Like Old Times

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.

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).

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.

Life Getting Interesting

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.

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.

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.

So that is what has been keeping me busy. I would love to hear what is going on in your life as well.

One Provider, Different Channels

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Catching Up

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.

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'.

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.

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.

What is a Garage For?

We experienced a moment of history-making last night.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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!