Impatience and a 40 MPH Speed Limit

I guess you’d say I’m an impatient person. Sometimes I yell at the microwave: Come on! One minute – are you KIDDING me!

I realize this is not one of my finer qualities. I like to excuse myself by saying, well, I just want to get things done. I don’t have time to dawdle. (How annoying is that, with the undercurrent of ugly pride? Okay, you got me.)

Anyhow I’m trying. I know patience is not only a virtue but a fruit of the Holy Spirit’s ministry in me. Although some of the spiritual fruit seem to be developing awfully slowly. (Come ON! Oh, oops…)

Four Lessons on Trimming a Puppy's Toenails

In August we got a new golden retriever puppy. We named her Mercy, which is what we’ve been asking God for ever since.

Anyway, I’ve been a dog owner all my life, but I’m always open to learn new things. Like yesterday when I decided to trim Mercy’s toenails. My experience taught me some important lessons that I want to pass on as a public service.

Bobby and the Sunday Gunfight

Readers of my blog know I sometimes post fanciful pieces – fiction, humor, poetry, dog stories, even. Anyhow, the following is of that sort. My wife loaned me a book on creative writing. It gives you topics to write on, supposedly to fire up your creativity. This one was titled “It was Sunday morning.”

Bobby stepped off the boardwalk and looked down the dusty street. He repositioned the stiff leather gun belt and holster on his thin hips, and wished he’d had some time to practice.

Black Bart suddenly emerged from the livery at the other end of town. Even at 50 yards away, he seemed huge. And getting bigger. He was striding forward, his right hand hovering over his own holstered weapon. Bobby took a tentative step to meet him. 

Poor Fluffy

Anyone who reads this blog knows that I have a soft heart (insert your own joke here) towards pets, especially man’s best friend. I know by experience that the death of a pet brings genuine grief. My recent post about our dog’s demise will back me up on this.

I also know that some of us in the Pet Lover’s Fraternity may go a little overboard in the way we treat these furry creatures. And this is especially evident for people who are not pet people. They think we’re really weird and cannot imagine why we even put up with our animals in our home, let alone grieve for them when they're gone.

I get this perspective.

Three Jokes That Made Me Laugh in the Middle of Life’s Heaviness

My blogging has been very light lately. I think my creativity is at a pretty low ebb, and the reason seems to be that I’ve been preoccupied with some unusually serious issues. I’m not complaining. We all deal with hard things from time to time, and as a pastor, it goes with the territory. Jesus is still on the throne, and I know He’s working His will.

But one of the gifts God has given me in the middle of Heavy Things is laughter. More than once in recent weeks, my wife and I have been stressing late at night, and what helped us keep our sanity is silliness. Busting up over dumb jokes, or stupid movie lines we both remembered.

Here are three examples that cracked us up.

My First Colonoscopy

This past week I had my first colonoscopy, long overdue. I didn’t even intend to have it. I quite innocently asked my family doctor, "So does Kaiser still do colonoscopies for people my age?" And he said, "I’ll set it up." (Wait…what just happened?)

Colonoscopies seem to make quite an impression upon people. You never forget your first one – though, of course you try through years of therapy. Just kidding. It’s similar to, I suppose, your first roller coaster, or maybe your first car wreck.

Anyhow, I thought I might share some of my reflections, for the benefit of you who are yet uninitiated, and perhaps to the fond recollection of those who are.

Mustard on Ice Cream and Chocolate Covered Raisins

A few weeks ago my wife and I took Madalyn, our five-year-old granddaughter, to the zoo. We ate lunch at one of the many overpriced fast-food places. We had chicken strips, a cheeseburger, and ice cream. And that’s where the mustard came in.

I had a sudden inspiration that I could convince my granddaughter to try mustard on her ice cream. Sure, it’s a devious trick to play on a child. And it probably proves that I’m a terrible person and an unfit grandfather. Okay, good points.

But look at it from my perspective: I doubt that I can really fool Madalyn about anything for too much longer. She’s pretty smart, and is already kind of “on to me.” She has begun to respond to my many ideas with kind-hearted skepticism. (“Oh, Papa…”)

That’s where the mustard-on-ice cream started. She didn’t believe me at first. I said things like, “Hey, you should try some of this mustard on your ice cream. It’s the bomb. You’ll love it!” She smiled politely, but wasn’t buying it.

And by the way, just so you’ll know what kind of uphill battle I have to fight, my wife is no help in times like this. In fact she refuses to play along, even though she knows this would bolster my self-esteem and contribute to the overall hilarity of our family. But no. (Pray for her…)

Harry Potter?

Nearly all of the over 260 posts on this blog have been my attempt to focus on spiritual things, and especially to "admire Christ." That remains my reason for writing.

But once in a while I am hit with a bit of whimsey. So let me apologize, in advance, for this post.

The other day I was looking over the cable channel menu and it occurred to me that there is always a Harry Potter movie on somewhere. I’ve not read any of the books, but did catch some of the movies. Whatever else you might say, they have interesting titles - Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, etc.

All of a sudden my brain created some new Harry Potter volumes.

Harry Potter and the Suppurating Sore

Harry Potter and the Monstrous Ego

Harry Potter and the Empty Chamber of Geraldo

Harry Potter and the Fiery Bean-dip

Harry Potter and the Half-Soused Raja

Harry Potter and the Psychedelic Sphincter

If you have J. K. Rowling's contact info, feel free to forward this.

Red or Black, You Better Stop

I’d like to think I was just distracted. My wife and I were driving home, and the route we take goes over the freeway. On and off ramps guarantee that the street is usually packed with cars.

I stopped at the light, as cars streamed through the intersection. I continued an anecdote I was sharing with my wife. At this point my brain apparently clicked over into an alternate universe, and I concluded that I was not at a traffic light, but a stop sign. Which, as everyone knows, means you come to a complete stop, look both ways and proceed through the intersection.

So that’s what I started to do. Despite the fact that approximately fourteen thousand cars were still zooming through the space our Corolla was about to occupy.

My wife, watching in disbelief as I began moving confidently forward, started screaming, “It’s black! IT’S BLACK!” while gesturing wildly at the red light.

This shocked me back into the Land of Trafficular Reality, and I slammed on the brakes. “Black!? Where black?” I yelled incoherently.

So we sat silently, waiting for the light to change, watching cars whizz by, with our vehicle sticking out about two feet into the intersection. After a moment I said quietly, “Black?” while squinting up at the red light above us. We both began to laugh, all the way from when the light changed, until we pulled up to our house.

I even thought of some morals to the story...

• We are all capable of dumb mistakes. Sometimes a simple dumb mistake could end in disaster. We need people around us to help stop us before it does.
• Just as a rose by any other name would smell as sweet, so it doesn’t matter whether you call it red or black. When the light says stop, you better stop.
• Laughing at ourselves is a sign of humility. It also makes life a lot more fun.
• In the end it is only the grace and sacrifice of our Savior that keeps us from an eternally fatal crash.

The Broken Plant, Revisited

A few months ago I told you the tale of The Broken Plant,  which you can read again with much hilarity by clicking here.

Or I could summarize, with less hilarity: I sat on one of my wife's house plants and broke off a main stem. Since my wife inexplicably likes these things, sitting on one of them was not the smartest thing I have ever done. To be honest, it joins a very long list of "probably not the smartest things" I have been compiling over the course of our marriage. So I suppose she should be used to random acts of plant-breakage.

But I immediately took the coward's way out and stuck the broken branch back into the dirt. My granddaughter, who witnessed my horticultural mayhem, counseled me to come clean and tell Nana. "Just say you're sorry." This proved to be great advice. As King David said, "when I kept silent, my bones wasted away through my groaning all day long." Of course he had committed adultery and murder, and all I had done was murder (so I thought) a peace lily. 

But the principle is the same. Fess up, throw yourself on the mercy of the court, tell your wife you busted a cap in her plant, so to speak. And I did, and Dionne wasn't mad at me. 

Actually she started watering my hastily buried branch, and now, five months later, the whole plant is doing great. Go figure. This picture, which I took with my dumbphone, shows the actual plant, with the actual branch, growing like a weed. Or a peace lily. (I added the arrow. We don't really have a literal red arrow floating above our hearth.)

Anyhow, I'm sure there are lessons to be learned here. For example, my wife did an internet search for "peace lily," and found out this plant has, and I quote,"resiliency and a forgiving nature." No kidding.

But, no, I mean spiritual type lessons. So here are three:

1. Don’t trust your instinct to cover up brokenness. Truth and humility are always a better way to go.

2. Listen to little kids, especially your grandchildren. They can be pretty smart.

3. Maybe what you think is irreparable might not be. If Christ can forgive people like you and me, busted plants can grow again. And who knows what else He might fix?

The Broken Plant

A couple nights ago I got to babysit our two grandchildren. My wife had to leave for part of the evening (how convenient!) so I had the two kids all to myself. My granddaughter is four and a half, and my grandson is a year and a half. And I was born during the Harding administration.

I got ready by chugging a five-hour energy drink and strapping on body armor. Just kidding.

Actually I got ready by childproofing our living room a little bit. I moved the big matches on the fireplace from the hearth to the mantle, put away a container of pens and pencils, and stored my wife’s cross-stitch project in the closet.

                                                                                                          

Then I dragged the coffee table out of the way, and slid the big leather chair in front of the loveseat. That way we could hurl ourselves from one to the other without being impaled on the corner of the table. And by “we” I mean, of course, the grandkids. I didn’t actually hurl myself, though I did lurch, stumble, and wobble a couple times.

We had a great time. We watched Thomas the Train on Netflix and sang the songs together. We all made loud, crazy noises and ran laps around the furniture. We played tag, with me holding my grandson on my shoulders while my granddaughter easily outran us. We dropped tennis balls in the dog’s water dish. Then we got our own water to drink and also to pour onto the loveseat. We hid under our blankees and snuck up on one another. It was pretty fun.

When I Almost Lost My Mind on a Prayer Retreat

This week I got away for a prayer retreat. I had a motel room near the ocean, and I planned to spend the better part of two days and nights praying for my family and for guidance for the new year.

 The first afternoon I sat with my laptop, beginning to list all the things I wanted to pray about. I got up for a drink of water, and suddenly I heard a “beeping” sound. It seemed to be coming from the bathroom, but it stopped when I went to investigate.

I turned around and heard it again. Beep, beep, beep. Maybe it was the smoke detector, I thought. I walked back into the bedroom—more beeping. But when I stood in the center of the room, nothing. I started to sit down on the couch, and beep, beep, beep.

Maybe it was coming from the room next door. I listened at the wall, resisting the urge to put a glass to my ear like they do in the movies. Wouldn’t want to get carried away. But no, the neighbors were quiet.

Honestly, this is the kind of thing that drives me nuts. I am overly sensitive to noise, and have been known to hunt down crickets at night because they were cricking under my window.