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!

Christmas Love

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 attention 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Sounds of Christmas

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.