Friday, March 27, 2009

To the Music

You are on the bus when you suddenly realize… you need to fart.

The music is really loud, so you time your farts with the beat.

After a couple of songs, you start to feel better as you approach your stop.

As you are leaving the bus, people are really staring you down, and that’s when you remember:

you’ve been listening to your ipod.

Steve's Weekly Weight-Loss Update


We continue to make a little progress. The encouraging thing is that there has not been any side-ways movement in the graph for a few weeks. Also recently the moving average is slightly below the trend line. Could I make 200 by Mary and Joel's wedding? I added a new "goal" line to put some pressure on my self to do that. It will requiring losing a pound every 4-5 days.

There has been a lot of speculation if I am running a secret contest. The answer is "yes." But only with myself. Ultimately, I race against myself, not anyone else. The benefits of achieving the goals are very personal and have nothing to do with whether or not any one else exceeds their goals or not. If I can get down to a healthy weight and stay there, I will be adding quality years to my life and may be able to enjoy my wife, children, grandchildren and great grandchildren for many years.
As you reach your goals, may the benefits far exceed your every hope!
Steve

Thursday, March 26, 2009

Co-Dependence with Light

My niece Jeannette makes a point that we can be too dependent on light (Understand I am not talking about the "light of the world". That is a whole other light.) The light I am talking about are those things that clamor for our attention, seem important and even necessary to function. But when we get too focused on the visible we miss the invisible, the feel, the smell, our other senses are ignored. When we focus on the clearly audible sounds and voices around us, we neglect the subtle sounds and still quite voice within us telling us something new, different and wonderful (That's the real light). Thanks Jeannette.

Love, Steve

Tuesday, March 24, 2009

Working in the Dark

This morning I got to work at about 6:20 a.m. The building where I work has automatic controls on some of the offices to make sure the lights are turned off at night. Our lights turn off at, well I don't know, I've never worked that late. They turn on about 7:00 a.m. Usually, however, I can over ride the computer that controls the lights by calling a special number, adding some codes and an earlier start time. When I did that today, the phone number was busy so I could not turn on the lights. There I was working in the dark (well mostly dark). There was some light from the computer screen and an emergency light outside my office.

Kathi had asked me for something via e-mail late last night that I did not get until this morning (I go to bed a lot earlier than she does normally). I had to work on it in the dark. I found that I was able to type-by-touch with no problem at all. Back in high school I taught myself how to type. Typing for me is kind of an automatic thing (if you can ingor the typos) that I can do in the light or dark. I sent her what she wanted just as the light came on!

It got me to thinking, what else can we do in the dark? By dark I mean when some input or information you normally have for a task is not available. What do we do "in the dark?" The Bible has some warnings about what some people do in the dark, I'm not necessarily talking about those things. How can we compensate when input is missing? In my typing example, I was able to compensate by years of practice and those little raised bumps on the "F" and "J" keys.

What if some "critical" piece of information is missing? or some person is needed? What do we do then? Do we sit and wait? Do we give up and do something else? Or do we push forward with what we know until the missing pieces come together? I suspect that the truly successful people "work in the dark" a lot. Maybe the light comes on after we start working, maybe it doesn't. But if we wait until every thing is perfect, will we ever accomplish anything worthy of our calling as Children of God?

May the Light of our Lord Jesus shine into our lives even when there is no other light at all!

Love, Steve