For the last three days, I have been working on our income taxes. No, it didn’t take me every waking hour during those days to complete them, but ours are somewhat complicated because of the two businesses we run (one my writing business). I completed them Tuesday, took Wednesday to proof them, make copies, sign, put s check in one, and mail them. Done for a year. I even created the folders and files for next year’s taxes.
Now, I need to get back to my writing, back to the two Bible studies. But it’s a beautiful day. Sunshine, not a lot of wind, heading to mid-60s for the high. I might get out and do some yardwork, or walk a little way. I have need to go to the post office and the bank. A year ago, I would have walked to them. But lately I’ve had some heart pain, mainly when walking up-hill. Actually, not heart pain, but pain at the base of my neck, in the front. So I’ve curtailed most of my walking until I have a procedure next week. More on that in Monday’s blog.
I feel as if I’m on vacation today without that tax thing hanging over me. I caught up on correspondence, both e-mail and snail mail. I filed a few things. I think I’m going to take the day off from writing, and will spend most of the day tomorrow catching up.
I had a different post planned for today, one that is mostly written, but have decided to change course. Yesterday, Sunday, was a typical day for us. Church in the morning, take-out for lunch, rest and writing in the afternoon, also a walk in the afternoon, leftovers for supper, a little bit of television, and reading, both aloud and silently.
As to writing, I did quite well on the Bible study I’m currently working on. It’s the same one I’m teaching to our adult Sunday school class. I managed to add over 1,650 words to it and organized the chapter I’m working on. I also found a couple of flaws in my Harmony of the Gospels for this passage of scripture, and was able to work that out and correct it. I still have to type the changes in the master file.
What made the day different is what happened on our walk. Both Lynda and I are not in as good a physical shape as we would like, so we are not walking very far. Plus, I’m limiting my exertions until I go through a heart procedure on April 19. But we went a little farther today, 1.26 miles according to the app on my phone.
It was a bright, sunny day, with a strong breeze, quite pleasant to walk in. Few cars were on the road to bother us. We saw another walker or two out, but not close. On the return leg we saw a man walking his dog. Well, we thought it was a boy until we got right up to him. He pulled the dog off to the ditch when a car approached in one direction and we in the other. As we came up to him and he remained in the ditch with the dog, ostensibly to let us pass, I flipped the switch and decided to talk to him.
Yes, I had to flip a switch inside of me. To talk with a stranger on the street is something I don’t do by nature, other than a quick nod and “Hello” and keep going where I’m going. It doesn’t really get any easier to do more than that.
But yesterday I did, and said, “What a handsome dog. Is it a beagle?” He replied with thanks and said the dog was part beagle. The dog made friendly lunges at us, putting his paws up high. He was never really still enough to let us pet him. We had a pleasant conversation with the man, lasting maybe three minutes. He was the son of people who lived down one of the side roads, just visiting and walking their dog for them. We never did get his name nor give him ours. I should have asked him his parents’ names and which of they two houses down that side street was theirs but, alas, didn’t think of that.
On with our walk. As we turned to go up the street that our circle connects to, a gray, short-bed pick-up passed us, a Ford Maverick, with the temporary plate of a new vehicle. Both of us remarked how quiet it was and wondered if it was electric. It pulled into the drive of a house we would soon pass. A man got out of the truck (not the neighbor who lives there, so apparently a visitor) and, being still 30 feet away and approaching him, I called out, “Quiet truck. Is it electric?”
I’m sure many of you would say something to the effect, you dummy, of course a Ford Maverick is electric. But I don’t follow vehicle names and models, so I didn’t know, nor did Lynda. He said yes, a hybrid. He had ordered it in July 2020, I think it was, and it had just come. He got it for the 2020 price and was pleased with the bargain. We talked about the truck and its features, benefits, gas mileage, performance, strengths, and weaknesses. It was a pleasant conversation.
I didn’t get his name, nor did he ask us ours. The conversation was a win-win item. We got information and he got to show off his purchase and knowledge of it.
Just a quiet day in the neighborhood, trying to break out of my natural introvert cell. Maybe some day I’ll move to learning names of people and remembering them, but for now, that’s enough.
The second Bible verse (see here for my discussion of the three verses and here for the first verse) I try to say each morning has been with me a long time, probably twenty years. I’ve used it in my e-mail signature at least since 2005. I think I first took note of it in 1993-94, when coaching our church’s teen Bible quizzing team. It is 2nd Corinthians 4:17.
For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that outweighs them all.
I more or less remember the day I found this verse. It hit me hard. Whatever our troubles are on this earth—and they might be many—they are nothing in relationship to heaven. Persevering through earthly troubles will result in heavenly glory for us.
The load about to go to Salvation Army. Glad to have this go; sad to think this a small amount of what we need to get rid of. A light and momentary trouble.
At some point I began saying this every morning. That is, except when I got up and forgot, which happens occasionally. I know that the day will have troubles. That’s a sign that I’m living, interacting with people. Quoting it helps me to keep those troubles in perspective.
However, recently I realized I wasn’t getting the full benefit of this verse. Sure, seeing my troubles in an eternal perspective was important, and beneficial, but the verse says something more. Those troubles are supposed to be achieving for me an eternal glory that’s much greater than the troubles. But were they?
I had a couple of incidents of troubles this week, and they almost slipped by without my realizing the full benefit of them. On Monday, after many false starts and delays, I loaded up the van with remnants of the garage sale we had over a year ago to take them to a thrift store. We decided that this load would go to the Salvation Army donation center about 20 miles from our house. We have a closer thrift store where we normally take donations, but decided this time to help out the Salvation Army.
A couple of months ago I had called them and learned their donation hours were 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. I had the load ready around 1:30, thus figuring I was safe. But to be sure, I called the donation center. Alas, their phone was busy. Busy on the first call, the second call, the third call. For 15 minutes their line was busy. I should have just got in the van and made the trip. Finally, they answered the phone, and I learned that their closing time had changed to 2:30 p.m. It was about 10 minutes to 2 p.m., and I had 20 miles to drive.
What to do? Knowing I had a busy day planned for Tuesday, I quickly hopped in the van and left. The recently opened Bella Vista bypass allowed for quick travel, and I reached the mall they were in (I’d not been to S.A. since they moved to this declining mall). I drove around it and no Salvation Army. I called, knowing I hadn’t been able to reach them easily earlier. But they answered right away, told me where they were in relation to the mall building and said drive around back. Although, the woman answering said “go past the mall….” I asked her east-bound or west-bound, but she didn’t know her east from west. A follow-up question gave me what I needed.
I got to the back at 2:22 pm, and the door was closed, the sign in place saying they were closed for donations. I knocked and no one came. I pulled the door open and no one was in sight. I called out and no one answered. I was hot. I drove around to the front and went in, ready to give them a piece of my mind. They assured me they were open for donations, to drive around the back again, and they would meet me. I got back in the van, still hot, when my verse came to mind. I was reminded that this trouble was, in fact, light and momentary.
But was it achieving me an eternal glory that outweighed the trouble? Not the way I was going. I had to change my attitude. I realized the worst that could happen was I might have missed delivering to this store and would have to drive to the other. The cost would have been just 10 miles of extra driving—not an inconsiderable cost these days. I got around the back. Three workers met me and they made short work unloading my full van while we had pleasant conversation. It was 2:30 p.m.
The other trouble came on Tuesday. After breakfast, when I was going to start my writing day, I remembered I really needed to prepare the income tax form for our partnership. Partnership tax returns are due March 15. Oh, such a problem.
All the information needed to complete the partnership taxes was on spreadsheets. I opened these. One was the business records, the other was the tax computations. But, the two spreadsheets didn’t quite match. I had some manipulation to do before I could dump the business records into the tax spreadsheet. Is this making sense?
Alas, I had much trouble with it. I had two spreadsheets open, and two worksheets in one spreadsheet. I kept making changes to the wrong file, or the wrong tab in the file, and had to un-do a lot and start over. I couldn’t remember how I did it last year. Finally, in frustration I left The Dungeon, went upstairs and got another cup of coffee. I had wasted over an hour.
As I sipped coffee back in The Dungeon, I realized that this trouble was light and momentary. But, my frustration and anger wasn’t achieving for me an eternal glory that outweighed the trouble. That would only happen if I calmed down, figured out how to do this a step at a time. It meant I would have to give up completely my morning writing session, which would put me behind my week’s writing goal. “If that’s what it takes,” I decided. Two hours later, and the problem was solved. The tax spreadsheet had all the information from the business accounting spreadsheet. Filling out the actual tax forms would be a two-hour task on Wednesday, and the deadline would be met.
Light and momentary troubles. I’ve recognized that for close to 30 years. But I haven’t always achieved the eternal glory part. This week, I think I took a couple of steps in the right direction.
When last I posted, we were just past a delightful snow day on Friday. The snow was on Wednesday and Thursday. The final total at our house I figure was about 6-7 inches. Others in the area had up to 9 inches. I didn’t do extensive measurements.
Of course, after the snow is snow shoveling—if you want to go anywhere on the weekend. We had sunny days on Friday and Saturday. Enough sun to melt some snow but temperatures too cold to see that much snow disappear. So Saturday just before noon saw me outside, shoveling. There were maybe 5 inches on the drive by this time. I knew if I could just get it down to mostly bare pavement, radiant energy would dry it. Sure enough, that’s what happened. By the time sundown came I had the driveway shoveled, the van up at the top of the drive, and dry pavement—except for the refreezing that would happen to three or four little streams of snow-melt running down my nice, dry drive.
Saturday and Sunday were productive. Yes, even Sunday. It’s supposed to be a day of rest, right? And it was, sort of. On Saturday I made a list of things I thought I needed to do. Some were normal Saturday activities, such as my stock trading accounting, updating the checkbook and family budget. I didn’t mess with filing, but will have to do that shortly. Kitchen cleaning was one thing. Filling bird feeders was another. Slowly, the tasks got done, mostly on Saturday.
Sunday was typical. Lynda was well enough to go to church with me. We had missionaries in the service. I taught Life Group. We got Arby’s takeout for lunch. Hope and eat, then for me it was to the sunroom with my half-way read volume of Dylan Thomas’s Collected Letters. I’m trying to read ten pages a day, and doing fairly well with it. I tried to nap out there, but didn’t get much sleep time.
So I went to The Dungeon, where I worked on critiquing works for my critique group, the Scribblers & Scribes of Bella Vista. I did five pages in one and ten in another (neither of which was the complete submitted item) and shot them back by e-mail. It was good to get them out. I also sent out the next chapter in There’s No Such Thing As Time Travel.
My other main task was to complete the edits to the church Centennial book. I had a long Zoom conference with the two proofreaders, whose comments were almost entirely edits. They only found six or eight typos, and half of those I had caught in my own proofread. I thought that was pretty good. But they had lots of suggested changes. We went through them, and I’m afraid I wasn’t real accepting of a lot of the changes this late in the game. I needed edits in October.
However, I decided to go through them all, slowly, on Saturday and Sunday, considering each suggestion, and making some more changes. Last night, around 8 p.m. or so, I finished. All suggested edits considered and dealt with, all changes made to my master document, and the master document e-mailed to the two proofreaders. I have one more photo to put in, and I will do that today. No, maybe two photos.
To end the day yesterday, I read about 20 pages aloud to the wife in the book we’re reading, about a Christian convert from Timor. Then I had an hour or so of reading in Dylan Thomas and C.S. Lewis, both in their collected letters. Now, time to see what goes on today’s to-do list—after this blog post, of course.
Looking north, not on our street but the one our circle ties in to. Plowed, but having had almost no traffic on it. The road veers to the left in the distance while our road goes right, both steeply downhill.
Yesterday was a snow day. This large winter storm, called “Landon” by the Weather Channel, was strung-out across more than half the USA. The forecasters missed the start of the storm, but otherwise got it mostly right. They even predicted that we would get a last band of snow last night, and it happened. It looks like another inch or two on top of the 6 we already had.
So, when you are retired and have hit your 70th birthday, what do you do on a snow day? For me, I can’t resist going out in it. Never mind that the temperature was 18 and a north wind was blowing the fine snow at a 45-degree angle. I bundled up and hiked up the road. Not far, just up to the stop sign and back.
As I left the house, I measured 5″ in two places on our property, and a 13″ drift near the garage. Our street wasn’t plowed. Tire tracks came to our mailbox and stopped. The mailman had obviously driven that far and, not having any mail down the road (one of two houses there is current vacant), just backed up the hill. He/she did a good job of staying within the downhill tracks as they backed uphill.
At the house up the road, my neighbor was out. Having just shoveled his driveway, he was standing there, in just a light jacket. We talked for a while, me at the top of the driveway and him just inside the open garage door. Then I continued my walk. I was surprised to find the next road plowed. It isn’t a main road, though it does connect to main roads at both ends. About an inch of snow had fallen since it was plowed, and only one set of tire tracks showed on the freshly fallen.
At the next road, it was the same. Plowed, more snow falling, and only a few tire tracks. No one was out, either on foot or in vehicles. My walk had been pleasant thus far. But when I turned to head home, the wind was in my face, driving the fine snow. It was biting, not all that pleasant. But, I had only gone .17 miles, so it was a short walk past five houses and lot and lots of woods on both sides. I reached home having not fallen and invigorated.
I then returned to my work for the day, a fresh mug of coffee in hand. I think that was my fourth. My work was reviewing edits to the church Centennial book suggested by the two proofreaders and uploaded to the document in Google Drive. They did more than just proofread it, however. They had a lot of suggestions for changes. We have a Zoom conference scheduled for this afternoon to discuss it, and I figured I should go through the comments before hand. So, in The Dungeon, Google Drive on one screen and the Word doc on the other, I went to work. By the time 3 p.m. came around, my brain was fried, despite having taken those breaks for the walk and for lunch.
On a snow day such as this, I would have then gone to the sunroom with my coffee and read and taken a nap. But yesterday, instead, I did that in my reading chair in the living room. I tackled my e-mail inbox, going through e-mails over 10 years old and deciding what to do with them. I made good progress and can see light at the end of that tunnel. Then I’ll get to tackle the sent box. Through the evening I went through another twenty pages of comments in the Centennial book.
Now it’s almost 8:30 a.m. on Friday. The sun is shining through The Dungeon windows. I have ten to fifteen pages of comments to go through. I have other writing to do, then the conference at 1:00 p.m. After that, hopefully, I’ll find myself in the sunroom, alternately reading and napping. It should be a pleasurable after-the-snow day.
Between leftovers and some takeout, I had to fix only one meal. Grandpa’s Mythical Sandwich was a hit, as always.
Yes, the dateline shows that I’m writing these Friday thoughts on Thursday. At least I’m beginning these thoughts then.
Yesterday (Wednesday), we drove back from West Texas from having babysat our four grandchildren last weekend and staying a few extra days. We might have come home on Tuesday, but Lynda had a stomach bug, so we delayed a day. Actually, we had been uncertain of which day to come home on.
But yesterday morning before we left, our son-in-law was sick, went for a covid test, and was positive. So we have been exposed. As it turns out we hadn’t been all that close to him in the house, so maybe we will be okay. But, let the quarantine begin. I guess 5 days. Except, I have prescriptions to pick up at Wal-Mart and a few after-trip groceries I must get. I’ll do that this morning. I’ll have to miss the monthly meeting of the Scribblers & Scribes, our critique group, Thursday night. I’ll send my piece to them by e-mail.
With The Forest Throne done and waiting on beta readers, and with the church Centennial book done and waiting on proof-readers, I’m about to spend time on my next writing project. As I said in my annual writing goals post earlier this month, it would be a Bible study. But which one? On Tuesday, I consolidated my various files from the Holy Week study I taught last Lenten season, on the Last Supper. Thursday morning, I found my hand-written teaching notes and will go through them over the next several days. I have a feeling I will make this my next book rather than the study I did on 1 and 2 Timothy some years ago. But we shall see. I should know by early next week.
I’m in the process of contacting an artist about a cover for The Forest Throne. Hoping to make contact on Thursday. Also, the first beta reader of TFT is my granddaughter Elise, 8. She loved it. She also picked up on a number of subtle things I put in the book.
I’ve been brainstorming the concept of individualism, having posted on that before and wanting to do a follow-up or two, possibly even write and publish an essay on that. I have come to the conclusion that the opposite of individualism is collectivism. I even found a quote by Dr. M.L. King that agrees with that, but I can’t trace it back to the actual speech or document, so hate to use it. I don’t know that this essay will ever happen, or if it does it will be anything more than serialized blog posts.
The drive home from W. Texas was pleasant. I was worried about road conditions near the end, in our own county, as the forecast was for a wintry mix that afternoon. As I looked at radar that morning, frozen precip was showing over Oklahoma City, where we were making a brief stop to drop recyclables from our daughter’s accumulation. But after driving an hour and a half, and checking the predicted radar again, it showed the OKC precip abating by the time we would get there, and that what would fall toward the end of our trip would be minor at most. So on we drove. We stopped about 45 minutes from home and made a couple of phone calls, learned the roads were fine, and so we continued on home.
I’m in the midst of reading three different books (well, four if you include the one I read 3 or 4 pages of on my phone a day—no, five if you include the book I’m reading for Life Group teaching), two of which are books about writing. I took those two with me to Texas, and made good progress in them. One I should finish in three days or so; the other will likely take over two weeks. It’s interviews with 20 writers, and I’m just reading one interview a day.
That’s enough random thoughts. I hope to head to the sunroom later, with my handwritten notes, and get to work on the Bible study. See you all on Monday, when I hope to get back to something on my list of upcoming blog posts.
Many people around here have seen frost flowers, but I never had, until walking Rocky this morning.
Since I retired, Monday isn’t much different from other days. But Monday is my regular blogging day. Here it is 6:30 in the evening, and I suddenly remembered I hadn’t yet posted a Monday blog. So I quickly opened my computer and got to work.
But, I’ve forgotten what I was going to write on next. I need to do another post on The Forest Throne. I need to do a post on the short story I just published, but I don’t feel like it right now. My writing progress post will be for next week. I covered writing groups recently. So what to post?
It’s just a few days before Christmas. We will be here alone again, unless we can get together with my cousin Greg and his wife Bev. We got our Christmas cards done on Saturday and mailed today (except for one or two i realized I forgot). Right now we are dog-watching for our neighbors. Rocky is a good dog to do this with. He’s not overly demanding. Walking him I get more exercise, in smaller bursts, than normal.
Rocky is our house guest right now, and took me out of the house this morning so that I got to see the frost flowers.
Today I took him outside at 6:15 a,m,, it was still dark and I couldn’t see much on our short walk in 26 deg temperature. I took him out again around 9:15 a.m. The temperature was maybe up to 30 deg. On the way back to the house, in the frontage of a wooded lot, I saw a couple of frost flowers. These develop only in certain conditions of temperature and moisture. You have to be out and about at just the right time to see them. This morning was one of those times. If we hadn’t been watching Rocky, I never would have seen them.
Well, this isn’t much of a post, but it’s all I have at 6:30 p.m. on blogging day, but it’s what I have. I’ll try to be better prepared on Friday.
My parents didn’t send religious Christmas cards. These are typical of the leftover cards I’ve been storing for two decades plus, wondering what to do with.
On Tuesday just passed I attended the monthly meeting of the Northwest Arkansas Letter Writers. This is a small club of people who enjoy writing letters. The emphasis is on physical letters and pen pals (though for me, e-mails are equally letters). I learned about them around the first of March 2020 and attended their meeting shortly after that at the Bella Vista Library. Then the pandemic hit, and the library closed.
During the pandemic, we didn’t meet for the first few months. After a while they decided to meet outdoors, under the drive-through canopy of a church not too far from my house. We had to bring chairs, and even in the outdoor venue stayed away from each other. We met like that for over a year. Sometimes we cancelled when the weather was too hot or too cold. But it was a way to stay in touch.
The cards have a simple, non-sectarian message.
Even when the library re-opened, at first they wouldn’t allow groups to use the newly-constructed meeting rooms. The problem was a legal one. This is a private library, and the lawyers had some concern about outside groups, even groups sponsored by the library such as ours is, using the facility. They eventually worked that out, and we began meeting there in September.
That’s a long introduction to December’s meeting. We didn’t have a formal program. Rather, we were all to bring old cards to show around. That was perfect for me, because right now I have a lot of old Christmas cards out of boxes, making a mess of our house. These are cards, as seen in the photo at the beginning of this post, that I found at my dad’s house back in 1998. They appear to be remnants of cards my parents sent in the 1950s. You buy a box of 25 cards and use 22 out of it, putting the rest aside to use next year. When that comes around you buy another box of 25 and use 23 out of it, totally forgetting that you have three left over from last year. Now you have five left over. On and on it goes. A decade later you have a fair number of unused Christmas cards.
I’ve had these remnant cards in a box in the storeroom for all these years, sorted into their own large envelope, wondering what to do with them. I think there are between 35 and 40 of them, but only 4 envelopes. Last year I came to the conclusion we should send them as our Christmas cards next year (meaning now). Since these are a special size, without envelopes, what could we do?
The template, perfected on the third try and already put into use.
Well, for our meeting next month, the letter writing group is making envelopes as a craft project, and will share them around. We are to make 12 envelopes. If we choose to, of course. Now, I’m not an arts and craft person, and making envelopes as a craft project didn’t excite me. I pretty much decided I wouldn’t do the envelopes. Then I realized, I have a need to make envelopes, to use to send these cards.
Ah ha! A practical need is not really arts and crafts. It’s an environmentally friendly activity. Rather than trash those old cards, I can make envelopes to send them in. And, rather than use clean sheets of paper for the envelopes, I can use paper from the re-use stack, printouts of my writing that I planned on using the back to print other things on.
The first envelope off the assembly line. I like it. Not sure the wife will, however.
So yesterday, I took the time to create a template. That took a while. I used two sheets of paper to create envelopes before I had it right. Then I used one to trace the template on cardstock and cut it to size. I then made one envelope and tested it with the cards. It was perfect: just a little over-sized as I wanted it to be, since the size of the cards varies a little.
Envelope creation began immediately. I’m not sure Lynda will agree that sending these cards in an envelope created on the back of my writing sheets will be a good idea. No problem. If she doesn’t, I’ll just make others from clean paper and use these for the letter writers meeting in January.
It’s as close to being artsy-craftsy as I’ll ever come.
Well done, good and faithful servant. We will miss you, but rejoice at your current status with your heavenly Father.
Death seems to be all around of late. My sister not so long ago. Church friends earlier in the year. Classmates from high school. Something like 80 out of 725 people listed in our senior yearbook are now dead. Just this morning I learned of the death of a former pastor’s daughter, who I was working with as I write a church history. Writing remembrances should be getting easier, but it’s not.
On Dec. 7, our friend from church, Gary Borchert, crossed the river from life to death. Here is his obituary. Only 73 years old, but a life well-spent.
Gary and Sue came into our lives around 1995-96. They visited our church one Sunday. We did not meet them at the service. Lynda and I were at that time part of a ministry that went to the homes of those who visited the church and gave them a small gift, maybe a coffee mug and a jar of jam. We got Gary and Sue. I remember going to their home, then in Rogers, and the time we spent with them. They were very open to our visit and kept us there an hour or so, just talking. They were horse people, having acreage at their house, which back then was at the edge of Rogers. It wouldn’t be long before the city started closing in around them and they did the wise thing of selling their property and moving to a house in Bella Vista.
They became faithful attenders at and members of our church. They formed the nucleus of the “Amen Corner” from a row up front, always worshiping with abandon, not worrying about who was behind them, watching them. At one point the pastor asked them to attend the start of the second worship service (after they had been in the first), for it was a little dead and they were an example to others on how to praise God without concern of what people thought of you. In our adult Sunday school class, he was always ready with a comment or question.
Gary’s life was one of accomplishment. He served his country in the Air Force and was in Vietnam. I remember a Sunday School class I taught around Christmastime one year. Gary and Sue were in it. Dealing with Christmas memories, I asked, “So where were you at Christmas 1969?” (or a year either side of that) Most of us were in high school or younger. Gary answered that with one word: Danang. What a way to spend Christmas.
Gary had a voice for radio, and he worked in that industry for many years. He took part in dramas at church, and, if I remember correctly, narrated from time to time. His most famous role in a church drama was as Dr. No, even shaving his head for the part. Another role he played was being father to his grandson after their daughter’s untimely death. This would prove to be a challenge, one that Gary and Sue met with grace, and, when called for, tough love.
Somewhere along the way, after we met them, Gary became involved in a workplace accident. I don’t remember the particulars, but it injured his back. He struggled with this the rest of his life. The first struggle was with the insurance company, or maybe it was with workers’ compensation. I played an unwitting part in that. While he hobbled on foot as much as he could, Gary was trying to get a motorized cart to help him get around. We had a Sunday school class blog at the time, and after seeing Gary struggle to walk one Sunday, I posted that it was good to see him walking. I meant it as an encouragement to him. The insurance company saw it and said, “Ah ha! He doesn’t need a motorized cart.” They eventually straightened it out and he got the cart, but the bureaucratic struggle added to the physical struggles.
An example of Gary’s willingness to serve, and his desire to be of use even with his limited mobility, was Easter Sunday 2010. We were in the midst of a parking lot renovation. Who does that when Easter Sunday is upon you, right? But that’s the way it happened. I was in charge of getting those improvements done and, knowing the condition it would be in that day, worked with our pastoral staff and the men’s ministry to have at least five parking attendants for each service, helping people to navigate to the parts of the lot that were usable. Gary responded to the request for volunteers and showed up early that day, in his motorized cart, and waved cars to a certain row until it was full. Then he pulled forward and waved them to the next row. He showed us all what Christian service was all about.
A great couple, lovers of Jesus, servants in the church.
Over the years, Gary dealt with health issues and had operations and times in the hospital with severe infections. The pain from his injuries, complications from them, and loss of mobility made life difficult for him. He met the challenges. Though, he wasn’t always the best patient. He would resist going to the hospital when Sue thought he needed to and wanted to be discharged before it was wise. I remember a talk I had with him about that, reminding him that his wife was a registered nurse and had a better understanding of his health than he did. He did much better after that.
On one screen, I have Gary’s picture up. On this screen what I type. Gary, we will miss you. Sue and Kody will miss you. But we rejoice that you are now pain free, infection free, and that your radio voice is competing with the choir of angels as you narrate the stories of God and His Son Jesus. You have now heard the words that the rest of us will someday hear, a day that gets closer for all of us: “Well done, good and faithful servant. Come share in your Master’s happiness.”
My new landing page. I hope you’ll check it out before leaving today.
Those who read this blog regularly know that it has been a goal of mine for a long time to do some updates on the site. What specifically? A writer friend said having my bio on the landing page wasn’t best. It should be on a page by itself and have the landing page for notices. After thinking about it, and seeing what some other writers did, I decided she was right. Also, my works-in-progress page is forever behind times. I looked at it on Thursday and saw I hadn’t updated it in a year.
As I say, it has been a goal to do some updates, but I kept putting it off. Why? The short answer is: technophobia. Yep, I’m scared that I will mess up and will see my website go poof into the ether. My security program supposedly backs up my site, so in theory I could restore it, but that’s something I wouldn’t look forward to or have confidence in. So, for months, I’ve had updates as a goal but have put off working on it.
Last Wednesday I finished a certain milestone on a different project, and had to decide what to do next. I have my novel-in-progress to work on, but before I got back on that I took a look at my writing goals for the month. And there it was: Begin the process of revamping my website.
That’s a good thing to do today, I thought. So I did it. With WordPress, everything is menu driven. You don’t really need to know html for the simple things. It took me a little while to orient myself to the menu system, as it’s been that year since I last looked at it. But I finally did. I created a bio page, moved the bio from the landing page to the bio page, and saved. Then I put some new text and photos on the landing page. I saved and…I couldn’t find the bio page. What happened?
The top part of my new bio page. I probably should re-read it for typos. You can find it through the Menu.
I discovered that you have to manually change the menu to have a new page show up on it. I’d done that twice before, at least eight years ago. So I dug into the menu on menus and got that changed. I hit save, and there was the Bio listed in the revised menu. That was enough change for a day.
On Friday, I looked at everything again. I realized that the Bio page needed some photos. So I searched my photos, selected a few (including the embarrassing 4th grade photo with the lock of hair sticking up), loaded them to the Bio page, saved. I think it looks fairly good. For good measure I added a couple of photos to other pages.
No, my website isn’t splashy like many peoples’. It never will be unless I learn html and grow an artistic bone. The best I can hope for is to do no harm with it, and I think I’m about there. This week I’ll update my works-in-progress page. I’ll also put a reminder on my calendar to update that page monthly
