This morning my wife and I awoke to find a message on our answering machine telling us that her uncle Dan was getting a new heart. He's been waiting for a heart transplant for quite some time now and we had been told that there was a good chance it would happen over the holidays. I can imagine the emotions that he must be feeling this morning as he goes in to receive a new heart. It is definitely a scary thing, as no one knows how his body will handle a new heart. Still this news is an answer to prayer.
The strange thing is that someone's life had to end tragically for Dan to receive this new heart. One person's bad news is another person's good news. Life is definitely not fair, but what an awesome gift he has received. As I say a prayer for Dan this morning that the surgery goes well, I also offer a little prayer for the person who is giving Dan this gift and that person's family who must be grieving right now.
Listening to this morning's daily Scripture readings, I thought it was appropriate that they dealt with giving thanks to God. The Psalm talked about this directly, and the Gospel reading was actually about the woman named Anna who had waited for years to see the promised Messiah. Upon meeting the baby Jesus, it says she gave glory to God. I'm sure it was not easy waiting for eight years just like it hasn't been easy for Dan to wait for this new heart. I do see a difference in Dan however as he has found a new zeal for life. Uncertainty and practicing patience is never fun, but God does use it to help us grow. Amazingly God always finds a way to take our pain and suffering and bring something good out of it.
Showing posts with label Life Stories. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Life Stories. Show all posts
Tuesday, December 30, 2008
Wednesday, July 30, 2008
Don’t dunk your remote…that’s better for milk and cookies
Yeah, everybody knows that electronics and water don’t mix. Sure if your camera or cell phone get splashed it’s not a big deal but actually dunking such a device into a glass of water is definitely pushing things. Well a couple nights ago my subconscious mind decided to test logic in what has to be one of the dumbest things I’ve ever done.
That night I laid in bed watching the news or a Mythbusters’ rerun or something else. I can’t really be sure cause at some point I fell asleep with the TV on. Hours later a loud commercial brought out of a deep sleep and I realized that I had forgotten to turn off the tube. Still half asleep I fumbled for the remote and pressed a number of buttons until at last my figures found the power button and the TV turned off. Now in a darkened bedroom I reached over to set the TV remote down on my nightstand.
I could have felt the top of the nightstand and gently set the remote down but this is where my subconscious deemed it a perfect time to see if a remote controller can float in a glass of water. As the remote slipped into the water sitting by my bed I remember thinking, “You idiot, you just put the remote in your water glass,” but I was so tired and out of it that it still took me what seemed like forever to fish it out of the glass. I immediately wondered if I had broke it but left it on the nightstand till morning.
Now all this made me quite thirsty and having already done one stupid thing I began to ponder another. “Probably not a good idea to drink water that’s had a remote sitting in it,” I told myself. But in the end my thirst got the better of me so instead of getting up and retrieving a new glass, I quickly guzzled the tainted water down and went back to sleep.
Well morning came and remote was still wet. I shook my head as I looked at how the remote would have barely fit into the glass. Nothing to do now but to take the batteries out of it (better late then never) and let it dry out for the rest of the day. Now a few days removed from the incident the good news is that I’ve suffered no ill effects from drinking the water after dunking the remote in it. The bad news is the remote has become a paperweight with buttons. So that ends my scientific experiment of dunking a remote in water and it’s safe to say that it’s still just as bad of an idea as it’s always been. Best to leave the dunking to milk and cookies.
That night I laid in bed watching the news or a Mythbusters’ rerun or something else. I can’t really be sure cause at some point I fell asleep with the TV on. Hours later a loud commercial brought out of a deep sleep and I realized that I had forgotten to turn off the tube. Still half asleep I fumbled for the remote and pressed a number of buttons until at last my figures found the power button and the TV turned off. Now in a darkened bedroom I reached over to set the TV remote down on my nightstand.
I could have felt the top of the nightstand and gently set the remote down but this is where my subconscious deemed it a perfect time to see if a remote controller can float in a glass of water. As the remote slipped into the water sitting by my bed I remember thinking, “You idiot, you just put the remote in your water glass,” but I was so tired and out of it that it still took me what seemed like forever to fish it out of the glass. I immediately wondered if I had broke it but left it on the nightstand till morning.
Now all this made me quite thirsty and having already done one stupid thing I began to ponder another. “Probably not a good idea to drink water that’s had a remote sitting in it,” I told myself. But in the end my thirst got the better of me so instead of getting up and retrieving a new glass, I quickly guzzled the tainted water down and went back to sleep.
Well morning came and remote was still wet. I shook my head as I looked at how the remote would have barely fit into the glass. Nothing to do now but to take the batteries out of it (better late then never) and let it dry out for the rest of the day. Now a few days removed from the incident the good news is that I’ve suffered no ill effects from drinking the water after dunking the remote in it. The bad news is the remote has become a paperweight with buttons. So that ends my scientific experiment of dunking a remote in water and it’s safe to say that it’s still just as bad of an idea as it’s always been. Best to leave the dunking to milk and cookies.
Thursday, June 26, 2008
Midnight Visitor
A few nights ago my wife and I were both awakened shortly before midnight by someone knocking on our door. They rapped it twice and then rang our doorbell. Our little dog heard that and started barking like crazy. Now we are still fairly new to our area and don't really know anyone who would come to visit in the middle of the night unannounced so I grabbed a baseball bat we had in the bedroom and stumbled still half-asleep towards our bedroom door. Then my wife mentioned, "Maybe you should put some pants on before you go down there," as I was just in my boxers and a t-shirt. So I garbed a pair of jeans and through them on. I opened the bedroom door and started towards the front door. Like an idiot turned on the main light right away so I couldn't see anything outside till I opened the door. No one was there though. Our mystery visitor was gone. The dog and I went outside and looked around but the neighborhood was silent and no lights could be seen except the street lights. My wife said she did see a car driving up the street from our place while I was headed to the front door so maybe that was the person. Hopefully it was just someone who had the wrong house number and knocked on our door by accident. Just to be safe though, I called the local police and reported it. Seems unlikely that a burglar would ring the bell unless he thought the house was vacant and was just checking first. Probably more likely was some young kids looking for trouble.
Friday, May 16, 2008
The Tale of Two Tables
Yesterday my wife and I were helping her mother get ready for a rummage sale. Her mother had talked to her parish priest about borrowing a couple of old tables that the church would lend out to people. He was fine with that but was going to be gone so he said that he’d just leave the padlock open on the shed where they are kept and we could lock it up after we got them. The job of picking up the two tables was given to me and my brother-in-law so we took a truck over to the church. It seemed like such a simple task but we were soon to discover otherwise.
First problem we ran into was that the padlock was locked so we had no way to get in. Fortunately a couple of lady’s we new from when we grew up there were in the church decorating it so we explained our situation to them and asked if they new the combination to the padlock or where we could find it. They figured we would need to get it from one of the people who take care of the lawn since the shed was were the mower was kept. So we called the person who they thought might now it. He was sleeping but I talked to his wife and she said we really would need to get it from his sister but she didn’t have her phone number so she said we’d have to call her mom to get the phone number. I thanked her and called her mother and did my best to explain our situation as simply as possible. I would have probably been a bit suspicious had someone told me they were so and so’s son who’s mother-in-law had talked to the priest about getting some tables but the shed was locked so could she give me the number of the person who could give me the combination???....Just your typical phone call you know. Amazingly the lady totally trusted me and told me that she actually knew the combination and so she gave it to me. So I thanked her and went back to the shed with my brother-in-law full of hope that our mission was almost completed. But alas, the combination didn’t work.
We started trying similar combinations hoping that the lady just had one of the numbers wrong. Finally I tried swapping the first and last number and finally the lock opened. Now to load up the tables and be merrily on our way. As the light crept into the shed a feeling of despair came over our faces though as there were no tables to be seen. Someone else must have taken them and locked the shed up. We figured there wasn’t much we could do at this point but wanted to cover all of our bases so we checked some storage rooms in the church basement and upon not finding any were about to leave when one of the lady’s decorating the church ran into us again and asked if we got everything. When we explained our plight to her she mentioned to us that she thought her husband had a couple of old tables in his shed which we could borrow. Oh the joy’s of living in a small town. She called him up and told us he would meet us at his shed and directed us there.
Now this shed her husband had was no ordinary structure. I was expecting a little garage structure like the ones you can buy from a home improvement store but the reality was that his shed looked more like an airplane hanger then a small garage. It was literally filled with old tractors, engines, and every part and piece of equipment you could imagine. The guy who met us there backed out a gator and made some room for us to get inside. Sure enough, there were two tables that would finally complete our task. We loaded them in our truck thinking we were just about on our way but the guy asked us to come back as he wanted to show us something. He asked if we had ever heard of a hit and miss engine. “Sure, I’ve got one in that truck,” my brother-in-law said with a grin. Then the guy (who really was quite nice) started up a small engine he had on a cart and explained to us how it worked with two flywheels and didn’t need any sparkplugs. It was kind of a neat thing to see but it soon went from just looking at this engine to a full-blown tour and history lesson of every tractor in the shop. It was pretty cool when the guy turned on the lights and the whole shed lit up one light after another with some old-time 40’s sounding easy listening music starting up over our heads. Almost felt like we were in an old-time movie. It turned into a movie that could use some major editing though and after listening to a half dozen tractors run we told the guy that we’d love to stay there longer but that we really needed to be on way. He proceeds to show us one more and then finally we escaped.
When we got back to the house were the sale was going to be a good couple hours after we had left, my mother-in-law asked what had taken us so long and said we were in trouble. “You don’t know that half of it,” my brother-in-law said. Getting those two tables had turned into quite the adventure….and tomorrow we get to take them back.
First problem we ran into was that the padlock was locked so we had no way to get in. Fortunately a couple of lady’s we new from when we grew up there were in the church decorating it so we explained our situation to them and asked if they new the combination to the padlock or where we could find it. They figured we would need to get it from one of the people who take care of the lawn since the shed was were the mower was kept. So we called the person who they thought might now it. He was sleeping but I talked to his wife and she said we really would need to get it from his sister but she didn’t have her phone number so she said we’d have to call her mom to get the phone number. I thanked her and called her mother and did my best to explain our situation as simply as possible. I would have probably been a bit suspicious had someone told me they were so and so’s son who’s mother-in-law had talked to the priest about getting some tables but the shed was locked so could she give me the number of the person who could give me the combination???....Just your typical phone call you know. Amazingly the lady totally trusted me and told me that she actually knew the combination and so she gave it to me. So I thanked her and went back to the shed with my brother-in-law full of hope that our mission was almost completed. But alas, the combination didn’t work.
We started trying similar combinations hoping that the lady just had one of the numbers wrong. Finally I tried swapping the first and last number and finally the lock opened. Now to load up the tables and be merrily on our way. As the light crept into the shed a feeling of despair came over our faces though as there were no tables to be seen. Someone else must have taken them and locked the shed up. We figured there wasn’t much we could do at this point but wanted to cover all of our bases so we checked some storage rooms in the church basement and upon not finding any were about to leave when one of the lady’s decorating the church ran into us again and asked if we got everything. When we explained our plight to her she mentioned to us that she thought her husband had a couple of old tables in his shed which we could borrow. Oh the joy’s of living in a small town. She called him up and told us he would meet us at his shed and directed us there.
Now this shed her husband had was no ordinary structure. I was expecting a little garage structure like the ones you can buy from a home improvement store but the reality was that his shed looked more like an airplane hanger then a small garage. It was literally filled with old tractors, engines, and every part and piece of equipment you could imagine. The guy who met us there backed out a gator and made some room for us to get inside. Sure enough, there were two tables that would finally complete our task. We loaded them in our truck thinking we were just about on our way but the guy asked us to come back as he wanted to show us something. He asked if we had ever heard of a hit and miss engine. “Sure, I’ve got one in that truck,” my brother-in-law said with a grin. Then the guy (who really was quite nice) started up a small engine he had on a cart and explained to us how it worked with two flywheels and didn’t need any sparkplugs. It was kind of a neat thing to see but it soon went from just looking at this engine to a full-blown tour and history lesson of every tractor in the shop. It was pretty cool when the guy turned on the lights and the whole shed lit up one light after another with some old-time 40’s sounding easy listening music starting up over our heads. Almost felt like we were in an old-time movie. It turned into a movie that could use some major editing though and after listening to a half dozen tractors run we told the guy that we’d love to stay there longer but that we really needed to be on way. He proceeds to show us one more and then finally we escaped.
When we got back to the house were the sale was going to be a good couple hours after we had left, my mother-in-law asked what had taken us so long and said we were in trouble. “You don’t know that half of it,” my brother-in-law said. Getting those two tables had turned into quite the adventure….and tomorrow we get to take them back.
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