...crunch, crunch, crunch

The driveway was a bit more thawed out today.

I suppose the rising temps had a lot to do with it, but as I got into the Burb, I still felt cold and longed for the warmer days ahead.

I feel as though we have been 'submerged' in a way and not in a comfortable way at that.

I listened intently to the conversations at the 7-11 as I stirred my coffee. It tasted good going down and I was immediately reminded of the "monthly cost factor" and smiled. Jack has been instilling in me more and more of his idiosyncratic ways, one of which is to multiply everything by 30, giving you a monthly cost on what you are buying on a daily basis. I suppose it is a good thing to be conscious of expenditures but sometimes I feel like certain things are more than a mere 'expense'. Some things are 'creature comforts' or a therapy of sorts that keep one going.

I for one definitely believe in 'treats'. I see some people with big frowns on their faces all the time and I tend to think that they don't 'treat' themselves to things. I'm not talking about extravagant items; no not at all. I'm saying that you need to exhort yourself once in awhile with a coffee from Starbucks or 7-11 and enjoy it on the way in to the office. Start your day off right. It doesn't have to be everyday, but at least a couple of times a week would be nice wouldn't it?

The brightness of the sun on the snow is only good for one thing; an instant headache.

I reached for my sunglasses only to discover that they are not where I thought I left them. Drat!

I hate it when things are not where I expect them to be, don't you?

A friend came by for a visit. He is feeling the pains of being uncomfortable in his role within the ministry. I have yet to see anyone that doesn't develop that issue over time. For some it comes after about a year, but for the most part it happens within the first 6 months of being placed into position. The nervous tension of learning the job dissipates and the person settles in and that's when it happens. They look around and begin to find fault. Especially if the ones around them are doing the same thing. It has a domino effect on people. But you know what? Bless 'em. They have a right to question and they have a right to speak their minds and they most definitely have a right to an opinion; so I think i'l just leave it at that and let the people in charge sort out the rest of it.

I got out of the Burb and walked into the church and right up to my office. How blessed am I to have so many things to do? How blessed am I to have so many friends to interact with on a daily basis? How blessed indeed.

...driftin', driftin', driftin'....

I was awake several times in the night. It's a usual happening.

I get up, walk around, get a drink, get soda, get sleepy and go back to bed. That's a typical night.

Last night was a bit different in that I monitored the storm everyone has been announcing for the past two days. You would think that that there aren't any other issues in the world but the local weather. Now I know that it is important to observe the weather and that lives are sometimes at stake when it comes to dropping temps and the like, but give me a break. Do the television stations have to broadcast nothing but weather all day long? There are other parts of the world to consider. How about the people in Uganda that don't have anything to eat today? Does that rate as a news? Or how about the 25,000 children that died last night somewhere other than downtown Oklahoma City? That might be something to notice.

My point is that we are somehow drifting away from the real issues in life and overtly concentrating on much lesser things, and I would add, much to our detrement.`The important things seem to get buried in between the 'fluff' content that is so irrelevant yet so prevelent. How do we get back to seeing and dealing with the real issues and center on things to do that help people in trouble instead of things that only pertain to our comfort?

I know, you're probably saying, "What's gotten John up on his soapbox today?"

I don't really know other than I feel helpless at times when it comes to being really effective in certain areas. We do so little for the hurting and so much for the hurtful. It seems disporportionate, if I spelled that right, and I for one would like to see more effort put into getting to the bottom of real issues rather than playing up the 'fluff''. I know we can do better, I've seen it happen.
On a lighter note, I am excited about working with Jack. His 'right down to it' sense of doing things reminds me of my grandmother. Her approach was always straight forward and to the point, never pulling any punches and forever the disciplinarian. I don't know which of them would be considered to have the better attention to detail ratio. I would call it a tie and go from there. Even though Nanny has been gone for quite some time now, I still look back to visions of her reactions to things I did or did not do. It can be inspiring and yet sting. Her usual reaction was physical and immediate, but I know she had my best interest in mind. At least I like to think that was the case. Its far more inspiring to leave it that way than to go another direction.
In the end, we can make a difference if we try. There shouldn't have to be 'Soapboxers' like me calling attention to the 'driftin'.

...the frozen ones

We left the house for church in time to stop by McDonald's for a Sausage Biscuit. The weather was very pleasant. I thought to myself how nice it was at the time and didn't think anything else about it until I walked outside a few minutes ago. The temperature must have dropped 20 degrees or more since noon. I don't guess I should be in the least bit surprised. After all this is Oklahoma.

I think the old saying, "If you don't like the weather just stick around a few minutes ", totally applies to the situation.

We're having a singing here at the church tonight. Ordinarily I would n't think much about it but I get to invite a couple of friends and that should prove interesting. One guest is an associate pastor at another church. He is Native American and really loves his heritage. I invited him so that he would do one of his Indian stories and play the flute. I love the sound. It's peace and harmony all rolled into one; ever so mellow. We played together at his church not long ago and it sounded pretty good. I'm looking forward to it.

The other guests are Kent and Phyllis; old time friends from back when Dianna and I attended Melody of Praise. They are special people. Phyllis has a puppet named Becky who seems more like one of her children than anything else and Kent plays several instruments.

This should prove to be a real fun evening.

... waiting for the 'bus'.

I think that I'm a lot like everybody else when it comes to waiting.

I try to be patient but then I think about how much time has gone by and I wonder if it couldn't be done faster and still yet, even more efficiently. I know, I'm bad. I try not to disassemble everyone else's designs but it seems to be a built in character flaw or something. Someone please tell me how to reverse this attribute; I don't want it.

The weather is really great today. I sat in my car enjoying the sun warming me; feeling the sensation of the increasing radiation through the glass. I can all but sense the onslaught of Spring. We are low on moisture though. Some parts of the country are inundated with flooding while we sit here in a mini drought. Go figure.

I got a very nice blessing yesterday. A friend of mine gave me a check to pay on bills. I hadn't thought that he had any money but there it was, more than enough to cover the electric bill for this month. I continue to marvel at God's capacity for providing. He must really love us a lot to do the things he does. I know there is just no way I can compete with that level of giving, loving, and plain old grace.

... the proverbial rabbit

I always did like to see things come together well. Even though it means subjecting oneself to a kind of humiliation, I think getting things right is better in the end than being 'the winner' of the argument or 'the contest'. I guess you could say that I consider my pride to be at stake when I sit down to write something for someone else. I have a tendency to think that I'm always right even when I haven't checked out the situation in it's entirety. And so I just 'take it for granted' that I'm putting down the right thing.

Of late I find that I'm not so often 'right' or 'as right' as I think I am. How humbling. How could I be wrong? Certainly not. That's just not allowed. I have to be right.... don't I? Not really.

Maybe I'm maturing after all. Maybe, just maybe, I'm finding out that I can step back and let the other person take the lead or have their say or , dare I say it, 'correct me"? All this time I considered my opinion above the others and discarded, for the most part, what was aid in passing, taking it with that justifying grain of salt and smirking in the background as though they were not 'up to it' like me. How course. I'm ashamed.

And so, today as a matter of practice, I will begin a new thing. I will try my best to listen better and endeavor to learn from others before I offer my sage advice and smokin' hot wisdom.

Maybe I can learn. Perhaps its not too late for this rabbit.

....how do you do it?

I finished a song today. It was one for King Music in Texas. They send me a poem and I add the music to it and send it back. Then they send them out all over the world and collect royalties for playing them on radio stations. So far I'm on stations in Germany, Australia, Netherlands, England and a couple of places I can't remember right now. I signed with the company a few months back and now they are also sending our music out along with their CDs. I hope to begin getting something back from that endeavor sometime this year. We'll see.

It feels good to finish a song. Sometimes I wonder if I'll get any more but then, out of the blue, there comes another one. God has been so good to me in that regard. He usually wakes me up about 3 o'clock in the morning and gives me a line or two. I know it's him. Who else would do such a thing? I can normally get most if not all of it done in the first sitting, but sometimes the words linger and I struggle with them and either take a break or go back to it after a little time has passed and I can approach it from a fresh perspective.

Church was interesting today. We just finished a revival. It was originally scheduled for Sunday through Wednesday but they decided to go on through Friday. Evidently no one showed up Thursday and Friday and we really heard about it this morning from Pastor Lantz.

He is so good to us. I hate to see him angry or distraught about anything. He loves us so. I know we must be a real test of his patience at times. Sometimes I just don't want to go but I make myself because I don't want to let him down. They have been so good to Di and I. We actually lived in the church for over two years. We were a couple of church mice so to speak, living upstairs in a room with no windows. I loved it and hated to move out but God had a different plan in mind and here we are with two grandsons in tow and waiting for what's next. Things can change in a hurry. I have quit trying to out guess the Lord. He is too tricky for me. I just go along with whatever he does and try to accept everything as a positive change. I used to fight him, inside, but I have realized that its useless. It's much better to adjust and look for what he is doing and try to work things out the way he wants.

A friend once asked me, "How do you do it?" He was talking about our lifestyle and how little we make in the way of actual money each month. "We have just learned how to trust God for what we need, I guess," was all I could think of to tell him at the time. He makes good money and doesn't lack for anything; buying whatever he feels like and doesn't seemingly have a care in the world. I don't know why we don't make any more than we do, its just the way it is and I have to believe that God wants it that way or he would give us more. It's to hard to try to figure things like that out, in my little mind anyway. I think its better left to someone that knows things about money; I certainly don't.

...decisions, decisions, decisions

I think the worst part about having too many choices is having to decide which ones to do and which ones to leave undone.
I counted the wesites today and we now have almost twenty online as we speak. I had no idea that I could do that many at one time. I have a couple of sites that I would like to work on a lot more than I do but I have "other duties" to perform that eat up my time on a daily basis.
I know all of us have busy schedules but I seem to have overloaded mine ...again.

Some of you will recall a man by the name of Jack McClung, the inventor of "Blue Stuff". I have begun work on his new product, "Jack's Answer". Should all go well, the website itself will be a fulltime job for the most part, so there again, I really need to look at what I'm doing here and make a decision.
I think it has more to do with wanting to be a part of as much as I can and I haven't learned how to say "no" very well so I keep getting 'deeper and deeper' in work with no real waay to accomplish what needs to be done. I can see that the work has begun to suffer as well and that is disturbing in and of itself. I have always been a man of my word but of late I find my energy isn't as good as it once was and I don't get as much accomplished.
...decisions, decisions, decisions.