Stories and other stuff

I'm very thankful for this rainy Sunday afternoon.  It's providing some time for me to rest.  I had a great time at church.  When I woke up at six-thirty this morning, I remembered it was pot-luck Sunday at church so I whipped up an old stand-by:  mac and cheese and sausages.  I couldn't think of what else to make.  I forgot about it until this morning so all I could come up with was that.  There wasn't time to bake. Anyway, last time I wrote, I mentioned we were going to talk about love.  Well, that's what I thought was gonna be a good topic but sometimes I think it's best to leave things unsaid in a public arena.  It's a subject worth talking about but because of the limitations of our language where we use one word for lots of different things, I'd spend all day rambling about something that wouldn't make sense. I told a story the other day.  It was just that; a story.  There isn't anything prophetic in it (at least I don't t...

My quest this year was to be a better steward of what God gives me.  It's involved painting my bedroom and such.  My bathroom is a work in progress that has been delayed for lack of proper funding for said project.  There have been more pressing things to use that money for.  I'll get there.  I'm not worried.  I'm being a better steward of the homestead.  And the funds. A couple of months ago, I asked God what was keeping me from Him and He was kind enough to show it.  That was right after the cat scratch fever episode.  I fixed that thing.  It was so hard for me to face what I once had been and the person involved but ever since then, things have changed in my life. The money seems to go just a wee bit further.  My time seems to be better managed and I don't feel like there's a hole in the bucket anymore.  It's kind of hard to explain otherwise.  The one big thing I can attribute it to is a Proverb I read about being ...

I swear, everybody from Wyoming must be in Ogden today. I shared this morning some stuff that happened to me yesterday.  I talked about the purge.  I should be having a nice day. I was. I ran errands.  I called the surgeon about sending my medical records to the VA.  He did once.  He will again. I have a meeting tomorrow so I thought I'd check the e-mail and there it was: Tami Anderson-Garcia.  With the subject heading "John". Tami Jo will forever be to me the woman at the well.  That was her description, not mine.  That story is only contained in the Gospel of John.  It's a great story if you don't know it.  My response to this was to go mow and trim the lawn. I am out of lawn bags.  I went to get lawn bags.  Pulling out of the circle, my neighbor waves me over and wants to chat.  We talked about a few things (oddly, marriage came up among them) and when he asked me about work, he asked me if I knew so-and-so....

I started writing a post last night about cleaning up my digital house.  I found that I'd become a bit of a pack rat; I had messages kept in Facebook from two ex wives and two ex-girlfriends.  I really don't need to keep these kinds of things anymore.  The divorce is final.  Wendi clearly moved on; so did Tami, and so did the squoze. It was the last one that caused me to clean up my house.  Being friends is fine but not when you're seeing someone else and all kinds of twitterpated about it.  I really don't need to open up Facebook and read about her new fella, especially since it's only been three weeks since I got the break up text.  The thing is though, I don't blame her.  She was so much like the last one in so many ways that it shouldn't surprise me that she was looking that quickly.  She wants to be Mrs. Someone.  I want to meet someone that would like to be with me for me. Maybe someday. Last night was a really odd night. ...

Originally this post was going to be about "Mrs. Somebody" but wisdom dictates that I just leave that one alone.  Besides, things are going all right; not perfect by any means, but all right.  We're scraping by.  We could use a little more ching around here but getting by on what we have seems to be working well for now. We're well blessed around here, by and large.  We have pets that are a blessing.  My sis just and to put down her pup.  Sad.  Katie won't be much longer for the world.  I can see it in her little face.  She's as sweet as ever but still, she's 11 and that's old for a Beagle.  I love that dumb dog. I told you the reincarnation of Snot is with us.  Still trying to figure out that one.  He's fun, though.  I will go before Miss June gets rid of that pussycat. That pretty much gets you caught up with the "this and that" stuff.  Let's talk about Kingdom things. You never know what you're going to say...

I made a mistake in yesterday's post.  The marriage chapter reading was not for yesterday, it was for today but I still think the whole point of the story is the same. The previous chapter that I should have read yesterday was chapter 6 of 1 Corinthians and I think there's some applicable material in that chapter too.  Again, lessons learned. I got an interesting e-mail yesterday from one of the guys in charge of the ministry I'm helping with these days warning us to watch out for spiritual attacks.  Like I said, if God is, then by reason, Satan is and spiritual attacks are a weapon.  Trying to deceive a maturing Christian?   Probably one of the tools in the Evil One's toolkit. So like I said, I'm waiting to see.  The thing has not come to pass so more and more, I'm thinking that this will be another life lesson.  I was reading a little Facebook meme this morning about scars life gives us.  I sure wish some wounds would scar over instead of ...

Today is the end of this nightmare.  I can't explain it any better than that but for the last month, I think I've been learning some tough lessons about marriage and relationships.  It all started with an instant message from Vincent (yup, that Vincent!) letting me know about his reconciliation with Wendy.  Yup, that really happened to me. Then the weird dream I kind of hinted about.  That one really messed me up.  Bad.  But if the thing comes to pass, it was from God.  If not, then I can tell you God is real because the antithesis of that argument is that if God is real, then Satan is real, and spiritual attacks on God's children are real.  There's no middle ground here.  Either God is gonna do something spectacular in my life or the Evil One was trying to trick me into doing something I shouldn't have. I defaulted to basics and remember that God doesn't change His essence.  He will change His mind sometimes, but not who He is; and ...

It's been so long since I've been blogging on a regular basis sometimes I forget what I've shared and what I haven't.  Keep this in mind as you read this. God gives us gifts.  My pastor has the gift of prayer.  I don't.  I can pray privately for you.  My pastor can pray publicly for a group and always have the right thing to say.  When I try to do it I stumble over the words and it feels clumsy to me.  In private, though, I have no such problem.  One has this gift, one has that one.  Some people are organizers.  Some are blessed with oratory skills and are good sales people.  Some are blessed with being a good listener.  I'm blessed with the gift of figuring stuff out. I prayed to God that I could find a way to use what gifts He's blessed me with to help out a group of guys in their ministry.  Quite by accident I found myself at a meeting I really didn't have any business being at.  I found out yesterday it was by...

Sometimes dreams mean things.  I've seen two examples of this recently.  A friend of mine had a doosey of a dream, starring yours truly.  I told someone else about the dream and that third person came to the same conclusion I did independently of mine.  That dream meant something. A week ago someone else told me about a dream to wake up the next morning to find out that dream was fairly accurate. Sometimes we just "know" things.  Sometimes dreams mean something. I had to tell y'all that so I could tell you about this (of course).  What story of mine is ever complete without at least one to two other stories to set it up?  Anyway, about three weeks ago, I had a dream and it was a doosey for me.  Without sharing the details, the dream was about NO! and a voice from the ethos telling me that it was now all right.  Me, being me, kept telling the voice in the ethos that God said NO!  This went on for about five minutes. And it's been ...

So, I haven't been very bloggy lately.  Not that there isn't stuff going on.  I'm just trying to make sense of it all. I don't dream much but when I do, boy do I have some doozies.  They haven't been of the drive-in movie variety.  They've been more of just five minutes of some very vivid subject matter that have ultimately led to pretty much the same thing:  No, not that, this! I also believe that when God is getting ready to do something, sometimes He lets you know He's getting ready to do it and it's entirely possible that the result might be:  No, not this, that!   Or I might just be up in the night.  Who knows?  I just know that when you don't know what to do, there is found in God's Word plenty of things that will at least help you decide what NOT to do.  I might not know if this or that is right, but I definitely know what wrong is. If you think you're confused at this point, you ought to try and be me for a day. I had the...

O, what a day. I went to paint some spots that needed painting in the church kitchen project this morning.  Before I did, though, I decided to stop in at my favorite small engine parts store and procure a carb. rebuild kit for the tractor.  It wasn't ever gonna run again without one.  Anyway, me being me, is minding my own business when one employee starts a conversation with the clerk waiting on me about updating price lists.  She said she had three to go. "What about Oregon; did you get Oregon done yet? "No, I haven't done Oregon yet." Yeah, me neither sister...... Round #2:  I see someone today I haven't seen in a long time.  It's a longer story than I'm going to tell because it's mostly private but I did something to this man a long time ago that I really feel God wanted me to make right.  I did that.  I apologized in a letter, in a phone call, and in person.  This poor guy has had a rough life.  Maybe me having to do this ...

Life is just funny.  I hope you'll see the humor in the short story I have to tell today. Today, we (being my Pastor and I) got together to pray for our nation.  The National Day of Prayer isn't until May but organizers thought it would be a good idea for churches to start early this year.  My pastor decided he would, so he opened the doors of the church so people could join together today and pray.  it was in the newspaper and everything. This country is in trouble.  And on top of everything, with the posturing and saber rattling, we're headed for a re-start of the cold war.  Christians are being beat down in the media and for some reason if the is country still trusts God, it sure seems we tolerate a lot of hate FOR God.  When people who mention God are booed, we have some problems.  It seems that prayer for the country is a good idea. So I showed up.  That meant he and I showed up.  And we prayed for our country.  You shoul...

Of the many things I can't figure out, there was one I was able to. I had to reset the satellite box back to "prehistoric" settings so my old CRT television would not show double images on the screen. Miss June is pretty smart but I figured that might be a little bit out of her reach, so after some thinking and playing around with the settings I was able, without the aid of tech support, to deduce what I needed to do and do it. It's been kind of a fix it day around here.  The squoze came up to move the stuff she was keeping here today (she was kind to let us use her fancy TV) so I went out and messed with the garden tractor.  The part that wouldn't go in the other day slipped in today so the fuel line has been replaced.  The battery is on the charger as we speak and tomorrow I will hopefully (and weather permitting) have it running. Then I can work on where the suspected vacuum leak is. A new garden tractor is a bit out of reach for me.  Heck, so is a us...

Oh, the days I have some days. I had a date last night.  We went to see "Son of God".  Take tissues if you go to see this.  You'll need them.  The depiction of how our precious Jesus was treated, how he was whipped and beaten is graphic and as a believer will leave you wincing with every lash, knowing that in part it was for your sins that He allowed Himself to be put through this.  The message of the cross is one of hope, but seeing this really makes the point come home that believers were bought with one tremendous price. After the movie I politely declined an invitation to dinner.  Mostly because I didn't sleep well the night before.  Partly because I knew what the topic of conversation was gonna be.  You can't be in someone's life for as long as I have been without making some kind of commitment, I suppose and I'm just not ready to do that.  My idea of slow isn't someone else's idea of slow.  So be it. I got the news via text. ...

I am officially having a week.  And it's only Sunday. I didn't sleep very well last night.  Why, I have no idea.  I have the worst stomach ache.  I get to go to Salt Lake today which is never my favorite thing to do.  I don't mind going; just the drive there and back. I promised pictures of the replacement pussycat.  It looks just like the old one.  It ACTS just like the old one.  It even walks like the old one.  He's taking over the joint.  He smacks the dogs.  He hates the other cats; except his mommy.  Her he likes. Anyway, here are the pictures.  You'd have to ask the ex for the before pictures.  I don't have any.

My former boss at the Air Guard passed away last summer.  It was kind of sad for me because we'd lost touch over the years.  It happens.  It's also why I like Facebook because I have friends I don't see much anymore because of time and happenstance but I do still care about them.  I honestly know every person who is a Facebook friend.  Anyway, my boss taught me many things; he taught me to be a good airplane mechanic.  I used to tell folks in fact that I wasn't the best...but I worked for the best.  He also taught me this little ditty that I never forgot. "If your shoe is in a knot, patience can untie it.  Patience can do many things.  Have you ever tried it?" As I said, I never forgot it. I can't sleep.  I don't know why.  OK, I won't say why.  I have a pretty good idea why.  Someone shook my snow globe again.  I don't know the who, the how, the what, the when, or the why.  But someone did.  That much...