Update:
Last night (Tuesday) I was able to attend the training at the Altoona
Fire Department where I am the Chaplain.
It was great being around everybody.
It was all classroom training, so I just rolled along in my wheelchair
from station to station. I enjoyed the firefighting
tactics the most but it was all good.
Jon, my son, came and picked me up and chauffeured me to Altoona and
back. He, and one of my other sons,
Joshua, and I ate dinner at the Altoona Family Restaurant before the Fire
Training. The food was delicious and it
wasn’t crowded. So it was a busy night
for me and as a result, after my head hit the pillow I didn’t have any issues
sleeping soundly through the night.
Karen had to rush out this morning (Wednesday) for an early client, so
I ended up making breakfast for myself.
I don’t mind the cooking, but the stove top is at an uncomfortable height
and I have shied away from using it for safety’s sake. I got
it done (took 45 minutes and made a mess of the kitchen), but I missed spending
the time with Karen this morning. And I
think her cooking tastes better than my own.
J
With generally sleeping better at night, I now usually take only one
nap per day (and sometimes my schedule cheats me out of that one too). With my naps, I am getting about seven to
eight hours of sleep a day. Once again, it’s
a good sign that I am gaining strength and on the road to recovery.
Seems sort of strange how much surgery can take out of you and how long
it takes to getting back to feeling yourself and having any energy. In the hospital, I was completely put under twice
(once for my amputation and the other for another procedure) with only a day or
two in between. I was told that really
takes it out of you. For me, the lesson
learned from this is that just because people are out of the hospital and it
has been awhile since their operation, it doesn’t mean that they are back up to
speed and fully recovered. Mentally I
think we tend to assume that once people are back home that everything is back
to normal. Not necessarily so. So be patient and considerate with those
fresh out of the hospital. It is hard to
image how much it zaps your energy until you’ve personally experienced it. And take my word for it, this is a lesson you
DON’T want to learn first-hand!
After resting my sore back muscle for several days, I’ve returned to doing
my exercises twice a day. Besides the
original routine I was given in the hospital, I’ve added a number of additional
exercises, plus I added working my upper body with some light weight
dumbbells. It feels so good to move and
stretch.
Yesterday, Hannah and Alena came to visit me. I am performing Hannah and Tyler’s wedding in
a couple of weeks, so we were going over some details. This will be the first time that I’ve ever
performed a wedding sitting down (or in a wheelchair). I teasingly suggested that they rent a bunch
of wheelchairs and the entire bridal party process down the aisle in them. We had fun laughing about how it would look
but ultimately the bride decided to retain the more traditional “walk” down the
aisle. How boring! Ha. Ha.
Thought for the Day:
J. Wallace Hamilton said, “Every person’s life is a diary in which he
or she means to write one story and is forced to write yet another.” Haven’t you found that to be true in your
life? Things haven’t turned out exactly
the way that you have envisioned them.
Maybe this week you had plans to go somewhere that were foiled when your
car didn’t start because of the cold; and everyone you called for a ride was in
the same predicament. Perhaps you couldn’t
get a job in the field that your degree is in; or you cannot get a job at all
and debt is burying you. Maybe your high
school sweetheart moved on and left you flatfooted; or your spouse divorced you
after a messy ending to a marriage you thought would last a lifetime. Possibly a disease or an accident drastically
changed the course of your life. Perhaps
the hardest change in a life story comes when a child or loved one dies
unexpectedly. Whatever life story you
envisioned and planned to write has been erased and a very different story is
now being written.
Everybody experiences this shift to one degree or another. In high school I never imagined that I would
become a pastor of a protestant evangelical church. I was religious; but came from a very
different church background. I planned
to be a cop but ended up in the military.
In the military, I was on my way to becoming a pilot but ended up having
to give up that dream so that I could be stationed on the same base as my
wife. After the military, I thought I
was going on staff with the Navigators and instead ended up in pastoral ministry. I thought I would attend Dallas Theological
Seminary but ended up at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School. When it was time to move to a new church; I
assumed I would be taking a church in the capitol of Missouri; instead I moved
to rural Fall Creek, WI. Recently, my
left leg was amputated below the knee.
Now there is a plot twist that I didn’t see coming!! There are hundreds and possibly thousands of
ways that my story has changed from what I envisioned; but I cannot say that
the changes are necessarily bad. I can
say that it is a vastly different story than I thought would be written.
I love reading. My favorite
genre is science fiction and I prefer a book series so the story goes on past
one or two books. Sometimes a book that
I thought would be entertaining and captivating turns out to be a dud. Do you know why? Because it is so predictable! There isn’t enough plot change or unexpected
developments. Character development and growth
are important. Guess how those things
are normally introduced? Through
conflict, hardship and difficulty. The
story is moving along in just the right direction and WHAMO! Some event happens that changes everything
and the characters have to adapt to that change. These events are rarely pleasant but they end
up making the person into the character that we care about and that we want to
keep reading about.
Now if we are writing the story of our lives, imagine how boring it
would be if everything turned out exactly as we pictured it? John Maxwell in his book, “The Difference
Maker: Making Your Attitude Your Greatest Asset” says this, “Here is the good
news: the story you write can actually be better than the one you envisioned,
but you need to have the right expectations.
You have to remain flexible, and you can’t expect everything to go
perfectly.”
Just reflect on every bible character you can think of. I cannot think of a single one of them that
had a “perfect” life that went exactly as planned. I suppose that there are a few people whose
lives go that way, but who would want to read about them? We get caught up in the drama of Joseph being
sold into slavery by his brothers and becoming Pharaoh’s right hand man. Every one of the disciples had pages of their
life story ripped out of the book and re-written. David formed a great kingdom but faced the
death of one son and betrayal at the hands of another. Moses was born a slave and raised as a prince
of Egypt; all that was stripped away when he fled to the desert after killing
an Egyptian. He lived in the desert for
decades before he returned to Egypt and set his people free. The apostle Paul was shipwrecked, beaten,
falsely accused and imprisoned. Perhaps
the greatest plot twist is that Jesus Christ, the second person of the Holy
Trinity, left the splendor of heaven and came to earth, taking on human flesh
and becoming one of us. He came to
rescue us from our sins but He was rejected and was killed. Three days later He rose from the dead. He now is in heaven as our advocate and High
Priest. He will come to earth again and
establish His kingdom that will never end.
Now that is a plot twist with plenty of conflict!
Think about how heroes act when faced with adversity. Some of the best books or films show us the
common person who rises to the challenge in the face of adversity and becomes a
hero. I want to be that kind of person
and I would guess that you do too. The good
news is that we get to write the story of how our character responds to
difficulty and the challenges that he faces.
So write an epic tale!
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