January 30 – “Neil the Angel”

We finally got back to the house to do some work with the stuff in the back yard.  It seems like I've been pacing back and forth, waiting for the chance to get back at doing something.  It's been too cold for almost a week.  Now that's a very strange thing to say about life in Galveston, Texas.  And it seems like more and more other pressing matters have wormed their way into our life.  There have been some days where we couldn't have gone even if it was perfect weather.  Well, today was a great day and we made it.   It was afternoon before we got there, though.  This morning we drew up some sketches of where we wanted electrical outlets and light fixtures to be.  We were hoping our contractor would call and want to meet with us about windows or doors or plumbing or something.  No call.  But we did get that picture drawn.  Then after lunch we headed on down.  Finally.  Finally.   So why did I have such a feeling of malaise?  This was my chance to get some stuff cleaned and moved across the street to storage.  It was all I could do to decide where to start.  I finally settled on the remnants of our cedar chest.  It fell apart in the flood, but we saved the pieces of cedar.  For some reason it repelled mold.  I started to just move it over, but Chris reminded me it hadn't been cleaned yet.  So I set up one cleaning shop and she set up one of her own.  She opened a storage bin with our Easter decorations.  I noticed she threw away a lot of stuff.  Then she said she was going to wash all the plastic Easter eggs.  To me, that just seemed like a task that would never end.  I asked her if it wouldn't be easier to just buy new ones.  Not the right thing to say.  I had forgotten how hard it was to lose "our" things.  In the first place, replacing them with all new stuff is probably not going to happen for us.  We are using our insurance money to pay off our mortgage and get the house fixed up to live in again.  There's not going to be enough for brand new everything, so it gets frustrating to hear people say, "At least you get a brand new (fill in the blanks)."  Also, brand new things, or things donated by good friends, as great as they are and as much as we appreciate them, are never going to be the same as what had become "ours" over our 33 years of marriage.   As we sat in the house and "contemplated" the situation from our dual positions of depression, an angel walked in the door.  Oh, he looked remarkably like our neighbor Neil, but there's no doubt about it.  He was a messenger of God.  An angel.  He walked in and started on a tirade of encouragement like I haven't heard in years.  He pointed out how far we had come.  And how much work we have done.  And how fast the rest of our house was going to go.  By the time he took a breath I just wanted to hug him.   Reminds me of Hebrews 13:2-3: "Do not forget to entertain strangers, for by so doing some people have entertained angels without knowing it."   Father, thank you for sending us Angel Neil.  Amen.

January 29 – “Molehills”

I talked to our youth pastor today about this summer's camp in Glorieta, New Mexico.  He told me we have 29 signed up for camp.  That's a pretty incredible number for our little post-Ike Galveston Body.  Now we face the rather daunting task of fund-raising for transportation, counselors, and scholarships.  Then Mike told me he heard from the group that has become our sister youth group – kids from storm ravaged Port Bolivar, High Island, and Crystal Beach.  They plan to go with us to camp.  But now it looks like they might have as many as 16 students wanting to go.  They found out that there are spots available for them.  And this will be a great chance for that group to become a group.  Creative missions.  God is at work.   Today was my day to teach at Seaside Christian Academy.  The lesson was on creation.  I gave them each two minutes to create and draw a new species of animal.  They came up with some pretty wild things.  After class I joined them in picking up trash from under the new school building.  I didn't get to do anything at house other than pick up the mail.  Felt good to be doing something.   While doing it I realized something about the sense of humor of God.  The church has one of those signs outside that we put cute sayings on.  The one I chose for this last week was, "To make a mountain out of a molehill, just add dirt."  Now I understand the intended meaning. When you start spreading rumors and talking bad about someone it just causes a bad situation to get worse.  But the thing that hit me was, right after I put that sign up, one of the school Dads arranged for truckload after truckload of soil to be delivered to our site.  We could never have afforded to add that much dirt.  All of a sudden the molehill that was our school building site had become a mountain of fresh soil.  Never again would our vacant lot be called Lake Seaside.  And in the process, with the sign, God turned a negative proverb into a resounding proclamation of his power.  Once again, God is at work.   Seaside is in the process of trying to figure out where we are going now – now that the storm is over and the people are well into their reconstruction or retreat.  We are making a concerted effort to look for where God is at work around us so we can join him.    Romans 8:28-29 says, "And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose."   Father, come on.  Make mountains out of our molehills.  Amen.

January 28 – “One for the Money …”

It was pretty cold today, so no work on the house on our end.  We did talk to our contractor, though.  He said the next thing that needs to happen is the plumbing and electricity, followed by the air conditioning and heating.  The roof can't get done until after everybody else finishes poking hole in the roof.  We are supposed to meet with him tomorrow or the next day to go over the specifics of the windows and door order.  We also got the initial bid for the Amish cabinets in an email.  It was pretty impressive to see a picture of what we have been trying to visualize for so long.  Chris is way better at that than me, so I guess I was more impressed than she was.  She had already seen it in her head.  The bid was close to what Chris expected, but I don't know if we can afford it or not yet.  Chris is playing with the numbers.   This morning w spent a few hours with Micah and Jachin.  Their Mommy had a doctor's appointment.  When we got there they were in the middle of a very important video about dinosaurs helping each other out against the evil velociraptors.  Needless to say we couldn't do anything until that crisis was resolved.    We did finally get into some exciting games of chase and "lock Nana in the bedroom."  My favorite, though, was when they brought out the baseball bat and tee and squealed, "Now it's baseball time!"  Got my attention.  We set up in the hall.  The batter stood at one end and all the non-batters sat on the steps and watched.  Jachin went first … and second … and I think he was third, too, before Micah realized that this might be kind of fun and demanded a turn.  Nana and DadDad even got into the rotation.  When it got to my turn, I set up as a left-hander – didn't want to show off too much, you know.  Jachin is obviously left-handed, and he was hitting pretty well.  Micah hasn't quite decided which side is best for him.  He pretty much smacked the tee and took off running.  When he got to the end of the hall he would carefully lie down on his back in a rendition of a slide.  Safe, as far as I could see.  Jachin made  the run down and back, and his slide looked pretty good – bent leg, arms up.  I was impressed.    That made it even more important for old DadDad to make a good showing at bat.  So I took careful aim.  Went into that time-honored traditional chant, "One for the money.  Two for the show.  Three to get ready.  And four to go."  On "go" I let loose with the swing of all swings.  And missed.  Hey, it was a little bat.  So I tried again, same chant, same grunt.  Same result.  That made my determination level increase to the max.  I got the chant going.  I squatted as low as I could get.  And I swung as carefully as I could.  Finally.  I finally made contact.  And the cheers began.   And when Jachin had his next time at bat, guess what came out of his mouth?  "One for the money.  Two for the show.  Three to get ready.  Four to go."    Colossians 1:15 says "Jesus is the image of the invisible God."    Father, I want to be like you.  Amen.

January 27 – “Slav-ation”

Not much action on the house today.  No workers.  No us.  We just stopped by to check the mail on our way to take Mom out to lunch at Luby's.  After all, it is Tuesday.  I got the last fried shrimp dinner available before they ran out.  Kind of tasted like it.   Most of my day today I spent working on the computer.  I got started on the teaching for Sunday.  I chuckled at one of my many typos.  I was writing about becoming a believer in Jesus, and the word came out SLAvation instead of SALvation.  The more I thought about it, though, the more it made sense.  1 Corinthians 7:22 says, "he who was a free man when he was called is Christ's slave."   I read through what I want to teach on Thursday at Seaside Christian Academy.  I fixed up a printout for the baby dedication on Sunday.  Had to spend some extra time on that one.  It was for Cailyn, after all.    I took a break for supper.  Nathan made a great pot of shrimp gumbo.  The best part of the meal was … I "had to" hold Cailyn while we ate.  Then we sat around and talked while Chris took her turn being Nana.   Speaking of Nathan, he and I spent a lot of time this evening on the phone with his computer savvy friend.  We were attempting to get our desktop computer to talk to our laptop.  I heard it was not that difficult a task.   We ran everything we could think of on both computers.  The problem was compounded by the fact that our cable internet here has been on the fritz lately, so we couldn't get online.  Well … still doesn't work.  They just don't want to communicate with each other.  And if they don't, how can they share files?  How can they increase their capacity two-fold?  Why don't they just do what they are told?  Things would be so much better for them.    Romans 6:23 says, "the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord."  But we're all just like my computers.  Romans 3:23 says, "for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God."  Why can't we all just communicate with each other, with God?   Father, forgive me when I don't listen.  To you.  To Chris.  To my heart.  Amen.

January 26 – “Laugh a Lot”

We headed out of the house fairly early this morning.  We had some fruit and clothes to deliver to two families.  We connected on one count.  Guess we'll try again on the other.    We also spent quite awhile at our house.  We cleared off another of the card tables in the back yard.  Added a few boxes to the stash over in Mom's garage.  We also threw some more stuff away.  Every time we do that it's as if Chris is experiencing our first days back home all over again.  She did really well this time, though.  When we started getting bored with wiping and packing, we went next door (our friends who left town and said we should go through and take whatever we need from their house).  Chris wanted some of the landscape timbers they still had in their back yard.  That ended up with us also carrying over a bunch of concrete bricks.  With what little strength I had left, I decided to get out of their garage a rolling cart that would be a pretty good substitution for a workbench until I can get one for our garage.  It turned into a little bigger project than I thought.  There were some rusty, still damp things in it that we had to get out.  Then we cleaned it up as well as we could.  It still has some rust spots, and some more rust is hiding underneath the paint in some areas, but it'll work for what we need for the time being.  I'm happy to have it.   We just got back from a really nice supper.  We were invited to join April's Grandmother and Grandfather and her Aunt and Uncle and Nathan and April and of course Cailyn at Gringos.  They were coming to see her for the first time.  All four of them seem to be good, down-home folks.  Grandma and Grandpa live in Corpus Christi and are about to celebrate their fiftieth wedding anniversary.  Aunt and Uncle live in Manvel.  That is in Texas, by the way.  They have a lot of fun together.  We had a lot of fun together tonight.  We laughed a lot.  It's always good to laugh.   Proverbs  17:22 says, "A cheerful heart is good medicine, but a crushed spirit dries up the bones."   Father, I've had enough of the crushed spirit thing.  Grant me a cheerful heart.  Amen.

January 25 – “Mom’s Address Book”

Church was pretty interesting today.  We had a good group there, and today was the kickoff for our big three week discernment meeting.  For three weeks we're going to brainstorm ways we can see God at work around Seaside.  He has begun to trust us with some large amounts of money from out of the blue, so we need to figure out how he best wants us to use it for his glory.  We're hoping this will be a catalyst to get some of our Seasiders who are back in town, back in.   When we got home I went downstairs to clean up some of the storm "souvenirs" we are trying to save.  I finished up the notebook we developed detailing the history of my neck and shoulder surgeries.  Had to get it out of the three ring binder and wrap it in a file folder with some rubber bands.  Guess it'll find its place in one of our future storage boxes of medical records.  Right now it's kind of lonely.   The second thing I cleaned up was Mom's old address book.  It was one of those things that Chris knew Mom would want back when we were emptying out the house.  It managed to stay hidden for several days, though.  It made its way to the front door under a huge pile of stuff that didn't look like it would make it.  Most of it didn't.  Chris saved this book, though.   And what a book it was.  It didn't just have phone numbers in it.  It was a historical record of at least ten years of Mom's relationships.  There were phone numbers and addresses of neighbors, friends, and family.  It had a Christmas card list for each year.  Who she sent a card to.  Who she received one from.  I turned another page and there was a list of everything she gave as a Christmas gift and who she gave it to.  Across the page from it was what she received that year and who from.  It had a page for anniversaries, one for birthdays, and even a place to record when people died.  I felt like I was like reading through one of those old family Bibles with the genealogies in them.  I was going to put in here one of those Old Testament genealogies out of Numbers.  You know, who begat who begat who.  But for some reason I kept going back to these two verses.  Don't know why.   Psalm 1:1 – "Blessed is the man who does not walk in the counsel of the wicked or stand in the way of sinners or sit in the seat of mockers."     Jeremiah 17:7-8 - "But blessed is the man who trusts in the Lord, whose confidence is in him. He will be like a tree planted by the water that sends out its roots by the stream.  It does not fear when heat comes; its leaves are always green.  It has no worries in a year of drought and never fails to bear fruit."   Father, I want to be like one of those trees with green leaves and strong roots and no worries.  Help me to trust you.  Amen.

January 24 – “Volunteers”

Want to know a good way to drive yourself more than a little batty?  Gather together all your receipts in preparation for doing your taxes.  Enough?  Add the fact that more than half of them aren't there anymore.  They now live under some landfill.  Then try to put together your medical records.  From a year when you are still paying off four major surgeries.  Then add a fifth surgery to take care of a cataract.  And the records of those are roommates of the receipts.  Then contemplate whatever you are supposed to do to itemize – again – everything you lost in the flood.  Then subtract what you have replaced with insurance money.  Then … then … then thank God you have a good accountant, because there's no way you can even come close to dealing with all this.   Add in there that we're still wondering what will happen with our insurance money.  And how much we'll end up needing to finish out the house.  And whether / when the outside groups that have said they want to help will be able to get here.  That's been my day.    I have also been having some more trouble with my lower back.  By early afternoon it gets really stiff and sore.  There are some movements that set off some pretty sharp pains as well.  And I've been a real "guy" about the whole thing.  I've been keeping it to myself as much as I can.  It's the old classic, "I don't want to appear weak" scenario.  Doesn't work too well when you really are weak, though.    I was thankful, though, that the students at SCA unstacked the pews for us.  That meant all we had to do today to get the church ready was sweep, mop, and clean the bathrooms.  It didn't feel any different cleaning the church as volunteers since Chris resigned as janitor.  Especially for her.  She has a real pride in her work, and wants it to look as good as she can make it every week.    Check out these three scriptures:             1 Corinthians 10:31 – "So whether you eat or drink or whatever you do, do it all for the glory of God."    Colossians 3:17 – "And whatever you do, whether in word or deed, do it all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him."    Colossians 3:23-25 – "Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord, not for men, since you know that you will receive an inheritance from the Lord as a reward. It is the Lord Christ you are serving."   Father, thank you for letting me see your word in Chris's deeds.  It encourages me when I get down.  Amen.