Dreary days of fall.

I personally don't like the fall, I always hear the optimists talk about the beautiful changing colors of the trees and migrating birds and talk about how it's just sooo beautiful.... I live in the middle of Illinois, miles and miles of wasteland cornfields, stubble from the crop that once painted the road sides brilliant green and gold. Now I got semi's driving by my house all day and all night, I got the grain elevators with their driers humming all night long, I got a three story grain pile sitting on the roadside, I've got damp piles of leaves, that I don't ever remember them changing colors, piled up in my front yard. By the time I get home from work it's dark out already, it just seems that I miss the day every day. I've always had this kind of disdain for the fall but there is one thing I do like about the fall... and that's the winter that follows. See I like the cold, I love the snow, I love being able to go out side at midnight and it still be bright out from the moon shimmering off the snow. I love shoveling snow, I love helping get peoples cars out of ditches, sometimes if the circumstances are right I even like getting stuck in ditches. I like the slick roads and having to drive carefully, I like scraping ice off my windows in the morning, I even like waking up in the middle of the night freezing because the fire died down. I have no idea why I can enjoy winter so much and loath the fall. Everything just seems to be dieing in the fall, corrupted and decaying. The winter brings snow, clean white snow, it covers the smelly decaying scarlet leaves, the mud ruts from the tractors, and the brown grass and wilted flowers.

Isa 1:18 Come now, and let us reason together, saith the LORD: though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool.

Even so, LORD come quickly....

We may have a new president, but God is still on the throne and whether we understand what is going on or not his will shall be done. Plus, Obama can't be any worse than the rulers of Christ's day, remember what happened with the Church in those days. There are several major issues that Obama is wanting to allow swift approval for that we should be in prayer for. One is a lift on all bans concerning abortion, another is the hate crimes bill that will make witnessing very hard and preaching about sin even harder, and there is also a bill coming up called the fairness doctrine that will mandate opposing views on talk shows and radio shows. So your favorite conservative radio show host will have to share his time with a left winger, or your favorite christian broadcasting station will have to share time with athiests, muslims, or scientologists. We as christians are to be anxious for nothing, and I'd have to say I'm not scared so much as I am excited. In our weakness his strength is made perfect!

Lil' Momma

Chloe made this dish for a cook out last Saturday. This picture doesn't say the half of how excited she was. I'm going to have to start eating twice as much just to keep her and my wife encouraged about their cooking!

I've been encouraged!

I almost called it quits on my air conditioning business. I've had a few jobs go bad, everyone told me I would, and I've lost a bunch of money... well it's a bunch to me anyway. I was going to let a few of my warranty jobs run out then cancel my insurance and call it a day. I get discouraged easy when I make a mistake doing a job, or when it takes longer than I thought, or when I don't make the profit that I thought. Well last week a brother called me up and asked me to do a job that I bid for him... a year ago. I told him I'd really rather not and tried to get out of it the best I could but he insisted that I do it. He really wanted me to do it. We worked out the details and I took it. This time though I decided I wasn't going to let myself get stressed out, I decided I was going to take my time and most important... Take my son along. Gage, age 8, came with me all three days of this job. He helped me and encouraged me through all of it, I also decided to have a friend from church help out. I learned two important things this weekend.
1st remember why I started HVAC in the first place. One day me and my sons may have a business that supports two generations. I want to be able to work along side of my boys! Fully self employed with 2 or 3 or 4 or more employees, how ever many boys we have! With a support staff of a loving wife and daughters back at the office! That's something to stick through the stress for.
2nd don't be afraid to ask for help. My son was a huge help to me, just having him around kept my stress level down, plus I wouldn't work myself too late into the night with him there (know when to call it a day). Also, my helper from church saved me at least two days of labor at the job site. He was a hard worker and very resourceful.

Pride... The barer of anger...

One more quick post for the day. I've posted before on a character quality that I'm trying to improve on in my life. Humility. Well one of the things I have to overcome in order to show humility would be pride and it's products one of which is anger. I never thought of my self of being prideful until I searched for humility in my life. Well for the past several weeks the LORD has been working in me for this goal. For me to be humble though I need to allow myself to be "subdued" to the will of GOD. Well pride doesn't allow you to be subdued, pride resists, pride claims authority. Well I've been doing ok in this, my wife and I are enjoying a more open relationship because of this realization that my wants and will are not meant to be a control over my wifes wants and will. Pride would say "me first" and "who is she to tell me". Humility allows room for her to be what God made her to be, my help meet. Anyway, the guys at the rehab clinic would call this a relapse... There was an incident last week, notice I didn't put this on my blessings post from a couple of hours ago, where pride came rolling back in but in a new way that I wasn't prepared for. It happened Friday afternoon, I got home early and was really tired. I had been working allot of overtime and have been running around trying to get our facility in shape for a semiannual inspection. So when I got home I was really wanting to rest. About every other Friday there is an auction here in town, we like to go usually but I was beat. So I let Jamie go by herself and I was going to "watch" the kids. I say "watch" because I was going to let Gage watch them in his room while I lounged around and rested. Well I never could take a nap but I tried. Chloe, bless her heart, was so excited about taking care of daddy again that she would ask every so often if she could go cook supper. Finally she came out one too many times for this proud man and I got testy with her and she went back to her brothers room, shutting the door behind her... I want to stop here and state that this is where I should have repented but didn't... The door closed with some force but not like she was meaning to. One thing though... It closed soundly on Rissy's finger. The sound of the door closing with the screeching of pain from our lil' one scared me... my first thought was that she lost a finger. PRIDE. I had no control over the situation and it scared me, I was scared angry. I wasn't really mad at Chloe, she didn't know or mean too. I was angry because an authority my pride created in me had been insulted and ignored. Of course I don't have control over that kinda thing, it's not my authority to decide whether or not a child's hand is in a door at that specific time. But my pride said it should be, and it produced an anger in me that scared my children to tears. This isn't all bad though, while I may have failed in how I responded to that situation, I immediately sought forgiveness from my children individually, told them where daddy failed and that it wasn't their fault. A few months ago my pride would have claimed my angry outburst as a victory and moved on. Growing into the Image of Christ. Ephesians 4:11-15

I could do this more often!

I haven't got to do this with the lil' one for months and months. This is me and "Rissy". She's such a prissy momma's girl and rarely wants to snuggle with daddy. She's going to be a girly girl, which is great, but I thank God for flu's and pink eye. Poor Rissy roo got pink eye over the weekend. This is day two. She just wasn't feeling good and wanted rescued.... In comes Daddy The Rescuerer! Some things take a momma's touch and some things take the comfort of a pappa. Praise GOD this took a pappa! We were laying on the couch in front of the fire cozy as can be. Side note, two full days and a night is all it took for her to get over the pink eye. We used an herbal rinse to clean her eyes, and applied warm tea bags to help sooth and cleanse.

Living Witness!

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Cracked Jar of Honey!

Our church recently had evangelist John Bishop preach a youth conference and a 3 day revival meeting. We weren't able to make but one full day of it due to my work schedule but the day we did make was very refreshing. Bro. Bishop suffered from meningitis years ago that took out all of his memory, he pastored a church for 15 years and can only remember the 2 years following his illness. I don't know his complete life history, but I do know that he had to relearn everything, how to talk walk eat. He didn't even know who his wife was anymore. When we met him two years ago he couldn't speak very well due to the illness, suffered seizures, suffered from random cluster migraines that are so painful that doctors have to ask you by law whether or not you have thought about suicide. Well about a year ago those migraines took his site from him, he can now only see outta one eye with the aid of something that resembles a jewelers monocular. The first testimony we got to hear from him about the blindness is that now he speaks clearly, and he does. He says that God took his sight so that he wouldn't sound like a dumby anymore. He gave testimony after testimony of how the LORD has used his blindness to witness to others, he says that people are more receptive to him now because he's blind. He made one comment that I love, and that I think ties into an early post I made and one that a friend of mine made on his blog.

Bro. Bishop's comment went something like this, when my sight went out my ears stepped up and said hey the body is in need, now I can hear better than I ever could, my nose stepped up and now it's more sensitive than ever I can smell things better, I taste better and my touch is more sensitive. One member was in need and the rest of the body stepped up."

What a great picture of what the church should be and what a great picture of a humble heart. Gracious in trials to still praise God through it all. A friend of mine from Church said this about him, "he is like a broken jar of honey" once the vessel was broken the sweet goodness of Christ in him just flowed out. AMEN!

Field trip to get school supplies.

Today we took a 2 hour trip to the local Amish and Mennonite community. It was fun, I like seeing everyone working so hard on my day off plus, honestly, they live an intriguing lifestyle. A couple years back I took my wife to Lancaster Pa. for our anniversary, we spent a weekend there just site seeing and shopping around. The reason we drove 2 hours wasn't just to drive around and watch men harvest their corn, this particular community has a little book store about 2 or 3 miles outta town. It's run out of a large machine shed at an Amish families homestead. They carry a huge variety of home school curriculum and christian literature that sadly you can't find in any mainstream christian bookstore. After driving for 2 hours, stopping to eat lunch at Yoder's, we headed out to the book shop.... the entire road, for at least a mile including a bridge right before their house, was closed. We drove all through the country looking for a way around the construction. Finally we stopped at one of the road blocks and I walked about a hundred yards and stopped a guy on a steam roller to see how to get to that shop. He said as long as we stayed on the shoulder and didn't touch the new asphalt they were laying we could drive on down there..... I should have taken a picture of that shoulder. Huge ditch, steep, with a 6 foot shoulder and we're in a 15 passenger. ::sigh:: Praise God that he made us men so stubburn. I figured if I drove 2 hours just for this book store we'd drive through the corn field to get there if we had to. Well it didn't come to that but that would have been fun, instead we drove past the baracades on one end of the construction (the end where they were building the bridge) and parked our big ol' van behind their earth movers. We had to walk quite a ways and cross a plywood bridge down in a gully but it was worth it. I won!

Another Year Older!

Both of my boys will be turning a year older this weekend. Well Gage is 8 today and Hunter will be 3 Monday, so for me that is my weekend. It was a busy day, I was able to have today off work, I usually work Tuesday thru Saturday. We got up went to a soccer game, came home split a ton of wood. (I'll take this time for a little aside, Chloe did an amazing job helping split wood today, she emptied an entire trailer load of unsplit wood by her self! Mamma in training nothing she's gonna make a fine wife too!) Gage got a B-B gun from grandpa, his first, and spent every bit of free time he could come up with shooting at soda cans and pinned up papers. We had a cook out with grandma and grandpa too, bratwarst mmmm..... I got Gage a head lamp, I have one and he just loved it plus I figure it'll help him getting wood for mommy on cold nights, chasing cats from the chicken pin with his B-B gun after sunset, and finding his way to the bathroom down dark hallways! All Hunter can think of these days are dirt bikes, he loves em', you give him some toy trucks, tractors, and a toy dirt bike and his imagination runs away with him. We ended the night with ice cream cake.
They had fun today, and so did I but wow, really Gage is 8 today.... and Hunter is going to be 3. How precious and fleeting the time is. I still feel so young but my kids are getting so big. Train up a child while his is young sounded challenging when they were babes and it seemed like they would be young forever, now it seems like I may wake up and find that they are all grown up. LORD I pray for wisdom for these days are short and few.