ice storms hit, if we can keep this arrangement going until spring we might be able to actually enjoy our garage for the very purpose for which it was built years ago. Now imagine that – what an idea!<br />
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Clay Feethttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15811502760379647181noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27339816.post-52118791420455435632009-12-31T17:37:00.005-06:002009-12-31T17:56:07.991-06:00Christmas Love<meta content="text/html; charset=utf-8" http-equiv="CONTENT-TYPE"></meta><title></title><meta content="OpenOffice.org 3.0 (Win32)" name="GENERATOR"></meta><style type="text/css">
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<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">As usual I am a bit slow in posting personal events in my life on this blog. Sometimes I fail to even mention them many times. But of course pictures always give me a little more incentive to try to share some of the special times in our lives.<br />
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</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">As might be expected, the Christmas holidays would be a time to have a higher chance of making some memories than other times. Many years those memories are often quite mixed, at least for me. When there are large groups getting together there is almost always the tension of widely varying personalities, old grudges, unresolved disputes and potential flare-ups hiding just beneath the surface. Most people are very aware of this potential and it has even become a good source for many holiday jokes now.<br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgf5618oVWz-djElwVTjD-aDsogz7zfMuqiK1Cw6ie6el1TbT4RwPa6xMAFQVCD118yBxxSIqXFKZTr9eaJsD7QuF5e1Jbi0xcj_OjXsQuIRb7Cd11aimOmJJ5ESezjB4i7KXy1/s1600-h/IMG_4928.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgf5618oVWz-djElwVTjD-aDsogz7zfMuqiK1Cw6ie6el1TbT4RwPa6xMAFQVCD118yBxxSIqXFKZTr9eaJsD7QuF5e1Jbi0xcj_OjXsQuIRb7Cd11aimOmJJ5ESezjB4i7KXy1/s320/IMG_4928.JPG" /></a><br />
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</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">I am certainly not the traditional Christmas type of person as anyone in my family could assure you. For many years I have resented the whole onslaught of expectations and commercialism revolving around gift-giving. Many years ago I made it plain each year that I did not want to receive gifts because I don't want to be guilted into spending a lot of money buying 'guess' gifts for people I am clueless about. I am terrible at guessing what people want and often at this time of year I am very strapped for money anyway. Given all the variables and seeing the hard feelings that happen involving people and the gifts they do or do not receive, I have decided that staying out of the whole process completely is preferable to trying to find some compromise.<br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjc4rwXZwpHVHv6XHHQ34LuztLRTnYlVSveIKOXosN236_7JgVqt7hVHiRATiGjvVyHPWINZSumHZNwxIN7HfAo0JxShRF3fZgJ3jbtTwlHqWA-mPcOG5LWtXHYB3Ks1Nrs_646/s1600-h/IMG_4929.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="150" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjc4rwXZwpHVHv6XHHQ34LuztLRTnYlVSveIKOXosN236_7JgVqt7hVHiRATiGjvVyHPWINZSumHZNwxIN7HfAo0JxShRF3fZgJ3jbtTwlHqWA-mPcOG5LWtXHYB3Ks1Nrs_646/s200/IMG_4929.JPG" width="200" /></a><br />
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</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">However, that does not mean that I don't value some things extremely highly. But the things that people could easily give me and that would cost them little to nothing in many cases are the kinds of things that do not fit into the typical mold of people's expectations. They are not things measured by the price tag attached to (or removed from) them but are measured by the long-term affect that they can have on the heart.<br />
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</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">Someone has stated the the only real gift any of us can every actually give, the only actual, authentic gift that we even possess that is of real worth is our undivided <b>attention</b> to someone. When I heard that statement the first time it resonated so deeply inside of me that I knew it was profoundly true. But in the reality of how most people interact at Christmastime that is one of the rarest gifts ever given to anyone. But I cannot avoid the fact that this kind of gift – someone taking the time to just spend quality time with me, open up their heart and soul to me and allow me to open up to them – that is a gift I could never buy with any amount of money and they do not need to spend money on giving such a gift as that me, except of course unless it involves some travel.<br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi0pCbXartwCd0VnTUxNQ1SZj8pHMwieHJT7JHAT2cl_040GpdAqKxBdoNZvORhAtqlLZ2It1Zc_B4cM-oIRFZthxh7AH9SNzF-3Qj9efbUw1i0syAb6xgt_HX9BaOZmGedyIfr/s1600-h/IMG_4932.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi0pCbXartwCd0VnTUxNQ1SZj8pHMwieHJT7JHAT2cl_040GpdAqKxBdoNZvORhAtqlLZ2It1Zc_B4cM-oIRFZthxh7AH9SNzF-3Qj9efbUw1i0syAb6xgt_HX9BaOZmGedyIfr/s320/IMG_4932.JPG" /></a><br />
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</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhz91vIpZ0KagAsh6Tuh4hOLscEB47KbRn41sxCI0QRhrXwFJGqJ3s9uN5V93RjuGWj4EOBfcGaqQAnbzzjE3sF4yCRYujmg-JDmSVzaJIWWi3y8j-udtppt-EMPBwZYAQQsf4R/s1600-h/IMG_4926.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhz91vIpZ0KagAsh6Tuh4hOLscEB47KbRn41sxCI0QRhrXwFJGqJ3s9uN5V93RjuGWj4EOBfcGaqQAnbzzjE3sF4yCRYujmg-JDmSVzaJIWWi3y8j-udtppt-EMPBwZYAQQsf4R/s320/IMG_4926.JPG" /></a><br />
</div>Given all that context and background from my perspective, I literally felt honored and blessed to actually get some of that very gift this Christmas. Two of our daughters drove down separately to spend the weekend with us and we had only the four of us together. There were no tensions, no hidden agendas, no expectations for reciprocal gift exchanges – just time spent together hanging out, talking, eating (our family cannot do holidays without engaging in some very specific holiday cooking extravaganzas due to the British blood in their veins) and generally enjoying each others company.<br />
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</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgxyZwMZXIaLNHBGAElp4qkz9JMmOs50G7dlMzJTsp0nJRBAFmYVbIHoWIKXyet7jAWA-QX4y-i54dNpn8UWxwqt9MJEHsQZNpqTX4iRfm9wFhTUhhxXJmZ3bdAN5x4RwJpAf1A/s1600-h/IMG_4940.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgxyZwMZXIaLNHBGAElp4qkz9JMmOs50G7dlMzJTsp0nJRBAFmYVbIHoWIKXyet7jAWA-QX4y-i54dNpn8UWxwqt9MJEHsQZNpqTX4iRfm9wFhTUhhxXJmZ3bdAN5x4RwJpAf1A/s320/IMG_4940.JPG" /></a><br />
</div>We had all agreed ahead of time that we would not do the gift exchange thing so I felt reasonably comfortable in not buying anything for anyone. I know that labels me in many minds as a heretic, but so be it. My family finally accepts me this way without trying to lay a guilt trip on me, even subtly as often happened for many years some time ago. This has greatly eased tensions now I have to say. But our girls did bring along a bunch of stocking gifts for all of us for which they did not expect any return.<br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhgf23L01eBdHyB-sWKXr461xmTlGyys-vGHjwBzH88YCgDzqRKSQItb3GcM3BfGKM7b8p4lkzda0-V-mkMR-ch0Fe3J5rwaEOrQW8B2Vb3itAowy8CKoF2I1ONlYa7jeupVeo5/s1600-h/IMG_4945.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhgf23L01eBdHyB-sWKXr461xmTlGyys-vGHjwBzH88YCgDzqRKSQItb3GcM3BfGKM7b8p4lkzda0-V-mkMR-ch0Fe3J5rwaEOrQW8B2Vb3itAowy8CKoF2I1ONlYa7jeupVeo5/s200/IMG_4945.JPG" /></a><br />
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</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">After we went through the small items of food etc. and it was obvious that my wife had received gifts that were not paralleled for me, they asked me if I felt bad they hadn't bought me anything. Again I assured them as clearly as I could that I have no trace of desire for that kind of gifts at Christmas. However, I do cherish and appreciate very much their presence and willingness to accept me, love me and just be here with us as the most valuable and important thing they could give.<br />
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</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj2P7NfvexenmyoIIvldSMZ7Bhs41V9wDtCp8cLWMTEziUbWxbFeDWBTbEIBobkJ1j948WB7LwwDxL0uuaKPVkoucLrocDoeVyHUuungVpqKs5Sr9BSh_zE5-uqtTgNLnoVXnHg/s1600-h/IMG_4943.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj2P7NfvexenmyoIIvldSMZ7Bhs41V9wDtCp8cLWMTEziUbWxbFeDWBTbEIBobkJ1j948WB7LwwDxL0uuaKPVkoucLrocDoeVyHUuungVpqKs5Sr9BSh_zE5-uqtTgNLnoVXnHg/s200/IMG_4943.JPG" /></a>We had some very earnest, heart to heart talks over this weekend more real and open than I can remember having with one of our girls. These talks were more transparent and had less resistance than any that I can remember having with her in the past. A few days after they returned home I was speaking with this daughter on the phone and shared with her that I believe this may have been the best Christmas I can ever remember enjoying in my life. That is a pretty radical claim to make, but from this vantage point I still feel that is true. That is not to say it could not improve a great deal. There is always much more room for more transparency, more heart synchronization, more love, more connecting. But what we experienced this year was so much more in the direction I have longed for all of my life that I don't think I can really express it in words effectively.<br />
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</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgtQ67_t4i0PIKr5dwUlK1IOk_M5pWWDLr4n71Vl6_Okjv79wbrVv696an-wPeWpGPiEeDKBnZDTnBsuJhDiqtA5RgHXul8KogDULG6s47YLwzIewCFToLb1RCU_u2Fr93o25J4/s1600-h/IMG_4939.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="150" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgtQ67_t4i0PIKr5dwUlK1IOk_M5pWWDLr4n71Vl6_Okjv79wbrVv696an-wPeWpGPiEeDKBnZDTnBsuJhDiqtA5RgHXul8KogDULG6s47YLwzIewCFToLb1RCU_u2Fr93o25J4/s200/IMG_4939.JPG" width="200" /></a>So to my two girls who I love dearly, one biological and one a gift from heaven when she was much older, I want to express my deepest gratitude for just giving me a few days of your love and your presence with me and your mother. You really cannot sense how much it has meant to me and how long these memories are going to stay in my heart as incentive for more such encounters. I pray for you and put you both, along with our son and our other estranged daughter, into the hands of God. I also pray that I can grow to be a much better father for you that I have failed to be in the past. I am taking lessons from the best Father but it is taking me a long time to learn how to do this. But He is also my children's Father and He knows just how to love them and guide them and protect them and draw them to His heart far more effectively than I have ever dreamed of being able to do.<br />
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</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><i>Father, keep them firmly in Your hands and show them the real truth about Your love, Your faithfulness, Your fairness and how crazy You are about them. Let them see Your face and know for themselves that You really do care about every detail of their life and that You can fix every problem, heal every pain and unravel every problem if they will let You. Bless them Father and ravish them with Your love as only You know how to do.</i><br />
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Clay Feethttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15811502760379647181noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27339816.post-16805725216757389132009-12-06T21:30:00.000-06:002009-12-06T21:30:53.091-06:00Sounds of Christmas<meta content="text/html; charset=utf-8" http-equiv="CONTENT-TYPE"></meta><title></title><meta content="OpenOffice.org 3.0 (Win32)" name="GENERATOR"></meta><style type="text/css">
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<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">I know I am rather delinquent in keeping this blog updated. My quartet actually participated in a three-way quartet concert a number of weeks ago and I intended to post something about it but never took the time. It was quite an interesting experience for us but turned out much better than I expected given that the other two quartets had many more years experience that ours. Each quartet gave their own section of the concert and then all twelve men joined together in the last song as a grand finale. Everyone seemed to enjoy it all immensely. I thought that I had some pictures of that event but when I went back to look I could not find any.<br />
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</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">Today our Barbershopper Chorus put on our annual Christmas concert in two different churches which is always a very stimulating experience for all. I noted to the men just before our first concert that it was exactly two years ago in that very church that I had first heard this chorus perform in a Christmas concert and afterwards asked how I might join them. I have been singing with them ever since and now encourage others to consider joining us in the fun.<br />
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</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh-gqfxNCxL2-x3yOchlANNlKjy2KISrKGW-MGpf92Ad7Sr-33cbmVMd_m5Md2vbJ7eUNQ5JuQuYbMM56hqfbwunUNN6rn2CwleXOjljENS0qUZSQeUMo3ycQ4hmSsIqnDta885/s1600-h/IMG_4905.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh-gqfxNCxL2-x3yOchlANNlKjy2KISrKGW-MGpf92Ad7Sr-33cbmVMd_m5Md2vbJ7eUNQ5JuQuYbMM56hqfbwunUNN6rn2CwleXOjljENS0qUZSQeUMo3ycQ4hmSsIqnDta885/s320/IMG_4905.JPG" /></a><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">Of course we all dressed up in our “monkey suits” as some call them to look dashing for Christmas. The shoes are miserable for everyone and especially for me since I have very flat feet. My feet go numb sometimes wearing them but they are certainly very shiny to look at. This year they had me sing in one of the quartet numbers which included both of our directors. Evidently I was the wildcard in this venture as the other three have sung this song many times before. The first time we actually all practiced it together was about a half hour before our first concert. But it worked out very well and I enjoyed the song very much. It was a melancholy type of song which fits my general personality some of the time. I believe that it was arranged by our director who is an excellent musician and a very fine Christian as well.<br />
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</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">Standing for that long of a time and keeping myself intensely focused caused my upper back to become so tense that after each concert I could hardly stand up straight. And by the end of the last song of the evening my voice was starting to seriously give out. I don't believe I could have made it through one more song. But it was a very good experience and I only wished more of my friends would have come to listen.<br />
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</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">The next two weeks our chorus is going to do some caroling in a couple towns around here. Then we are taking off a couple weeks to start up practicing again after the new year. This has been a good outlet for me to be involved in music and also to make friends with people in areas where I usually would not ever get to know.<br />
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</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">Anyway, that's what is going on in my neck of the woods right now. The weather is supposed to turn very cold this week and we might even get a little snow. It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas as some people might say.<br />
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Clay Feethttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15811502760379647181noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27339816.post-72187180567035782072009-11-28T23:27:00.003-06:002009-11-28T23:28:07.532-06:00Beyond Coincidences<meta content="text/html; charset=utf-8" http-equiv="CONTENT-TYPE"></meta><title></title><meta content="OpenOffice.org 3.0 (Win32)" name="GENERATOR"></meta><style type="text/css">
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<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">Some answers to prayer and miracles are dramatic, jumping up to catch your attention in a spectacular way. Those are the ones that most people prefer and are exciting to talk about in testimonies and stories.<br />
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</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">But then there are the more subdued versions that are a little harder to sell as being spectacular, at least initially. But I wonder if upon reflection a little farther along that they may be seen to be at least as significant if not more in the story line of our lives. <br />
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</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">I think that I had some of the latter kinds over the last couple of days and am waiting to see how the “rest of the story” plays out in each of these situations.<br />
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</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">Two of these cases involved a deeply estranged relationship between myself and someone else. Both of these have been sources of deep emotional pain to me over the past couple years and have been a subject of prayer. I have been insistent on putting these relationships into God's hands and leaving them there for Him to work behind the scenes as only He is able to do while at the same time keeping close tabs on my own heart to be sure I am not harboring resentment toward these individuals. Whenever I feel some of it inside I try to flush it out into the open and choose again to consciously forgive them.<br />
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</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">In the last two days both of these situations have come into focus in my life and with both I have had surprising encounters that I was not expecting or even trying to orchestrate. Neither of these relationships are to the place where I could safely claim that they are fully reconciled, but at the same time I have been encouraged by the small things that have taken place to diffuse some of the tension that has existed for too long. In both instances I have been able to speak with someone on a friendly level and in one relationship we even spent several hours sharing openly almost like old times again – and this after several years of complete incommunicado.<br />
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</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">A couple of other things have also transpired in just the last 24 hours that have also affected other sensitive areas of my life. One of them involved tapping into some intense leftover emotions and triggers from my relationship with my own Dad in previous years, and another involved a potential change in my form of livelihood. The later is much, much more tentative and I am certainly weighing a number of factors and options to look for more clear guidance from God's providence. But the issue involving my intense and surprising arousal of old emotions from my Dad was much more interesting.<br />
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</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">As I sat in church this morning during class time I was almost blindsided by some comments from another person in the class whom I had never met or known before. But the subject matter, the spirit and amazingly even the tone of voice and vocal pronunciation of certain syllables were so very close to what my Dad would have done just a few years ago while he was still alive that I was almost stunned. Needless to say it was not a pleasant experience because the memories aroused involved some of my Dad's most controversial weaknesses that caused many people who knew him much pain. In his later years he had become so involved with some critical religious organizations that perverted his perceptions that his life became filled to overflowing with bitterness and faultfinding.<br />
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</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">I can distinctly remember the last time I ever attended church together with my Dad – in the very same church that I now regularly attend. He acted so confrontational and abrasive during that time that I was humiliated and embarrassed beyond anything I had ever experienced in my life. I had some of my family with me that day and I was seriously wishing that I could just slink down and crawl to the back of the church underneath the pews and escape out the door hoping no one would notice. I also vowed emphatically that I would never, ever find myself sitting in a church with my Dad again for as long as I lived.<br />
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<br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">I think I may have actually attended church again with him later on, but it was never in that particular church and it was some time after very painful and traumatic events took place that literally banned him from ever entering that church again. Some time later my parents began attending another church some miles away and were much subdued in their interactions with the people there. But it was also not long after that that he started having strokes which landed him in a nursing home finally where he was never able to attend church again anyway.<br />
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<br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">Not long after entering the nursing home God arranged a series of events in my life so as to bring about a very dramatic reconciliation between us as well as a genuine conversion of my Dad's heart. It was a spectacular miracle to say the least because of the sheer impossibility of the whole event, but I had been daring God for some time to do just that and He did do it, but not without making sure that I was involved in the process as part of my own healing journey.<br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
<br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">I suppose that is a lot of background information to create the context for what happened today. But for many years my Dad's virulent attitudes and actions involving strident views he had about certain religious topics were a constant source of friction and triggering between us nearly every time we talked together. Whenever I visited home for a few days I was certain to feel triggered by the worship periods that were required each morning with him. The internal triggers were linked not only with the things that he wanted to emphasize but very much by the tone of his voice, the word inflections and the hidden messages conveyed that only I knew about because I had known him for so long. Other people were sometimes baffled by how many triggers I could receive just listening to my Dad read something or talk about something because they did not have the inside repertoire of links to the many subtle things my Dad inferred whenever he spoke about certain subjects.<br />
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<br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">What amazed me and elicited these same emotions this morning was the fact that this complete stranger was so closely aligned with the same beliefs and attitudes and spirit that had so hijacked my Dad's attention the last few years of his life, and listening to this man was like being in the presence of my Dad all over again. It was so similar that I could almost predict what this man was going to talk about next – and I was right. His logic and arguments were the very same ones that my Dad had always used and when I heard the same tone of voice and word articulations I could hardly believe what I was hearing. Needless to say I had some rather strong emotions stirred up that I had to deal with right away.<br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
<br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">When I decided to make a comment in class to counteract the poisonous sentiments being spread by this person I knew that I might become the target of his anger if he was not willing to take what I said to heart. I was not mistaken in the least as he suddenly turned and fired off another predictable quotation at me meant to stop me in my tracks. But instead of withering away I decided to answer him with what I have come to about this passage after years of reflecting on that particular statement. This caught him by surprise and he was about to launch into an all-out assault on me when the teacher immediately shut down the conversation to bring the class to an end and stop the damage before it got any worse.<br />
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<br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">I was quite relieved at this because I really have no stomach for getting into a pointless, fruitless argument with a person who is not in touch with his own heart and is so infected by a root of bitterness. I am all too familiar with these roots and the fruits that they always produce and I know that trying to reason with such a person only adds fuel to their fire instead of bringing anything closer to resolution. The real problem is not a lack of correct information or proper interpretation of some passage as they suppose but lies in the condition of a person's spirit. What must take place is a change of heart and attitude, not corrected information or the argument of a better formula.<br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
<br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">After the church service had finished I was a little surprised but encouraged when this same man came up and apologized for getting upset with me in class. I cannot judge his motives, though I still think I can read him almost like a book because he seems so similar to my Dad. But later on I took opportunity to have a long talk with the class teacher where I was blessed to have much more insight into the other side of the story and some of the dynamics taking place in that church. I was blessed to see how God was working more than could be seen on the surface and I also spent some time sharing with several people who gathered, my own experience and the story of my Dad and his conversion experience before he died.<br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
<br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">Immediately after leaving there we went to meet our girls at another small church that was coming to a close and getting ready to enjoy a Thanksgiving dinner together. As our girls related to us the incredible stories that were shared in the group before we arrived I was wishing that we had been there for the whole service so we could have heard these stories ourselves. A number of things also happened during our time in this place that I believe were significant but again I do not know how it all fits together until more developments mature. But it was unavoidable to see that God's hand was in a lot of things that were going on through all of this.<br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
<br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">I cannot say why all of this happened today and over the last couple days, but it seems that they were for some specific purposes, many of which I may never know for some time. But the range of emotions that were experienced or resurrected today were certainly unexpected and had a variety of effects on me this weekend. I don't know what it all means, but I do have a sense that I might understand it more as time goes by.<br />
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<br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><i>Father, I simply accept all of this from You and trust that You are doing things to bring about more reconciliation on a number of fronts that need to be healed. I ask that You continue to change my heart and my attitudes that get in the way and to also work in every way possible on others who are still resisting Your love or Your convictions in their hearts. I praise You for what I have been able to perceive today along with all that I can't see that You are doing behind the scenes. I trust Your heart and Your plans and Your ways. Bind our hearts together as we all learn to trust You more completely. I give myself, my plans, my will, my life to be used as a testimony for Your goodness and faithfulness.</i><br />
</div><br />
Clay Feethttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15811502760379647181noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27339816.post-44336063458216697072009-11-26T15:18:00.000-06:002009-11-26T15:18:08.690-06:00Happy Anniversary<meta content="text/html; charset=utf-8" http-equiv="CONTENT-TYPE"></meta><title></title><meta content="OpenOffice.org 3.1 (Win32)" name="GENERATOR"></meta><style type="text/css">
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<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">Today is our 32<sup>nd</sup> wedding anniversary. As I just wrote that it suddenly occurred to me that my Dad was married twice and both times he was married 32 years. Both marriages ended in the death of his wife, the second one on the day of their anniversary. But my wife just assured me that she has no plans of dying just because that happened to both of my mothers.<br />
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<br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">Because we were married on Thanksgiving weekend (to accommodate everyone else's travel plans coming to the wedding and because it was more likely to get them to come then instead of around Christmas), each year we are reminded to be thankful for our marriage in more ways than just our anniversary. And every so often, like this year, our anniversary and Thanksgiving day line up on the same day.<br />
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<br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">This year we are enjoying the privilege of spending this holiday with two of our daughters, one biologically and one by spiritual adoption. I just spent several hours this morning having the most open spiritual conversation with one of them that I have ever been able to have in our whole life. As you can imagine my heart hardly knows how to act after this blessing. I am thrilled to see her opening up to God, learning to listen to His voice to her personally and practicing how to relate properly to the messages she is now sensing from His Spirit.<br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
<br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">We have had at times a very rocky relationship with each other over the years. Her biological parents had many of the same hangups that my parents had and that I also had in raising my own children. So the tension that has marked many of our interchanges is not unfamiliar to me but has been a source of great pain at times. I have longed to be able to share my heart with her and get her to understand that I really care for her heart. But most of the time we end up knocking heads instead of meshing gears.<br />
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<br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">My desire for my relationship with all of my children has been to be able to relate to them at a deeper level as an adult – like a best friend. I am very jealous of people who can honestly say that their parents are their best friends. I wish that was the case between my children and I, but in honesty I have to say that is not the case. I also have to accept most of the blame for this situation because I failed to love them and honor them and inspire them like a good parent should have done. I now realize that this happened because my own picture of God along with the modeling I received from my own upbringing was poor preparation for the job of parenting. I tended to resort to the methods and emotions that were used on me but that proved so damaging in my life. So it is no surprise that the relationship I have to a great degree is not much different than the tension I felt most of my life with my own Dad.<br />
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<br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">But God is much greater than all of our mistakes and faults. I have been seeking to know His heart for a number of years now as well as asking Him to repair the deep damage my modeling and treatment has had on my biological children. God has sent several other children into our life at various times with different effects and results along the way, but our family is still in process and learning how to relate to each other better as God leads us.<br />
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<br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">One of these children ended up dying a few years ago at a young age. This was very painful for us especially because it happened while we were estranged from her. Another adopted daughter is still estranged from us and I continue to pray for reconciliation and healing in this relationship. Nothing is impossible with God and only He can bring about the healing and restore the trust and confidence needed to have a positive relationship again. But the daughter with which we are staying right now is really listening and seeking God's heart in spite of all the baggage she received from her parents that was similar to what I experienced. In spite of her background and misconceptions about what God is like she is responding to His drawing love and is allowing Him to love her more and more. This is a source of great joy for me as I sense that she is moving into a stage of her experience where we can communicate about things that before she could not relate to me about without much discomfort.<br />
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<br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">I know that all of these relationships are very much in process. I know that there will be misunderstandings, hurt feelings, assumptions and all sorts of other bumps in the road ahead with all of my children. But my heart's desire above all is for each of them to somehow begin to see the real truth about God, about His inescapable love for them, His untainted feelings of affection for them that they failed to experience from me. I not only wish that for my children but for my wife and for me as well, to sense the unconditional love of our Father.<br />
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<br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">This is a day to remember a life of shared love, shared hardships, shared pain, shared experiences, shared memories that have united our hearts and minds for over 32 years together. It is a shared journey of seeking to discover how to relate to the God of our parents who often misrepresented Him to us while raising us as their children. It has been a life of many emotions as we at times felt that God was not listening or caring about us based on our desperate circumstances. But through it all we still have to say that God was and is faithful and that if there has been a problem believing that that it has always been in our perceptions and not because of His lack of abilities.<br />
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<br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">Our marriage has not been the high profile romance as portrayed by Hollywood and that is idealized in the movies. Our relationship has been a mixed bag of emotions and experiences. But one thing that has stabilized us through all of these years is the ironclad decision that we have always maintained and that I can remember my parents instilling deep into my thinking, the decision that divorce was never going to be an option for us no matter what happened. I cannot say that I have had too many reasons for even wanting to think in that direction, but the very fact that it simply was never an option that we would even allow into our thinking has led us to be serious about facing our differences and problems instead of running away from them.<br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
<br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">I know that I am not the ideal husband. Many times when I see other people who are enjoying obvious marital bliss or when a husband is openly selfless and sweet to his wife that I at times feel very guilty and delinquent. I have way too many faults and have far too much selfishness to be the blessing to my wife that she deserves. This may not sound like the ideal anniversary tribute, but I feel that honesty is something that is remedial and important for my heart. I know I am learning and growing but that I have a great long way to go to be the loving, caring husband that God wants my wife to have.<br />
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</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">But in 32 years of give and take and standoffs and reconciliations, through it all we have grown closer to each other at levels beneath what we can consciously perceive. I am so thankful that my wife has a heart to know God as I too want to experience. And though her journey to find God at a deeper level is usually very different than the way I do it, I am learning to respect her private journey and to encourage her uniqueness and expressions and struggles as she learns to respect mine.<br />
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<br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">I am not one easily given to flowery language and romantic expressions. Everyone who knows me much at all can tell you that. I am more of a pragmatist and what I think is a realist. But for me, to be real and face things like they really are is the first step toward being better able to then move toward a deeper relationship that is genuinely connected and has affections that are based on more than surface beauty or performance. We are learning, albeit very slowly at times, to know each others heart while also seeking to know the heart of our Creator and Father. I wish that romance was something I was better at, but I am the product of my past. And while the future does not have to equal the past, what I am in the present has always been all that I have to work with at the moment.<br />
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<br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">God led our lives together in very complex situations in both of our lives. We still wonder what some of the reasons were behind how God has led us over the years, but of course we will never know until He can explain it all better in heaven. But for now we are learning that God's heart can be trusted even when we may fail each other. God is love, and if God is not in the marriage it is impossible to know true love between a man and a woman. There may be emotions and excitement, but real love can only be found from the heart of the only One who is love.<br />
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<br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">Today we mark the milestone of 32 years of experimenting together, of learning how to love in the context of marriage. Have we learned anything yet? I believe we have. But I will be the first to say that there is far more to learn than what we have already grasped. And I pray for God to keep opening and softening my own heart so that I can be a better father and husband to the hearts of both my wife and all of my children so they can more clearly see what love should really look and act like in real life.<br />
</div>Clay Feethttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15811502760379647181noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27339816.post-38864623084101334472009-11-15T14:31:00.002-06:002009-11-16T10:42:53.413-06:00A Triple Dipper Day<meta content="text/html; charset=utf-8" http-equiv="CONTENT-TYPE"></meta><title></title><meta content="OpenOffice.org 3.0 (Win32)" name="GENERATOR"></meta><style type="text/css">
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<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">Yesterday I had what I called a triple-dipper – a day spent with some of my favorite people.<br />
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<br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">The night before I decided at the last minute to take a family that is becoming close to us up to Chicago all day yesterday to attend some meetings by one of their, and my, favorite speakers, Herb Montgomery. This young man is one of the most exciting preachers that I know of when it comes to presenting a clarified picture of what God is really like. His teachings have greatly helped me to sort out many confusing issues revolving around why Jesus died on the cross and why bad things happen to good people. He is not afraid to tackle the most challenging and emotionally charged issues in religion and I admire him for this.<br />
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<br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">Because we have never met him in person even though we have listened to many hours of his sermons, I was quite interested in taking this opportunity to see him live and maybe get a chance to interact with him a little myself if possible. I had actually contacted him several months ago about assisting him with some of my audio editing skills and helping get some of his series recordings ready for public use. But over the past few months I have become very discouraged over even communicating with him as he has been so busy. I had about come to the point where I decided that possibly he was trying to avoid me and did not want to come right out and tell me that. So I decided that if I couldn't make meaningful connection with him this time in person that I would just drop my efforts to hook up with him and let the whole idea die.<br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
<br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">Our friends, a family of five, have become very interested in the things that Herb teaches after I began sharing his talks with them some time ago. They somehow felt that the things he talked about and the way he presented them were so sensible and compelling that they wanted to learn more. They even went to his website and downloaded more of his series to listen to. So when they learned that he was going to be this close to us they were very excited to take the opportunity to meet him in person. However, since they were having car problems they had decided to give up on the idea until I called them Friday evening and offered to take them in our car.<br />
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<br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">As a result we all had to get up around 4 AM which for them in particular was not an easy thing to pull off. But we got all loaded not long after 6 AM and got on the road with eager anticipation. When I had called for directions the night before I learned that in the afternoon there was going to be a Michael Card concert. This popular Christian musician is one of our favorite singers and my wife was very upset that she was not able to go along. Since she has been sick the past few days she decided that it would not be wise to try to make this trip and risk getting other people sick. However, she was very jealous and upset that she would be missing out on one of her favorite Christian artists and reminded me of that each time we talked on the phone.<br />
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<br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">But since the concert required tickets I assumed at this late date that it might be impossible to get any tickets for us. We choose not to generally buy or sell things on God's Sabbath according to His instructions so I assumed that short of a miracle we would either have to miss out on the concert and wait around outside for the last evening meeting with Herb or just come home early after the morning meeting.<br />
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<br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">It took us around 2 ½ hours to arrive at the church where the meetings were to take place and we got there about 9 AM. I decided to hang out upstairs where the sound and video techies hang out because that is where I feel most comfortable. They were kind to show me their software and the equipment they have which I found very interesting and informative. The balcony area where all this is located was also a very good vantage point to view everything going on in the church, much better than anywhere on the main floor.<br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
<br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">After participating in Sabbath School for both the adults and the children, we very much enjoyed the compelling message by Herb for the church service. He was close to wrapping up a 10-day series called Life Unlimited which is all about how to find real fulfillment and satisfaction in every area of life – mental, financial, emotional, spiritual, physical and social. It is an excellent series that he has developed and is presenting it repeatedly all over the world at this point. It is also keeping him so busy that he is coming close to burnout it seems. Fortunately he is done for this year after this one closes and can spend some much needed time with his children and wife for a period of time before flying off to do more seminars.<br />
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<br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">We had a delicious fellowship dinner together with a large number of people after church. I felt I was so hungry after not having hardly anything for breakfast that I almost overestimated how much I could eat and uncharacteristically got two platefuls of food. That was enough to keep me for the rest of the day but in the evening the church secretary brought in more food for us to eat which was very kind of her.<br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
<br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">I decided to go and talk with the man in charge of the tickets for the afternoon concert to see if I had any options. He told me that we could still get tickets and that I could just pay him later. I told him that I had not come prepared with that much money and he allowed me to just send him a check after I got home to take care of the cost. This was really exciting for us as we could then enjoy the full day listening to both Herb and Michael Card all on the same day. Michael had played a couple songs before Herb spoke in the morning and we knew that the concert was going to be very inspiring because of his personal style and laid-back personality along with his excellent musical abilities.<br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhUZEoPJM5X2lmgBn3RWn4dp0N2JmfbE9u9Gvf8NGQB-2xi_VMCQYiQB3c2q7LnPAvcNy-sdSKVJKyY2DyCt7IiOP0ir1kWxHj_4WnySs7twPrQSA2loJ93GF1FMs3vIPhp9j50/s1600/IMG_4854.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhUZEoPJM5X2lmgBn3RWn4dp0N2JmfbE9u9Gvf8NGQB-2xi_VMCQYiQB3c2q7LnPAvcNy-sdSKVJKyY2DyCt7IiOP0ir1kWxHj_4WnySs7twPrQSA2loJ93GF1FMs3vIPhp9j50/s320/IMG_4854.JPG" /></a><br />
<br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">I chose to view the afternoon concert from up in the balcony sitting with the sound man and his wife. I tried to get a couple pictures from there but it was a challenge to get a good shot without a flash that could reach that far or a stronger lens. But the music was superb and it really blessed our hearts.<br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjilSGM1TreCX73JJt55v1Lt1boY7Wc5newW_esAI9JxqgWAXWIB8JozB-uLM7S0cy97BZ5y5IZbFaziu7CgMqplwVUfJDWN64kvNq6_SuN-M2srZCWWHxV5lL2pSxiuUzOK2rf/s1600/IMG_4849.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjilSGM1TreCX73JJt55v1Lt1boY7Wc5newW_esAI9JxqgWAXWIB8JozB-uLM7S0cy97BZ5y5IZbFaziu7CgMqplwVUfJDWN64kvNq6_SuN-M2srZCWWHxV5lL2pSxiuUzOK2rf/s320/IMG_4849.JPG" /></a><br />
</div><br />
<br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">That evening we stayed for the evening presentations by Herb and were even more blessed and inspired. My friends really soaked up the amazing insights that Herb shared directly from the Bible which are so different than anything other speakers ever talk about. During the intermission and a bit after the last meeting I was finally able to spend a few minutes speaking with Herb about various things and we agreed that we wanted to stay in touch much more. I feel a real resonance with the spirit that Herb has and would like to get to know him much better if possible. I hope that this can work out for both of us.<br />
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<br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">We had a long drive home and got in around midnight with a car full of very tired children and adults. But all of us were so blessed and my tiredness seemed different than usual. I was surprised that I did not get very sleepy even after being up for so long and driving so far. It just seemed that my body and mind had been so energized by the wonderful mix of friends and favorite people and the presence of God that I may have been feeling a little of what Jesus was talking about when His disciples couldn't figure out why He lost interest in eating after sharing the wonderful good news about God with the woman at the well.<br />
</div><br />
Clay Feethttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15811502760379647181noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27339816.post-59091619086945296732009-10-08T20:11:00.000-05:002009-10-28T20:15:57.229-05:00Back From the (near) Dead<meta content="text/html; charset=utf-8" http-equiv="CONTENT-TYPE"></meta><title></title><meta content="OpenOffice.org 3.0 (Win32)" name="GENERATOR"></meta><style type="text/css">
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<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">I can hardly believe it. But it is still working yet today. After months of great frustration and seriously considering throwing in the towel and buying a new one to replace one that has not been used very much at all, I finally got my printer to begin working properly.<br />
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<br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">For months I have had a problem with my printer just fading out of black (instead of fading <b>to</b> black like in video production). When it would print, which was never predictable, it might just as suddenly quite printing in a very few minutes. On top of that I also began to have problems with it spreading great pools of ink around the corners and along the edges of the sheets of paper. It seemed that my nice new multifunction printer was not such a great investment after all.<br />
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<br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">About a year or two ago I had installed a continuous-feed ink supply to this printer. At first it seemed to work quite nicely. But then I had problems keeping the hoses attached firmly out of the way in the routing. When they came loose the print carriage would jam inside and make awful noises which made one believe that the whole printer might be self-destructing. I tried several methods of attaching the hose inside the printer after the original double-sided tape from the supplier failed and finally ended up sawing a hole in the plastic to allow the plastic retainer tab to sit flat up under the top of the inside.<br />
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<br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">That seemed to solve that problem but then I started having this more serious issue of ink fading out completely more and more often. I tried everything I could think of. I raised the print bottles higher, I cleaned the heads repeatedly, I readjusted the routing of the hoses – nothing seemed to have much effect.<br />
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<br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">I called the people I bought the ink system from and the lady told me the ink bottles absolutely had to be on the same plane as the printer or they would not work right. I figured out that was what was causing the flooding over the paper but it did nothing to get it printing like it was supposed to. I did hook up a hose to the internal dumping system however and routed the output of the head cleaning process to drain into an external bottle instead of dumping into the bottom of the printer like the default factory setup did.<br />
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</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">I decided to try again yesterday to see if I could do anything to make it start working again. I filled up the black ink reservoir. I put the printer through repeated head cleaning cycles but with no effect. I even tried putting some ink directly down into the carriage to see if maybe it had dried up somewhere along the way. As I was doing all of this my cat jumped up on the desk and demanded attention. As I tried to pick him up and move him out of the way he swatted the whole set of ink containers off the desk with his tail and they hung down beside the desk by the hoses connecting them to the printer. I dropped the cat on the floor and grabbed the hose to fish up the bottles which all had their vent caps open. There were various colors of ink splattered all over the sides of the printer, the desk, the wall and dripping onto the carpet underneath. What a mess! Of course that cat was totally unconcerned.<br />
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</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">I finally decided to call the supplier again and see if I could talk with the man there who always seemed much more knowledgeable about their systems. He seems to have invented most of their processes and is very familiar inside and out with these printers and usually has much better insights for solving difficult problems if I can actually talk to him directly.<br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
<br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">Fortunately he was the one who answered the phone yesterday and I explained to him my problem. I was nearly at the point of getting rid of this printer altogether and buying another one but I really didn't like that idea and don't have the money now besides. I had been so frustrated for so long and just felt impressed to call him today which may have been a suggestion from higher Wisdom anyway.<br />
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</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">When he heard my description of the problem he told me to prime the cartridges. He said that it sounded like they were starved and needed to get ink flowing from the bottles again. He told me just how to get it primed and so I hung up and proceeded to try it. On the second attempt I began to notice that while trying to suck ink out from the bottom of the cartridge with a syringe it seemed that even with a great amount of vacuum placed on the outlet there was almost no ink coming out.<br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
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</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">I thought that was a bit strange since there shouldn't be anything preventing the ink to flow from an open bottle full of ink to the top of the cartridges where the hose entered. As I thought about it more I examined a pinch point where the hose entered the printer from the side. The lid sits down very snugly at that point and the hose always looked very restricted there. But I simply could see no other way of getting the hose to where it had to go inside the printer. I had installed it exactly per instructions that came with the system, but as I looked very closely I realized that this very well might be the very problem that has plagued me all this time.<br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
<br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">I took time to massage the hose to try to unrestrict it as much as possible and then decided to take a pocket knife and cut a relief cavity into the side of the printer cover to let the hose have some free room to squeeze through. Since I have no plans to return the printer to the manufacturer I can do whatever I need to do to it to make it work right no matter how hacked up it might look.<br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
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</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">After putting some slack in the hose and getting a good notch cut into the printer cover, I put everything back together and tried to prime the cartridge again. This time the ink flowed very freely and I knew I might have solved the problem. I tried another print job and this time it printed fully and completely without any problems whatsoever.<br />
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</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">At that point I decided to catch up on a whole bunch of print jobs that I had been needing to do for the past week or two. As each page came out perfectly I could hardly believe my eyes. After all the ideas and crazy notions that I had tried to solve this problem, the real issue all along had likely been this one little pinch point. And to think that I was ready to throw away the whole expensive printer when the only problem was just to give the hose a little relief in the right spot.<br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
<br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">I have been thinking about that a lot lately. How many times have I been so sure that I knew what was causing some problem, maybe in someone else's life even, only to spend a lot of time judging, second-guessing or criticizing what was not the real issue at all. Then later I might find out what the real problem was, and maybe the real issue was far more simple or less offensive than the things I was so tempted to accuse, at least in my own mind.<br />
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</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">I could hear God pressing home the warning in this experience with my printer. Don't throw out valuable things and especially people and relationships just because you are so sure you know how worthless they are. You simply don't have the wisdom needed to know what is really going on. You must learn to listen to outside insights, to defer to those who do have more experience and seek to see things from heaven's perspective and not be so ready to give up easily. When the real truth comes out you might be very glad that you did not give up too soon.<br />
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Clay Feethttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15811502760379647181noreply@blogger.com0