Stories and other stuff

Thanks for reading this important post.  I decided to move it to its own blog which can be found HERE! I do love the idea and really want to try to find others who are willing to do this really inexpensive and important thing. Coop!

No, gang, I haven't hit that point.  I'm gonna be fine.  Yesterday, the Lord planted a seed.  He gave me a dollar. No, I haven't gone off the deep end.  The dollar is probably one I lost under the car's seat at some point.  I know that.  I don't think Jesus put it there for me to find.  But the timing and circumstance were inspirational, and I believe sometimes those things come from Him. I thought a lot about this dollar.  It's in my wallet.  I haven't had cash in my wallet for a while so it feels pretty good to know I have that dollar.  Chances are, you've got one in your pocket, too.  What's the big deal, right?  It's just a dollar. And, that's true... by itself, but it was the genesis of an idea. I've been praying for some direction in my life and I have to see if this little idea of mine is someplace the Lord wants me to go.   No more worldly stuff, just godly stuff and I'm thinking this idea I have can be put t...

I took some bad advice regarding my financial situation back in February.  I did something I didn't want to do, didn't feel right about, and in my estimation, went against some very biblical tenets about paying one's debts. I've spent the last two days on the phone trying to undo the damage caused by listening to said advice. I did get an offer on the house, one I cannot accept in good conscience.  Right now, I'm weighing the pros and cons of keeping it.  The pros are outweighing the cons but now I'm in a race against time to see what will happen.  In this, I've learned the difference between good and bad lenders, good and bad people, good and bad advice.  It's these things I want to share with you today. There are predatory lenders who make bad loans.  I know because I took a bad loan.  In that, there was nobody to blame but me.  This particular lender shall remain nameless, but at the time, it was a means to an end.  It may be the end...

Good Monday morning!  Yesterday was an exciting day.  Miracles happened all over the country and I want to share just a couple with you that I know of.  In Spokane, a large number of people came to proclaim Christ as Lord and Savior; a greater number were baptized.  A small church in Ohio that I've been blessed to attend had 86 people at their Easter service.  When I was there last, there were fewer than two dozen at the worship service.  Three of those came to know Christ yesterday.  I'm always excited to hear news like this.  In our own church, a family transferred their membership back and another couple spontaneously joined the church during the service!  I love it that our Pastor is spontaneous and it was truly a blessing to be in church yesterday.  I hope many of you had a chance to experience your own blessing of the day and reconnect with the Lord. Yeah, I know that's not what you wanted to read.  You want to know about th...

My to do list went from short to huge yesterday afternoon.  I started on it first thing this morning. I hate talking to people on the phone, but that was my first thing on the to do list.  I had to call the bank and start the process of undoing a short sale on the house.  The fight to keep Lark Circle Farm is ON!   Fortunately, I think things haven't gone far enough that it cannot be stopped.  There will be more phone calls on Monday but that's OK.  The blessings of last week will help make that a reality. I did absolutely nothing to the yard last fall.  I did rake up the leaves in the lower back yard so the yard would look presentable to potential buyers, so that's one chore that doesn't need doing.  The back 40, well, it's a bona-fide mess.  The immigrant and I just had a conversation about it and I think we're both in agreement that a healthy dose of Round-up is called for.  I can't burn it off (stupid fire code...), so I gotta hi...

Please remember that today is Good Friday.  Today is a day of remembrance for the price that Jesus Christ paid for our sins.  He was crucified, died, and resurrected so that we may find salvation and forgiveness of sin, to find everlasting life! I hope y'all will take some time to contemplate this today. I know I will.

I want to share with you today's devotional from  "Our Daily Bread" .  It talks about how to move past sin.  It's an interesting topic for today and one I thought worth sharing because of this little tidbit from Facebook this morning. Real Life Part 1 www.oneplace.com If you’re a Christian, when you came to Christ, did all your problems and struggles immediately go away? Of course not! We’re really not exempt from the struggles of life as some proclaim. Pastor Mike Fabarez believes it’s important to know what you’re signing up for, before you decide to follow... 5 hours ago via dlvr.it · 524 · Like ·  · Share The link to the radio program is  here.   It's a 25 minute listen, but well worth the time.  This isn't one of the programs I typically listen to throughout my day, but it's an well worth the lesson. Furthermore, if you read the Scripture recommended in the ODB devotional, it'll take you to the story of what happened to King David f...

Over the past week or so I've seen a post about simpler times on a few friends' Facebook pages.  It was about drinking out of the hose when you were hot in the summer.  I remember those days well.  You didn't want to go in the house to get a drink of water for fear that you might have to stay there... You wanted to be outside because the sun was shining and you were having fun.  I remember how I hated to be called in just because it was "getting dark".  I was still having fun! I was thinking about this, too.  If kids don't play outside, it's more than likely not the kids' fault these days.  We live in a scary time, with drugs, gang violence, people that prey on children... those things happened when I was young, I'm sure, but not to the degree of frequency they do nowadays.  Outside might not be the safest place to be these days.  And, when did parks become hangouts for weirdos? Going to the park used to be fun.  Murray park had THE ...

No other subject in my life will start a fight with either an ex-wife or the Mrs. faster than the subject of money and starting late last week, money seemed to want to fill a predominant role in my life.  There were the prerequisite and for once in my life, one-sided fights about the issues. I've never been smart with money, to be sure, or I wouldn't find myself in the mess I'm in today.  That's OK, though, because I no longer place the value on material things I once did.  I'm no longer a slave to my desires.  My primary view on money these days is to just find a way to clean up the mess I'm in with following principles set out in the Bible. I had some pretty good news to share with the wife about money.  News I never got around to sharing because I couldn't get a word in during the conversations we had.  Our conversation started off about taxes and went from bad to worse, mostly because I never had a chance to get a word in as she was letting me know ...

Today is a day for giving glory to God!  It's been an interesting couple of days for me, with good and bad news.  The good news is a blessing.  The bad is a way for me to show someone very dear to me that I'm not who I was. The blessings part:  In the course of finding some information for the Mrs. regarding our tax return, I had to download copies of my two previous tax returns from 2008 & 2009.  Looking at 2008's return I found a huge, glowing error.  I didn't claim my son as a dependent on my 2008 return.  I don't know how I made this simple, stupid mistake, but I did.  The blessing comes from catching the error in time to file an amended return.  I received a refund in 2009 and that refund will be bigger once I file an amendment.  I have a rather large tax bill this year because of circumstances and that refund will help pay the deficit I owe this year.  That's a blessing. Another blessing is the potential to recover som...

I'd started writing a blog this morning before I went to Salt Lake.  Something good happened to me yesterday, in a round about way, and I was going to talk about not feeling happy about this when I should have.  I wasn't really feeling it and then I ran out of time. I haven't had much time this week to myself, with working 12 hour days and yesterday was no exception.   usually start my day off with time to read my Bible but I was running from the time I woke up so I didn't make time for this important part of my day until after work.  I often talk about how I just read wherever I open the Bible and before I went to bed, I turned to the book of Matthew, to the page with the "Beatitudes", Christ's famous "Sermon on the Mount".  These are very uplifting passages and I enjoyed them. On my way to Salt Lake today, I tuned in to a program called  "Love Worth Finding"  on BBN Radio (95.5 fm in our area BTW).  When I was looking up the link ...

I haven't had much to say the last few days.  I'm just kind of laying low and dreading doing business taxes tomorrow and Thursday.  Friday brings an appointment in Salt Lake to take care of some more "business" business.  The show must go on, I guess. New glasses are ready to be picked up.  Bifocals.  Pride stopped me from getting them last time.  This time, they're a necessity.  (you can stop laughing, wife!) So, the title of the post has absolutely nothing to do with all that stuff.  If you do some hunting, you'll find it's two words I lifted from a comment on my last post.  I have really no idea what the point of the comment was.  I've talked about the challenges in my life before and honestly, I embrace them for what they are... learning experiences.  If the comment was pointed at the wife, I'm gonna defend her. Wendi is a lot of things, but one of them isn't difficult. But there are difficult people we encounter every d...

I don't give advice any more.  I used to have an opinion on everything!  It was the "Guard Guy" in me.  We used to joke about doing projects because almost without fail, someone who would walk into your shop and watch what you were doing would ask you this: "What are you doing it that way for?" and then proceed to tell you that you were doing it all wrong. I laugh about that but it's true.  And sometimes, even very well-meaning friends give me some advice I can't follow because of the circumstances in my life.  It happened to me earlier in the week.  A friend who knows some of the "swiss cheese" details of my life told me that in my circumstances, God allows for divorce.  That may be true, and whether or not it is, I've been saying for months I don't believe that's the way He's leading me. I'm doing this little workbook as a devotional that my pastor gave me and today's lesson really struck a chord with me.  It...

Hi readers, Today's lesson is important and I hope that everyone that reads this will take something from it.  It's been a very hard week for me and this morning, I finally broke down and asked "Why?" The answer was rather quick in coming and the lesson I've been taught is worth sharing and it's this:  Don't take something that's not yours. I'm not talking about stealing in a sense of taking stuff.  I'm talking about people.  I'm talking about relationships. I've been guilty of this twice.  Once with my second wife, where I caused a bunch of trouble with her and the guy she was seeing when I was very young and VERY immature.  Those are things I'd just rather forget.  The second was Wendi's husband.  The first time, I failed at taking something that wasn't mine, but I tried and that was foolish of me.  We didn't get together for a year, and a failed marriage later on my part, later. The second, well, I may not h...

I logged in to the ol' blog and realized I hadn't posted anything since Sunday.  That's unusual for me and I know that, but I've been trying to make some sense out of the things that have happened to me over the last few days and quite honestly, I just can't. Sometimes you just can't know or understand the things that come at you and to be perfectly honest, I don't know from one day to the next what I'm doing with my life because so much of it is dependent upon another person.  I have this little moral problem that I can't solve; only God can.  For the last week or so, it's looked like it was going to get better, then got worse, then turned into, well, I don't know...  Yes, I know some details would be nice to have this story make sense and someday maybe I'll share them with you.  Right now, I just can't.  Sorry. What I can share with you is this, though... Through everything that comes my way, I've learned something.  Yesterd...

Hi, readers! I'm winding up an enjoyable three day weekend.  There's a roast in the oven, mashed potatoes and a vegetable are coming shortly.  The baseball game starts in about 30 minutes.  I had an enjoyable experience at church and I've spent the afternoon educating myself about organizations that help others in a couple of communities, including my own. These organizations have been on my mind for the past few days. As our Government seeks to cut discretionary spending on programs like Medicaid, a lot more of our neighbors are going to be looking to these church and community organizations for help.  As prices for things like food and gasoline start to climb (Hershey's announced an almost 10% across-the-board increase in their products last week), I worry about the toll that takes on our churches and charities across the country.  With government out of the picture, who steps in and fills the void?  I wonder how family budgets will cope and when a ...

Yesterday was just beautiful, wasn't it?  Lots of sunshine; lots of people enjoying spring.  It was a great day to get some yard work done, too.  I have a tree that doesn't lose leaves, it loses the branches the leaves grow on, so I was able to get them all raked up and the leaves that blew in over the winter, too.  I took some time to survey the other lawn I take care of.  It'll need to have a mower run over it sometime this week, but I think it's presentable for this week.  Today or tomorrow I'll change the oil in the mower for the season.  Maybe in the car, too. I guess I should have taken care of those two chores yesterday but I had a bit of a hectic day.  I took Chevron in to get her inspected.  She didn't pass.  I forgot that when someone tried to kill me ( an overly dramatic, but accurate description) last spring by loosening the lug nuts on my front tire, one of the wheel studs broke off.  It's easy to fix, but you have to...