When cabinets go bad

We are redoing our kitchen. We need new cabinets. The cabinets that we have are original to the house and they are literally falling apart. They are made of particle board, which are chips of wood glued together. Time and water have caused the particle board to literally come apart in chunks in places. The problem is, you can’t just replace the parts of the cabinets that are coming apart. Plus you can’t save the tile counter tops on top of the cabinets. It is the domino effect - when you start to fix one thing, you impact another thing that needs to be fixed, which impacts yet another thing that needs to be fixed, and so on and so on. Think of the movie, The Money Pit.

Here are some spiritual lessons from this:

1. Change is stressful. Even if it is change for the better. Redoing your kitchen cabinets looks like a great time on HGTV (the home and garden network), but so far all it makes me is tired and grumpy. So too with changes in our life, especially when it comes to character issues. It sounds great when you read about it. Actually doing it is a lot of hard work.

2. Demo leaves a big mess. We hauled everything out of the kitchen and piled it up on the driveway to be hauled off to the dump. The pile is huge and ugly. You can make the spiritual connection.

3. Things look much worse before they get better. Ripping out the cabinets exposed some nasty stuff that was underneath the cabinets. The Bible makes a contrast between living in the light and living in the darkness. There are times we need bring areas of our life into the light.

4. The domino effect is brutal. When you fix one thing, you can see the thing next to it needs attention as well. It is easier and cheaper in the long run if you fix it now as opposed to later. The same is true spiritually.

5. Someday it will be worth it. It sure doesn’t feel like it right now staring at the bills. But someday it will be worth fixing. So too with your life.

There is a joke about polishing the front door knob of where you life. It starts with a warning not to polish the front door knob, because if you do, you will notice that the door needs to be painted. And if you paint the door……

Let encourage you to do it anyway. Clean up one aspect of your life. Then see what happens. Someday it will be worth it.

A taste, but more work needed

I have project car that I am working on that is not happy. It is beyond simply being not happy. It is an angry beast. Every time I walk it the man cave (my garage) the thing sneers at me. If it could talk it would curse. And spit. It is a 1972 Capri, which most people today have no idea what that is, but I had one just like it when I was in high school. There is nothing special about these cars. They are not collectable. However, nostalgia got the best of me when I bought another one thirty some years later. I remembered all the reasons why I liked and the disliked the car and then sold it. But somewhere in the back of a grown man’s mind still reside the hopes and dreams of what you wanted to do to that first car but never had the money to do it. I wanted to drop a V8 into it. So I bought another one and headed in that direction, but found out that money is just tight now as it was way back then. And now time is ticking faster as well. So I sold the second one, vowing not to go down this road again.

Then came the call. A man who had one of these cars that already had a V8 in it was selling his, and wanted to know if I wanted it. I had been asking him to sell it to me for well over a year. I had wanted this car for the drive train to put in the body of the second one, but I had already sold that it. And I had made the vow. Besides, this car by had issues. It had dents, it had rust, the interior was trashed. It was not a car that would be easy to bring back. Even the monster engine in the car was running rough. So I told the seller, “No thanks.”

That should have been the end of it, but…well….it wasn’t. I called him back a few hours later and told him I would buy it.

Over the years I have learned the hard way not to buy a car sight unseen. And yet that was what I just did. When I did see it in person a few weeks later only confirmed I should have looked at it first. It was worth the price. But the car indeed had issues. The deeper I dug, the more issues I found. This was going to be a challenge.

You may know where I am going with this. We are all like this car to some extent. We have dents, rust, areas of our life that are trashed, and last but not least, have issues. Because we do, life can at times be a challenge.

Like the car, we have times were we are not happy. We are angry. We sneer at others. We even curse. But we have someone who is working in our life that can see beyond that. He can see the potential of our becoming what we were designed to be. And he rolls up his sleeves and gets his hands dirty in our lives. You know his name.

Tonight I took the angry beast of a car on its first trip to the back country roads of East San Diego County - a place that doesn’t know what flat or straight means. With the interior gutted and the wiring hanging everywhere, it rattled like crazy. No carpet or insulation meant searing floorboard temperatures. And running ragged as it was, the engine and exhaust smells were not pleasant.

But all that said, there were a few minutes of glory. There was a moment where the road I was on broke free from civilization and pointed east toward the back country hills and canyons. It was at that moment the car sensed something lay ahead…maybe not today..but in the days to come. I hit the gas. The engine roared. For a few brief moments we were off and running. Thrilling is too weak a word. Then I let off the throttle, turned around and headed home. More work will be needed before we can go further.

You can make the connection. Soon there will be a moment like that in your life. You can sense something is ahead. Something good. Something you were created for. And for a few brief moments you can taste it. More work will be needed before you can go further. But at least you got a taste.

It is coming. And coming soon.

A taste, but more work needed

I have project car that I am working on that is not happy. It is beyond simply being not happy. It is an angry beast. Every time I walk it the man cave (my garage) the thing sneers at me. If it could talk it would curse. And spit. It is a 1972 Capri, which most people today have no idea what that is, but I had one just like it when I was in high school. There is nothing special about these cars. They are not collectable. However, nostalgia got the best of me when I bought another one thirty some years later. I remembered all the reasons why I liked and the disliked the car and then sold it. But somewhere in the back of a grown man’s mind still reside the hopes and dreams of what you wanted to do to that first car but never had the money to do it. I wanted to drop a V8 into it. So I bought another one and headed in that direction, but found out that money is just tight now as it was way back then. And now time is ticking faster as well. So I sold the second one, vowing not to go down this road again.

Then came the call. A man who had one of these cars that already had a V8 in it was selling his, and wanted to know if I wanted it. I had been asking him to sell it to me for well over a year. I had wanted this car for the drive train to put in the body of the second one, but I had already sold that it. And I had made the vow. Besides, this car by had issues. It had dents, it had rust, the interior was trashed. It was not a car that would be easy to bring back. Even the monster engine in the car was running rough. So I told the seller, “No thanks.”

That should have been the end of it, but…well….it wasn’t. I called him back a few hours later and told him I would buy it.

Over the years I have learned the hard way not to buy a car sight unseen. And yet that was what I just did. When I did see it in person a few weeks later only confirmed I should have looked at it first. It was worth the price. But the car indeed had issues. The deeper I dug, the more issues I found. This was going to be a challenge.

You may know where I am going with this. We are all like this car to some extent. We have dents, rust, areas of our life that are trashed, and last but not least, have issues. Because we do, life can at times be a challenge.

Like the car, we have times were we are not happy. We are angry. We sneer at others. We even curse. But we have someone who is working in our life that can see beyond that. He can see the potential of our becoming what we were designed to be. And he rolls up his sleeves and gets his hands dirty in our lives. You know his name.

Tonight I took the angry beast of a car on its first trip to the back country roads of East San Diego County - a place that doesn’t know what flat or straight means. With the interior gutted and the wiring hanging everywhere, it rattled like crazy. No carpet or insulation meant searing floorboard temperatures. And running ragged as it was, the engine and exhaust smells were not pleasant.

But all that said, there were a few minutes of glory. There was a moment where the road I was on broke free from civilization and pointed east toward the back country hills and canyons. It was at that moment the car sensed something lay ahead…maybe not today..but in the days to come. I hit the gas. The engine roared. For a few brief moments we were off and running. Thrilling is too weak a word. Then I let off the throttle, turned around and headed home. More work will be needed before we can go further.

You can make the connection. Soon there will be a moment like that in your life. You can sense something is ahead. Something good. Something you were created for. And for a few brief moments you can taste it. More work will be needed before you can go further. But at least you got a taste.

It is coming. And coming soon.

What is your blue towel?

Today I read a story written by Peter King of Sports Illustrated. He wrote the story some months back about Tim Tebow, a quarterback who was drafted by the Denver Broncos in the first round, and what their coach Josh McDaniels and his staff were doing to prepare Tebow for the NFL. Now let me state right up front I am a Chargers fan. I also realize that some of you reading this can’t stand the Broncos, Tim Tebow or even Josh McDaniels for that matter. If at all humanly possible, put those emotions on hold and try to read the article from a spiritual perspective. The theme of this article is how the Broncos are trying to change Tebow’s throwing mechanics. Now at first this may seem ridiculous, because Tebow was wildly successful as a college quarterback. He even won the Heisman Trophy. So why on earth would Coach McDaniels want to change a person like that’s throwing mechanics?

To make him even more effective. And not simply being able to throw better, or even feel comfortable doing so, but so that it comes naturally.

So too in your and my spiritual lives. There are things that need to be reconstructed so that we can be more effective spiritually. Even some things that we think we are already doing successfully. One of the techniques used by the coaching staff was continuous repetition. That makes sense. Do right thing over and over until it comes naturally. Interestingly, it also involved using a blue towel. They had Tebow tuck a blue towel under his right arm while he threw with his left. Holding that towel with his arm forced the rest of his body to remain in the correct position.

Here is my question to you today. What is your blue towel? What small thing can you do in your spiritual life that will help the rest of you remain in the correct position? For some it is taking time to pray each day. Or reading the Bible. Or helping a person in need. The list could be endless. Remember, the goal is to make you more spiritually effective and the key is repetition.

Here is the link to the story.
Peter King's SI Reconstruction of Tebow Article

What is your blue towel?

Today I read a story written by Peter King of Sports Illustrated. He wrote the story some months back about Tim Tebow, a quarterback who was drafted by the Denver Broncos in the first round, and what their coach Josh McDaniels and his staff were doing to prepare Tebow for the NFL. Now let me state right up front I am a Chargers fan. I also realize that some of you reading this can’t stand the Broncos, Tim Tebow or even Josh McDaniels for that matter. If at all humanly possible, put those emotions on hold and try to read the article from a spiritual perspective. The theme of this article is how the Broncos are trying to change Tebow’s throwing mechanics. Now at first this may seem ridiculous, because Tebow was wildly successful as a college quarterback. He even won the Heisman Trophy. So why on earth would Coach McDaniels want to change a person like that’s throwing mechanics?

To make him even more effective. And not simply being able to throw better, or even feel comfortable doing so, but so that it comes naturally.

So too in your and my spiritual lives. There are things that need to be reconstructed so that we can be more effective spiritually. Even some things that we think we are already doing successfully. One of the techniques used by the coaching staff was continuous repetition. That makes sense. Do right thing over and over until it comes naturally. Interestingly, it also involved using a blue towel. They had Tebow tuck a blue towel under his right arm while he threw with his left. Holding that towel with his arm forced the rest of his body to remain in the correct position.

Here is my question to you today. What is your blue towel? What small thing can you do in your spiritual life that will help the rest of you remain in the correct position? For some it is taking time to pray each day. Or reading the Bible. Or helping a person in need. The list could be endless. Remember, the goal is to make you more spiritually effective and the key is repetition.

Here is the link to the story.
Peter King's SI Reconstruction of Tebow Article

Jail

This has been a wild week for the Wade household for a number of reasons. It started when we were leaving church on Sunday. I got call from the nurse at the assisted living place my 89 year old father is staying at. She said he was not doing well and should go to the emergency room at the hospital. We rushed over and sure enough he was not doing well. He ended up having a severe urinary tract infection and being dehydrated. This is common in elderly people and equally common for this combination to result in the person being very confused, which my father was. The first night at the hospital he was convinced he was in jail and was demanding to see the judge. On one level you have to laugh to keep from crying, but it is a gut wrenching thing to see a loved one in that condition. On another level I got very frustrated because I could not convince him he was in a hospital. My dad is a very stubborn man and at one point I asked him, "What will it take to convince you that you are in a hospital?" He shot back with, "What will it take to convince you that I am not?" My wife Glenda, who was there in the room watching this exchange.....well you can ask her what her perspective was watching this was. :)

When we got home I was stressed. Usually when I am stressed I go for a run but it was to late to do that. What to do? I went out to the man cave (my garage). I have a 37 year old car I recently got that has not been running for about 10 years. It needs a lot of work. The steering does not work but the parts needing repair are covered with a thick layer of oil and dirt. One way of getting that dirt off is taking a single edge razor blade and scraping it off by hand. So I got under the car and started scraping. But before I did I put on a CD of the Psalms that I have. So there I was, late at night, lying under an old car on a hard concrete floor, scraping decades old oily dirt off with a razor blade. Believe it or not, that was therapeutic for me.

However, what really de stressed me was listening to the Psalms. A big chunk of the Psalms were written by King David, and he doesn't mince words. Many of the Psalms are directed straight to God and if he is upset, he tells God he is upset. If he feels like God has forgotten him, he tells him so. If he is mad that someone wronged him.....well you get the picture. Listening to those Psalms really ministered to me that night.

And that is why I am telling you this story. If you are going through it and have not been in the Psalms recently, let me encourage you to go there. As you read or listen through them, I predict you will find one you can really relate to. There really is something for everyone there. And if you do this, and you find a good one, let me know.

By the way, my dad is better and is back at his normal residence.
He still didn't like being in jail though.

Jail

This has been a wild week for the Wade household for a number of reasons. It started when we were leaving church on Sunday. I got call from the nurse at the assisted living place my 89 year old father is staying at. She said he was not doing well and should go to the emergency room at the hospital. We rushed over and sure enough he was not doing well. He ended up having a severe urinary tract infection and being dehydrated. This is common in elderly people and equally common for this combination to result in the person being very confused, which my father was. The first night at the hospital he was convinced he was in jail and was demanding to see the judge. On one level you have to laugh to keep from crying, but it is a gut wrenching thing to see a loved one in that condition. On another level I got very frustrated because I could not convince him he was in a hospital. My dad is a very stubborn man and at one point I asked him, "What will it take to convince you that you are in a hospital?" He shot back with, "What will it take to convince you that I am not?" My wife Glenda, who was there in the room watching this exchange.....well you can ask her what her perspective was watching this was. :)

When we got home I was stressed. Usually when I am stressed I go for a run but it was to late to do that. What to do? I went out to the man cave (my garage). I have a 37 year old car I recently got that has not been running for about 10 years. It needs a lot of work. The steering does not work but the parts needing repair are covered with a thick layer of oil and dirt. One way of getting that dirt off is taking a single edge razor blade and scraping it off by hand. So I got under the car and started scraping. But before I did I put on a CD of the Psalms that I have. So there I was, late at night, lying under an old car on a hard concrete floor, scraping decades old oily dirt off with a razor blade. Believe it or not, that was therapeutic for me.

However, what really de stressed me was listening to the Psalms. A big chunk of the Psalms were written by King David, and he doesn't mince words. Many of the Psalms are directed straight to God and if he is upset, he tells God he is upset. If he feels like God has forgotten him, he tells him so. If he is mad that someone wronged him.....well you get the picture. Listening to those Psalms really ministered to me that night.

And that is why I am telling you this story. If you are going through it and have not been in the Psalms recently, let me encourage you to go there. As you read or listen through them, I predict you will find one you can really relate to. There really is something for everyone there. And if you do this, and you find a good one, let me know.

By the way, my dad is better and is back at his normal residence.
He still didn't like being in jail though.

Jesus' words

Every now and then a verse really haunts me. Like getting a song stuck in your head. I just won't go away. The current verse is

The Spirit gives life; the flesh counts for nothing. The words I have spoken to you are spirit and they are life.(John 6:63)

If I believe this, why am I not doing everything in my power to get Jesus' words in me? Everything. And not just in me, but acting on them.

Jesus' words

Every now and then a verse really haunts me. Like getting a song stuck in your head. I just won't go away. The current verse is

The Spirit gives life; the flesh counts for nothing. The words I have spoken to you are spirit and they are life.(John 6:63)

If I believe this, why am I not doing everything in my power to get Jesus' words in me? Everything. And not just in me, but acting on them.

After midnight

One of those days Jesus went out to a mountainside to pray, and spent the night praying to God.(Luke 6:12)

I love this time of night. All I hear is the sound of fan. And the dog snoring. I have a feeling most of what I write here will be written late at night. Yet I do envy morning people. People who can get up at the crack of dawn and immediately are awake. Really awake. Like I am right now. Over the years I have tried to be a morning person, but it always ended badly. Years ago, when I was in grad school back in Texas, I had this big idea that I could achieve morning personhood by jumping into the pool every morning. I actually do that now when I am on vacation in the summer. Picture Palm Springs, California in August. If I want to run, I have to run in the morning before the temperature breaks one hundred. So I get up and run early, my body and especially my mind protesting the entire way. When I arrive back at the hotel, I jump into the pool, which is as warm as a bath that time of year.

Back to Texas. Summers in Texas can be just as hot plus the added burden of having high humidity. Ninety degrees and ninety percent humidity, day after day. That could have easily been the weather conditions the afternoon I was sitting in the pool of my apartment and had the big idea. Well...maybe not so big, but it was an idea. In my quest to become a morning person, I would get up early, go for a jog, and then jump in the pool. Much like I do on vacations these days on Palm Spings. But sitting there in Texas, I also knew that at some point the weather would change and the mornings would turn cold.

Now at that young age, a person can and should dream big dreams. And have big ideas like, "My body will toughen up and adapt to the cooling temperature of the pool water." It was along the line of thinking that if you lift up a calf the day it is born, and continue to lift it every day from then on, by the time it becomes an adult cow you will have grown strong enough to still be able to lift it. If the human body can adapt to cow lifting, then it can adapt to pool plunging. Besides, when I was growning up, the man next door swam laps in his pool every morning even during the coldest winters. If he could do it, I could do it. What I forgot was those were the days of twenty nine cent per gallon gasoline and even cheaper natural gas, so he kept his pool heated all year long. Not so with my apartment pool.

So each day I got up, I jogged and I jumped in the pool. For a while it actually worked. I was getting in better shape, and indeed my body seemed to be adapting to the falling pool temperature. Morning personhood seemed to be mine.

But then came the day. The day that the cow got too large to lift.

In that part of Texas, cold fronts called "northers" can blow through and drop the temperature significantly in a matter of minutes. I remember driving though one and the windows of my car instantly fogged up so much I couldn't see out to drive. That was the kind of norther that swept through one day...the norther that did me in.

To run the morning after that norther required full sweats, the thick gray kind with a hood before hoodies became cool. By the end of my run my hands were numb. Then came the pool. I stood there and looked at it. Certainly the water would not have cooled down much overnight. Being a engineering major, I knew there would be some thermal lag involved. I pulled off my sweats and linger there momentarily in my swim suit. The wind was bitterly cold. Bitterly.

I dove in.

I know some medical professionals say you don't get sick from playing out in the cold. My body hadn't read those medical journals. I got sick and I got sick instantaneously. The minute I hit the water I was sick and by the time I could haul my body out of the pool I was even sicker. I know it sounds impossible. It probably was impossible. But I was sick and that was the end of the big idea.

It took forever to get well. By the time I did I had reverted back the my true identity, the night owl. The pool never recovered either. At least until the following summer. When someone else had another big idea.

After midnight

One of those days Jesus went out to a mountainside to pray, and spent the night praying to God.(Luke 6:12)

I love this time of night. All I hear is the sound of fan. And the dog snoring. I have a feeling most of what I write here will be written late at night. Yet I do envy morning people. People who can get up at the crack of dawn and immediately are awake. Really awake. Like I am right now. Over the years I have tried to be a morning person, but it always ended badly. Years ago, when I was in grad school back in Texas, I had this big idea that I could achieve morning personhood by jumping into the pool every morning. I actually do that now when I am on vacation in the summer. Picture Palm Springs, California in August. If I want to run, I have to run in the morning before the temperature breaks one hundred. So I get up and run early, my body and especially my mind protesting the entire way. When I arrive back at the hotel, I jump into the pool, which is as warm as a bath that time of year.

Back to Texas. Summers in Texas can be just as hot plus the added burden of having high humidity. Ninety degrees and ninety percent humidity, day after day. That could have easily been the weather conditions the afternoon I was sitting in the pool of my apartment and had the big idea. Well...maybe not so big, but it was an idea. In my quest to become a morning person, I would get up early, go for a jog, and then jump in the pool. Much like I do on vacations these days on Palm Spings. But sitting there in Texas, I also knew that at some point the weather would change and the mornings would turn cold.

Now at that young age, a person can and should dream big dreams. And have big ideas like, "My body will toughen up and adapt to the cooling temperature of the pool water." It was along the line of thinking that if you lift up a calf the day it is born, and continue to lift it every day from then on, by the time it becomes an adult cow you will have grown strong enough to still be able to lift it. If the human body can adapt to cow lifting, then it can adapt to pool plunging. Besides, when I was growning up, the man next door swam laps in his pool every morning even during the coldest winters. If he could do it, I could do it. What I forgot was those were the days of twenty nine cent per gallon gasoline and even cheaper natural gas, so he kept his pool heated all year long. Not so with my apartment pool.

So each day I got up, I jogged and I jumped in the pool. For a while it actually worked. I was getting in better shape, and indeed my body seemed to be adapting to the falling pool temperature. Morning personhood seemed to be mine.

But then came the day. The day that the cow got too large to lift.

In that part of Texas, cold fronts called "northers" can blow through and drop the temperature significantly in a matter of minutes. I remember driving though one and the windows of my car instantly fogged up so much I couldn't see out to drive. That was the kind of norther that swept through one day...the norther that did me in.

To run the morning after that norther required full sweats, the thick gray kind with a hood before hoodies became cool. By the end of my run my hands were numb. Then came the pool. I stood there and looked at it. Certainly the water would not have cooled down much overnight. Being a engineering major, I knew there would be some thermal lag involved. I pulled off my sweats and linger there momentarily in my swim suit. The wind was bitterly cold. Bitterly.

I dove in.

I know some medical professionals say you don't get sick from playing out in the cold. My body hadn't read those medical journals. I got sick and I got sick instantaneously. The minute I hit the water I was sick and by the time I could haul my body out of the pool I was even sicker. I know it sounds impossible. It probably was impossible. But I was sick and that was the end of the big idea.

It took forever to get well. By the time I did I had reverted back the my true identity, the night owl. The pool never recovered either. At least until the following summer. When someone else had another big idea.

Wisdom on Location

Wisdom on Location