relationallychallenged

I love flowers.  The older I get the more I love to plant flowers and see them grow.  I have never planted bulbs in Scottsdale.  It never gets cold enough here so I have only dreamed about planting tulips and daffodils.  I was up in Flagstaff last fall and had to go to home depot for a home repair project.  I went by the bulbs hanging on a tree hanger and decided this was the year to plant bulbs in our Flagstaff cottage garden.  It was a beautiful day in November, so I got the necessary mulch, picked out the kinds of daffodil bulbs I wanted, and threw in  some hyacinth bulbs to place in front of the daffodils.  It was a warm day so the digging in the garden was very easy.  I put about 2 inches of mulch over the bulbs and went about my business with my repair project.

All winter long, I wondered if my bulbs would come up in the spring.  We didn’t get up to our place because of all the company we had down in the valley.  It was a warm to hot winter in Scottsdale and I longed to get up to the cooler climate–and see my bulbs.  Last weekend was the time to see what had sprouted.  It was night when we arrived at our house so the first thing I did on Saturday was to go out to my garden in the front of the house to see if the flowers had bloomed.  Guess what?

My daffodils had come forth.  It was early, so there were a lot of blooms that would burst forth, but these flowers were singing.  The hyacinths were just peaking through the soil and will probably bloom in a couple of weeks.  But my daffodils were trumpeting their beauty to any that wanted to look.

I am reminded of a passage in I Corinthians 3: 6 which says, “I planted the seed (bulb), Apollos (I) watered it, but God has been making it grow.”  I bought the bulbs.  I planted the bulbs.  I watered the bulbs.  God caused the bulbs to grow.  It’s a perfect picture of what the Lord wants us to do in this life.  Plant seeds and bulbs.  Water seeds and bulbs.  Plant and water.  That’s it.  It’s God’s responsibility to cause growth in what I have planted and watered.  In my bulbs.  In the seeds that I sow in the lives of others.  I am planting seeds of ethics and morality in the lives of my children.  I sometimes water those seeds.  It is God’s responsibility to take those seeds and cause growth in them and in others.

I didn’t sweat or toil in making those bulbs grow over the winter time.  I just anticipated that they would come up and show me the beautiful flowers that they did.  God caused the growth.  When we see that our responsibility in this life is to plant and water and not be responsible for growth, it takes all the worry and anxiety away.  Plant and water.  That’s all.

On this journey, it makes life so much more enjoyable when we allow God to do His work and we do ours.  Happy planting.

You’ve heard the saying, “Like father, like son.”  Most of us have used it to describe a trait or mannerism that we saw our dads use or say and have used it ourselves.  My father was a fix it man and I pride myself in following in his steps.  I don’t know of the number of times I have fixed a toilet, or taken off the drain pipe under the sink and taken care of a plugged pipe.  I have replaced screens in windows numerous times.  I’m not bragging.  I’m just stating that what I saw my father do, I learned by osmosis watching him and began doing it myself.

My dad was a quiet man and was a good listener.  I know that my listening skills have come from growing up with him and watching him listen to his customers or patrons around his rural mail carrier route.  He loved to help widows and elderly with odd jobs around the house and I have taken up his love.  Like father like son.

What is also true is that we can take on the bad characteristics of our father and begin to manifest those bad traits and thought processes in our own life.  I was reading in the Old Testament and came across an attitude and perspective of the younger generation that was  so similar to their father’s.

We need to go back to what the father’s perspective was and then you will get the picture.  It was the time when the nation of Israel was being directed by God to go into the promised land.  Thirteen spies were sent out to spy out the promised land and report what they saw.  They were gone for 40 days and brought back produce they had seen and the land they observed.  They did that, but they also brought back a bad report.   “The land we explored devours those living in it. All the people we saw there are of great size. We saw the Nephilim there (the descendants of Anak come from the Nephilim). We seemed like grasshoppers in our own eyes, and we looked the same to them.” Numbers‬ ‭13:32-33‬ ‭NIV‬‬  Rather than looking at what God could do and resting on His promises to take the promised land, they compared themselves with what they saw and found themselves to be inadequate to handle the situation.  They trusted in themselves rather than in God.

Fast forward 45 years when all the fathers had died and the sons entered the promised land.  God told them to clean out all the enemies in the promised land and settle with their families.  The sons of the tribe of Joseph replied, “The hill country is not enough for us, and all the Canaanites who live in the plain have chariots fitted with iron, both those in Beth Shan and its settlements and those in the Valley of Jezebel.” ‭(Joshua‬ ‭17:16‬ ‭NIV)‬‬.  Like father, like son.  They were looking at their circumstances and the people in the land, rather than focus on God and His power to be victorious.  Sometimes being like father is a good thing.  In this instance, it wasn’t.

On this journey, it is important to take the good things of our ancestry with us as our legacy, but make sure that the bad things are being replaced and transformed by God’s perspective.

Easter weekend was a wonderful time of connection and reflection. Nadine and I took our usual 30+ mile bike ride down to Tempe Town lake to eat breakfast at our favorite breakfast nook and back. We were both exhausted and took an hour nap. We hit our favorite shop Tommy Bahama Outlet and then out for supper at Charlstons and split a meal together. These days, we rarely order two meals, as our waist lines couldn’t take it and leave a restaurant feeling satisfied and not bloated.

Sunday has always been a special day of celebrating the death and resurrection of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. We like to go early to the sunrise service and then we have the rest of the day for family and friends. We had two of our grandsons over with the rest of the family and several of our friends. What we didn’t know was that one of the friends brought homemade cookies she had concocted the day before.

They are called butter cookies with cream cheese frosting on top. For those who weren’t on a diet, they were wonderful. They don’t seem that dangerous as they weren’t that big. Wrong, wrong, wrong. I decided to go off my no dessert, no bread diet and have just one. WRONG again. They were sinfully delicious. I took one bite and they literally melted in my mouth. Even though they were small, each one of them had a stick of butter with a little bit of flour covered by powered sugar mixed with cream cheese. It only seemed like I had just taken one bite and they were gone. My mouth screamed for another. I couldn’t take just one and neither could all others who indulged in the sweet concoctions.

They are a lot like the pleasures of this world. We get a taste of those things that God tells us not to participate in and it seems that we can’t get enough. The writer of Hebrews talked about this issue when he wrote Hebrews 11:25. He was writing about Moses who had all the possibilities for enjoying the good life in Pharoah’s house who was the ruler in Egypt. Rather than enjoying the benefits of being with the rich, it says, “He (Moses) chose to be mistreated along with (his Jewish people) rather than to enjoy the fleeting pleasures of sin. He chose. On Sunday, I allowed my temptations to dictate my choice and the second choice.

On this journey we can be tempted by so many worldly pleasures. If we don’t choose a different path, the temptations can be like the cookie that cause us to veer away from our path God chooses to direct us. Choose wisely.

Do you remember your first real car? Not the one that your dad passed down to you. Not the one that went from family member to family member and you were the third recipient. I mean the first car that is in your name.

I remember being 22 and was just graduating from college. I had saved my money after being paid each week for driving the tractor and herding cattle with horses in my home town. Yes, I was a farmer and a cowboy and still have roots back in eastern Colorado. I went into the Chevrolet Dealership in Flagler Colorado to order my car. In 1971, you had to go in and order your car rather than picking one out in the car lot. There was no such thing as car lots in the smaller towns. It took 6 weeks from the time you ordered your car until you got the call and drove over to the dealership with your dad to pick up your prized possession. The excitement driving to see my car for the first time was electric. It screamed independence. Mine. All mine. It seemed like forever to sign the necessary papers before the keys were handed over. I remember where my car was sitting and the pushing the key into the ignition was the best thing ever.

Well, I had the privilege of experiencing the same thing that my dad experienced 44 years ago with me. Here is Carter standing by his first car, all his own.

Look at that smile. If he could hug it he would. It’s black like his dads. I know it is a Ford which for the most part I have stayed away from after a bad experience with an Expedition. But he wanted an F-150 and he got an F-150. It took most of the day to check out the truck, secure the title of the Avalanche he was driving, and filling out the necessary loan documents. But here he is in our driveway after he drove home to drop me off. His excitement couldn’t contain his enthusiasm about talking about all the things inside his truck.

There are times in life when it’s healthy to soak up the moment and enjoy the experience. Today was one of those days. Samuel in the Old Testament was a judge of Israel and wrote in his second book about the importance of seizing the moment. He said that life is like water that is spilled out on the ground and cannot be gathered up again (II Sam14:14). I believe that the writer wanted us to seize every day and every moment in our lives and not allow them to spill out without experiencing all that God wants us to experience.

On this journey today, I had the privilege of being with my son in all of his joy and excitement in getting his first truck. I thank God for the honor of being there.