Stories and other stuff

I got up at six.  I had an errand to run that didn't quite work out the way I wanted it to.  It worked out the way it was supposed to, but that's altogether a different story.  Or maybe it's just part of this one.  OK, I'm kinda 100% sure it's part of this one, but that part of it I'm going to keep to myself. So, there I was....no, not at 30,000 feet; mine was more like the parking lot of the Kohl's in Clinton.  It's 10:46 and I'm wearing a Bass Pro tee shirt and the dirty pants from yesterday.  I need a shower.  I did brush my hair before I left, but I'm not gonna win any fashion awards.  I'm not trying to impress anyone...I HAVE to get my kid his Christmas presents like NOW and I have a coupon. Church isn't on my radar screen.  It's all right sometimes to miss a Sunday because sometimes you get to BE the church.  But this Sunday it was not  all right to miss church, because if it were, then there wouldn't have been this b...

I was just sitting here thinking about something my roommate said today.  And I wonder why it is, that we so often are willing to share the little platitudes of the faith, but never the real story.  And what is it that keeps us from talking about the miracles that happen every day to us? I think I know.  Often times, it's either so unbelievable or overwhelming that we're not sure whether or not we actually believe it. I know that's a lot of why I don't share with all y'all like I used to.  I can't ask others to believe what I often don't understand myself.  Here's a case-in-point story that really happened.  Miss June actually had a Sunday where she could go to church and on the way home, she got a little choked up as she told me that when she sees Pastor Karl at the pulpit, all she thinks of is the day he stood at the top of the steps of a chapel on a beautiful fall day in October.  She said those words to me, and as she said them, we passed a car...

Because I'm so tall, I have a very large step.  A normal step for me is seriously about 36" and the estimate is so close that over 100 yards, I'm accurate to within less than a foot if you measure it.  I learned this by pacing off things like rooms in the house or the back 40 once. I used to tell my kids and when I was with my ex, to hold my hand because if you don't it's very easy for me to get ahead of you, however unintentional it is. Today, I'm remembering to hold God's hand.  So to speak.  I have a tendency to want to run ahead of Him.  OK, that's the job?  Let's get going!!  I don't wanna wait.  I'm all about getting busy, except for this time. This time, I understand that there's a plan and it's unfolding, but in God's time.  And as I look back, what's starting to happen is God is giving me the time to see relationships starting to develop.  Others are growing stronger.  Bonds are being formed in ways I don't...

Yesterday morning, I woke up and turned the radio on for noise.  I always have the radio in the bedroom set for 95.5 (BBN Radio).  The program that was on is called "Let My People Think" and is hosed by Ravi Zacharias, who is a tremendously gifted speaker.  He was talking about Christians and how we've kind of gotten used to doing things for ourselves and not expecting God to show up at events, like even during the sermon at church. At church, before the sermon, the pastor asked if anything unusual happened to me in the last day.  I shook my head no, but that was about to change. God always shows up.  I wonder though, how many times we're too busy waiting on or working for what we want, that we forget to notice. I sometimes don't know what to make of the things I see in my life.  I mean that.  Honestly sometimes I just think they're there to be seen.  Other times, I'm convinced they mean something.  But as I listened to the sermon, I he...

I waited all day for the UPS guy to show up, and about five he finally did.  I collected up my tinker toys and my furnace parts and proceeded to the basement.  They're installed, but not without incident. I own an air driven angle drill.  And a compressor.  They live in the garage.  Or did.  They're now taking up space in the basement, mostly because I'm too tired to move them to the garage.  I needed the angle drill to put new mount holes in the furnace for the new blower motor, which works just fine.  Unfortunately, it's a temporary fix.  I think it's time for a new furnace.  It'll make it the rest of the season, but in the spring and summer, I need to save up what little money I can to replace it. Because I needed the angle drill, I went to the garage to get the compressor and wheel it downstairs.  As Miss June and I rounded the corner of the house, we heard this unbelievably loud mewing coming from under one of our bushes. ...

So hopefully you read the last post.  If you didn't stop and read it before you read this one. On Wednesday evening, we were on our way to Logan when the young man who I was taking to see his mom for Thanksgiving looked up and noticed the car in front of us was from Indiana. I said nothing. Last night, I took a picture of Miss June and posted it to Facebook. When I got home from dropping said young man off at the Greyhound terminal in SLC this morning, this is what I came home to: Quite often, my life is too odd for words, but in God's providence, Miss June will find out about some sad news about her bestie.  Her and Judy were besties, but the old lady can't keep a cell phone for five minutes.  They wouldn't talk for months and then talk for hours on end.  I'm gonna hate telling her the news, but it's an example of how God can use anything to accomplish His purposes.

God works providentially in my life. By that I mean it's a co-mingling of circumstances, timing, and divine appointments that lend themselves to me, and sometimes others, seeing the I AM at work in my life.  I'm in awe and often left speechless by the things that happen. It can be hard to believe sometimes.  Sometimes I don't even believe it.  Of late, I'm praying that God will do something to help those close to me see that where I think I'm headed is the direction He wants me going in.  Although I don't understand it myself sometimes because I can't even begin to apply human understanding to it, I think it would be helpful to me to have the people I count on the most for advice and wisdom to be on the same page. At dinner last night, we were talking about Shetland ponies.  My uncle Bob (former uncle, my aunt is my mother's sister) had horses when I was a boy and he told me to stay off the Shetland pony.  My cousins talked me into riding it.  It...

On Thursday, we're going to have a feast here at Lark Circle.  It's not gonna be like an old-tyme king's feast, but just the same, we're having a feast.  We've much to celebrate this year and it's time to just have a feast in remembrance and honor of the God who provides. I see Him in the preparations for this feast.  It started with His hand in providing the very plates we'll be using, both at Thanksgiving and Christmas.  The Pfaltzgraff has been replaced (wrote about this earler) and we have an abundance of place settings for the feast.  I'm borrowing some tables and chairs from the church for the feast as well. Over the last few weeks, I've been shopping for the feast.  Some stores have better prices on this vs. that, and I shop around.  Our dinner this year comes from Macey's, Winco, Smith's, and the Commissary.  Macey's is the only store I know of that carries the frozen squash for the soup and has better produce than the others....

So, God answers prayers. My friend's wife was in the hospital with some internal bleeding.  He mentions it on Facebook and asks for prayers for her.  Several hours later, she was home.  The source of the bleeding stopped, in his words..."on it's own". Or maybe with help?  Often times, we look for prayers and then forget to acknowledge when they're answered.  Several friends prayed for healing and it took place....however it took place, on its' own or with some intervention from above.  Prayers answered. She's resting at home which is a blessing. So my mom gave me a car. I've been praying over my old truck.  I had to buy some wire to wire the two halves of the catalytic converter heat shield together.  The welds at the back cracked and it deployed like a flap on an airplane wing.  I need things to last sixteen more months or so.  The other day I asked God to please just glue everything together for the next 16 months. He bless...

OK, so a lot of things are on my mind today.  It's Veterans' Day.  I'm a veteran, but I'm not a combat veteran.  It wasn't my job to get shot at.  My job was to fix planes that delivered gas to planes that delivered bombs on the guys shooting at the guys whose job it was to get shot at.  We all have a part to play but I can't and won't compare my service to the real heroes.  I just did my job. And I did a good job, because when I left they got along fine without me.  That means I trained up the people to take my place.  The show went on.  It was supposed to.  And when the guys that I hired move on to the next stop in their lives, that show will go on.  It's supposed to.  I have every faith that it will. I got out at the right time for me.  When I had to as a Chief Master Sergeant, "When did an ass chewing cease to be an effective management tool in the United States Air Force?", I knew my days were numbered.  A co...

OK, so you're skeptical.  You read about all this stuff that I say happens to and around me and you just don't believe half of it.  If you have any sanity about you, you don't anyway.  Often times I don't believe what does. Tonight's post is about Facebook.  Facebook is cool because when you share stuff, it time-stamps things, so you can verify for yourself that I'm not ready for the funny farm. I have a FB friend named Bruce, and if your news feed is like mine, you'll see posts your friends like.  Tonight, Bruce "liked" a picture of a yellow and white old Chevy pickup truck.  The only reason I saw the pic is because he liked it.  It's not a page I look at because for starters, the Coops are a Ford family.  Or a Hyundai family, or OK, whatever the hell we can afford family.  But I love my Ford pickup. The truck has, and I kid you not, Oregon plates. Of course it does. The last couple of posts have been about things I didn't see co...

As we walked out of the Intensive Care Unit, Pastor K turned to me and asked me "In the seven or whatever years ago when you first walked into my office when you and Wendi got married, did you ever think you'd be doing hospital visits and praying for people?" Um.  No, I never saw that coming. A couple of guys from the Rescue Mission are ill.  We missed them at Bible study this morning so we went and saw them afterward. I've learned to not expect anything in any given day because I just never know what's coming next.  Sometimes, what comes is an affirmation of something; just a little way to know God is here, in the rainy season. We were talking about Acts today at Bible study, and how a sorcerer named Simon offered to buy the gift of the Holy Spirit this morning and and wondered if the sorcerer was planning to use giving the gift of the Holy Spirit as a way to enrich himself.  The Holy Spirit came upon believers that Peter and John laid their hands upon an...

For all the things I do see in and around my life, sometimes the most obvious ones escape detection. I was a bit upset last month by something that happened, but with a couple of weeks of hindsight, I see the many ways God used that for good in my life.  That and reading a book that forced me to take a timely assessment of my life kind of showed me something I didn't see before. I struggle financially.  That's not a news flash.  But when I looked at my finances and looked at some of the programs on the TV in my home, I kind of thought it was time to make a change.  As for me, I watch mostly old movies, sports, and MSNBC.  There are other things on the tube though and it's easy to overlook what exactly some of the content is by saying, "well I don't watch those programs." Looking at my finances, I began to see that if I'm paying for TV while asking God to lead me to a place of being more obedient with my finances, then I need to be willing to sac...

I wrote the other day about taking stock of my life.  I listed some realities and some of those became painfully obvious the past week or so. Today's Our Daily Bread  devotional was like having salt poured into an open wound.  It hurt.  It hit me right where I am because it's something I failed at, got a second chance at, and now have to let go of for a season. Sometimes when you follow God, you get hurt.  Over the past month, there have been a number of hurts, failures, and setbacks.  It's those things that caused me to look at the realities of my life.  Faith walks hand in hand with reality; they don't exist on different planes.  Here's what I mean by that... My back hurts.  I have every confidence that the One who created me is capable of healing me.  I am still seeing a doctor and a physical therapist.  Faith tells me God can.  Reality tells me that He's gonna use something other than Divine intervention to get the jo...

Sometimes even I can't believe what happens around me, let alone TO me.  Today, even though my back is killing me (couldn't hardly sit through church, but glad I did and will get to that by and by), I thought it wise to write some things down and kind of do a reality check. I'm reading a book called Daring  written by Paul Louis Cole.  I've met Mr. Cole on several occasions and he's an interesting man to know.  I like the book, but got stuck on page 131 this week because I needed to answer several of the questions he posed to the reader. The first one was an admonition to recognize the season of life you're in.  My life is in a rainy season.  God gave me someone to have in my life a few years back and He told me to love her.  He told me all about her (hence the meme about loving the broken, hard to love, etc...yesterday) and I loved her until....and because of the until, I decided I didn't need her in my life.  And then I fell in love with her...

So the key to understanding me is simply this..... You can't. Not even I understand how or why some of the things that happen to me do.  Today's story is one on my Facebook page from earlier this evening.  Long time readers of the blog will understand the connection between the meme, the inspirational post that was randomly in my news feed, and the story about the Rosies. That happened.  I shared it. And this:  As I was waiting to turn on to 193 from the South Gate, the car in front of me, leaving the base, waiting to turn left as well, and the only other car in the traffic lanes at eleven p.m. on a Saturday night had Oregon license plates. Of course it did.

I'm reading a book I've had for over a year.  Finally.  But I got stuck on a section of it I can't get past without actually taking the time to evaluate where I'm at in my life and my walk with Christ.  I've been kind of doing that the last couple of days; maybe not so much out of want, but out of need. One of the things I needed to do was evaluate what the season of life I'm in is.  Applying the principles of the four seasons didn't seem to work.  I would like to think I'm in the 3rd quarter of life physically and time-wise.  But what season? After careful thought it came to me:  The rainy season. It's been raining in my life for quite some time and sometimes it takes a toll on me.  Things happen that really hurt.  A lot of things happen I just don't understand.  A long talk with God whist walking around the duck pond last night kind of cleared things up for me. Sometimes God is going to use me in a situation and I'm gonna get h...

So I was having not the best day yesterday.  I never said my life was easy and sometimes living out my faith isn't as easy as I'd like it to be.  One of the things I write the blog for is to tell my story.  Earlier, I told you the front half.  Here's the back half. I don't do pity parties very well.  It's just not something God wants for, nor allows me to participate in.  A lot of times, that's my problem.  It's hard to empathize with someone who isn't strong.  So sometimes God has to introduce some strife into my life to make me realize that He's the strong one.  Not me. I took a nap today.  My body rested.  My mind didn't.  After that didn't work out so hot, I got up.  I went outside and noticed the curb needed sweeping.  There were weeds growing in my gutter that were tall.  It was full of leaves and pinecones.  Not anymore.  I took care of it.  My back has been hurting and the lawn has kind...

If you walk into my house, one of the first things you're greeted with is part of a Scripture verse from Joshua 24:15, which says "...as for me and my house, we will serve the L ORD. The entire verse reads this way: Joshua 24:15New International Version (NIV) 15 But if serving the Lord seems undesirable to you, then choose for yourselves this day whom you will serve, whether the gods your ancestors served beyond the Euphrates, or the gods of the Amorites, in whose land you are living. But as for me and my household, we will serve the Lord. Do I mean it though?  I mean, really, do I mean it?  Especially when it's hard. I've had to do a lot of thinking about money (and mostly the lack thereof) this week and the reasons behind it.  I had a bit of an unexpected setback, through no fault of my own, and it forced me to stop and take a good long look at some of the things I believe about me, and about God's Word. I hate money.  I really mean that.  I hate ...

One thing I never got over from being a kid.  I never learned how to order chinese food properly. When I was little, this was chinese food: A container of sweet and sour spare ribs A container of ham fried rice A container of chicken chow mein--with crunchy noodles A container of ham fried rice A container of egg foo yung A container of fried shrimp That to me was how you ordered chinese food.  Until some friends of mine made me understand you order the dinner, or your order the combo. When you got sweet and sour from the Oriental you got little bites of meat on the bone still, and there were chunks of pineapple and green pepper in the sauce.  They didn't mess around.  And there was nice layer of grease that separated from the sauce when the leftovers were refrigerated.  The sauce used to kind of congeal like jello when cold.  It was so good! There is one place in Salt Lake that you can still find sweet and sour spare ribs:  The Kowloon ...

My youngest is living the working-man's life.  He didn't get to take today off and he missed out on a decent fishing trip.  Here's the story. My son and I went fishing today.  He showed up at my house at ten till five.  Usually I pick him up but today he drove up because the destination was a little further north.  He didn't want to meet me in Kamas.  Now he knows where the meeting place in Kamas is so maybe next time.  It's a shorter drive for both of us if we meet there.  Today though, I'm thankful he didn't meet me there. We talked on the way to the lake.  He asked if we could change the oil in his car when we got home.  I said yes.  He wanted to learn how to do it himself.  I wanted to teach him.  It worked out great for both of us. When we got to the lake it was still dark, so we just kind of sat there until the sun came up, just enjoying the time and the company.  When it was light enough to see, well, tha...

One of my favorite things in the fall isn't in existence this fall.   I really looked forward to being able to afford a bag of coffee beans this year.  I haven't been able to the last couple, but I found out this morning that Einstein's isn't offering their fall coffee. I have my little fall rituals.  Around Labor day, the Brach's mellowcreme pumpkins and autumn mix come out.  Jonathan apples are also an annual fall thing for me.  They sell another Brach's mellowcreme mix I like but the only place I can find it is Walgreen's so I make a stop there to pick it up.  And Einstein's for coffee. I had one cup last year.  I was thankful to have it. Things change.  People change.  Tastes change.  And sometimes I think that change is good so our little "things" don't define who we are.  I've been doing the same things for so long that they just become habit.  I think having "traditions" in your family is a good thing bec...

I took a little road trip to Tooele the other day.  It was a divine appointment with a young man who doesn't now, but will someday, have a part in my story.  It was two hours in a car, a conversation with someone who, from past experiences, could relate to a younger man facing a lot of stuff nobody should have to at 25. I didn't have my snow globe shaken until I turned 45 and like this young man, it was dumb choices of my own doing.  I understand addiction so much better than I ever thought I could because I had one, and it's one of those things, that by God's grace, He's taken from me.  The desire still rears its' ugly head from time to time, but I have better tools to deal with it.  Oddly, one came from a very odd source:  an old movie on TCM I saw from the 1930's, where a singer was singing about being tempted.  The title lyric was "Get the behind me, Satan." Power in those words, folks.  Let me tell you.  Jesus spoke them to Peter. ...

My life is never boring.  For a week now, I've been bugging the old lady to call her daughter.  Not really sure why; mostly because I had to explain to her for the umpteenth time that her daughter is in love with someone and she needs to accept it. I did several years ago. Anyway, she's been kinda hem-hawing about it but after today, she decided she ought to. You've heard these stories a bazillion times.  I'm someplace I'm not usually at, and something unusual happens.  Today's goes like this:  My mom came up and wanted some salsa made (thanks for helping me make it, mom!).  We ran up to the fruit highway and bought what we needed.  Usually, I just drive home the way I came because I like Highway 89.  It's a neat road to travel.  One day, I'm gonna drive the whole thing, but not time for that rabbit trail.  This time, though, I decided to take the freeway home, so while driving through Brigham City, by the Walmart, and stopped for ...

It's sad for me that my friend Jim is gone.  You don't really realize how close you get to people, until they're not there anymore.  Yesterday, I heard a good deal about my buddy Jim at his memorial service.  And fortunately, Jim had good friends as well that he confided in about some of the people in his life. Jim was my coffee drinking buddy.  At just the right time, Jim would call me and invite me to coffee or over to his house for a cup of coffee.  He was always good for a story, a laugh, some advice when he thought I needed it, and helped me diagnose the truck issue I had last summer.  Jim had just about every tool you can think of and was always kind enough to loan them to me when I needed one he had and I couldn't afford. I'm not sad for Jim though.  I know (and this is the first time I can say I fully understand that statement) that Big Jim is at home with Jesus.  He's not experiencing the physical suffering that kept him sidelined for...