Notes From My Journey

Are people supposed to just smile and say, “Fine!” and talk about unimportant things and move on?

Are people supposed to say, “I’m breaking apart on the inside and I just want to run away from something that I can’t run away from because it’s inside me!”

If people smile and say “Fine!” their hearts get hollow, then hard, then brittle, then break.

If people say, “My life is on fire!” and try to tell it to the wrong person, it is very uncool.

Sometimes people can’t smile and say, “Fine!” anymore and they just say “It hurts so bad I took the plunge into being uncool because I don’t know what else to do!”

What if I’m a wrong person? What if I wince and turn away and leave the cry of pain hanging in the air?

What if I don’t turn away and I listen and take some of the pain myself? Is that enough? Is there anything else I can do?

I mean what are people supposed to do, just smile and say, “Fine?”

My second project for the day was installing a ceiling fan in the bedroom.  We’ve had the fan for a month and today is the day to git ‘er done!

I carefully opened the box, found and removed the packet containing the instructions.  I’ve learned from previous installation projects that it’s good to read the instructions before ripping open the box and scattering all the parts around the house.

So I read through 6 pages of step-by-step, detailed instructions (with photos and diagrams) and it really looks doable!  I can’t quite picture all the details, but it looks like it will make sense when I get to it.

The first thing is to make sure the electrical box you’re going to install it to is UAL approved and properly fitted, then go for it.

I took the existing light fixture down and discovered that the existing electrical box is plastic and is not properly anchored to a ceiling joist or support bar and I have no idea what to do next!

Thinking it through, it seems that one might go into the attic, try to avoid falling through the ceiling, and carefully fit a support bar between two ceiling joists at just the right location to match the hole in the ceiling sheetrock, install an approved electrical box, and properly attach and anchor the electrical wires.

Thinking it through again, that’s way beyond my agility level (climbing up a ladder, through a 16-inch hole in the closet ceiling, picking my way over the wall into the space above the bedroom, crawling across 14 feet of ceiling joists – and then discovering I forgot the tape measure).  It’s also way beyond my skill level to think I could get the support bar cut and installed so it would support the weight of a ceiling fan.  And I have no doubt we’d have a sort of oblong hole in the ceiling sheetrock about a foot from where the fan should go.

So I put it all back in the box for now as I settle down to await a visit from a carpenter-electrician angelic being who will figure out what to do next.

I did, however, manage to put the existing light fixture back and it still works.  So at least we’re no worse off than when I started.  Oh, and I vacuumed up all the sheetrock, insulation, and plaster dust I scattered all over the bedroom.

1 I love the Lord because he hears and answers my prayers. 2 Because he bends down and listens, I will pray as long as I have breath! (Psalm 116:1-2 NLT)

I’ve learned so much about the relationship between God and me from my dog Buddy. On a Friday morning in January 2003, Jean and I visited the local Humane Society and I saw a black and brown dog in a cage. I’m pretty sure I loved this dog from the moment I saw him, and Jean and I immediately made arrangements to adopt him. When we chose to adopt him, we rescued him from an unknown fate. When we chose him his life (and ours) was changed from that moment. When we chose him, we chose accept responsibility for him for as long as he lives.

I love Buddy because he’s my dog and I chose him. He loves me (affectionately, trustingly, dependently) because I feed him, provide for him, and care for him in ways he cannot even think or imagine in his little doggy brain. Buddy has no idea how much Jean and I actually do to care for him and provide for him. As long as there’s food in the dish and water in the bowl and a ride in the car and a run in the desert, he’s happy with his life! He’s happy to be my dog Buddy.

God loves me because he chose me. God chose me because of his mercy, compassion, kindness, and grace. Because he chose me, I’m his born-again, rescued, adopted child Jimmy. When he chose me, he accepted responsibility for me for as long as I live. My relationship with God is based on my dependency and his sufficiency. He cares for me and provides for me in ways I can only imagine. And I so quickly forget how much he does for me. There’s nothing like prayer to keep things in perspective. I pray because I have needs. I love him because he hears me and responds to my prayers.

God loves me because he chose me. He chose me because he loves me. He hears me because he is God. He answers because He is good. I’m happy to be his rescued, adopted son Jimmy!

Prayer:

Father, 12 What can I offer you for all you have done for me? 13 I will lift up the cup of salvation; I will praise Your name for saving me. 14 I will keep my promises to You in the presence of all Your people. (Psalm 116:12-14 NLT)

To shrink back from all that can be called Nature into negative spirituality is as if we ran away from horses instead of learning to ride. There is in our present pilgrim condition plenty of room (more room than most of us like) for abstinence and renunciation and mortifying our natural desires. But behind all asceticism the thought should be, “Who will trust us with the true wealth if we cannot be trusted even with the wealth that perishes?” Who will trust me with a spiritual body if I cannot control even an earthly body? These small and perishable bodies we now have were given to us as ponies were given to schoolboys. We must learn to manage: not that we may some day be free of horses altogether but that some day we may ride bare-back, confident and rejoicing, those greater mounts, those winged, shining and world-shaking horses which perhaps even now expect us with impatience, pawing and snorting in the King’s stables. Not that the gallop would be of any value unless it were a gallop with the King; but how else—since he has retained his own charger—should we accompany him?

C.S. Lewis – From Miracles

Princess Eve, the King’s oldest daughter, was kidnapped from the palace by an evil witch. The Kingdom was in an uproar as a fruitless search was made of every town and village, every farm, every forest camp. The princess was gone.

Nearly ten years later, Andrew, the King’s most trusted aide, was passing through a dismal town near the southern border of the Kingdom. As he watered his horse at the well in the town square, a raggedly-dressed girl came to the well for water. She was dirty and bruised and walked with her shoulders slumped and her head down, yet there was something, just a hint of dignity in her walk and her manner.

Andrew called her to him and asked her name and where she lived. She shyly replied, in the local accent, “My name is Sadie. I’m an orphan. I belong to the wealthy man who owns the bank in this town.” “Give me your hand, Sadie,” Andrew said. He took her hand and pushed back her sleeve and there on her forearm was the heart-shaped birthmark that confirmed to him she was really Princess Eve!

Andrew took her from the town and within two days she was back in the palace. It took weeks for Princess Eve to become healthy again. It took even longer for her to learn to trust, to smile, to realize she was safe now from the abuse she had suffered. But what a glorious day it was, when the King called a national holiday, a day of rejoicing, and brought Princess Eve out on the palace balcony for all the people to see! Then, at last, the story could be told, that Sadie the slave was really Eve the Princess and that she was home, safe at last!

18 Yet what we suffer now is nothing compared to the glory he will reveal to us later. 19 For all creation is waiting eagerly for that future day when God will reveal who his children really are. (Romans 8:18-19 NLT)

I’m compiling a year’s worth of my GraceNotes daily devotionals into a book. I’m working with the devotionals from 2009, when I was reading in the New Living Translation, using my usual through-the-Bible-in-a-year reading plan.

These devotionals became the first year of the daily GraceNotes by email series and I was beginning to work at making my writing a little tighter and limiting myself to a page of text for each devotional article.

Now that I’m putting them in a book, I’m learning a lot! For one thing, a book page doesn’t hold as many words as an 8.5 X 11” sheet of paper! So to fit each devotional on a page in the devotional book, I’ve got to trim some words from some of them.

I also discovered that my devotionals varied by as much as 35% in length. So it makes sense to work toward a more consistent length for each and all of them. This requires editing. That means cutting out some words that at one point I felt were necessary words – words that had to be present in order to say what I intended to say.

In this process (there are 365 devotional articles to read and adjust as required!) I’m learning a couple of other things as well. I just realized, after painfully going through the first 100 or so articles, that I am writing better now than I did two years ago and it’s worthwhile to make some changes that make it better for the folks who will read it!

Another thing I realized at about the same time is that these are my words and I am free to do what I want with them! I’m not obligated to leave a paragraph in if it makes the article too long and if I can get the message across without it. I can just cut it out and no one but me will even know it was there. And that it’s gone! Amazing!

Anyhow, this is a healthy process for me. It’s also plain old hard work! And that’s good for me as well.

I’ll keep you posted on my progress as we go along.

I’m writing this at about one a.m. and that’s not the wisest time to write something that someone else may eventually read!  Oh well, let’s roll.

I woke up from about two hours’ fitful sleep and discovered I’d been dreaming some pretty weird dreams accompanied by the words and music of “Seven Spanish Angels” by Ray Charles and Willie Nelson.  I vowed never again to listen to that song on YouTube just before going to bed.

Seven Spanish Angels is probably not a song you want to base your theology on, at least not exclusively.  “There were seven Spanish angels, at the altar of the sun.  They were praying for the lovers, in the valley of the gun..”  It goes on…

YouTube is becoming a universe in itself.  A couple of years ago, when I’d search YouTube for an obscure song that only I and four other people on earth would even think of or remember, I’d be lucky to find even a jumpy, low-res video from a hand-held recorder in a low-light setting in someone’s basement.  Now I can search the same eclectic mental play-list and come up with dozens (well, three or four) versions shot professionally and recorded flawlessly.

Two other songs I thought of and listened to before heading off to bed a few hours ago are “The Late Night Benediction At The Y’All Come Back Saloon”  and “My Heroes Have Always Been Cowboys.”

If you’re reading this late at night, just before heading off to bed, I can only hope that you click on the link and have a listen.  Then good luck with getting it out of your brain!

Sweet Dreams!