shut up you big baby

I have been looking over the blur that has been the last few days. I have been complaining about how busy I am and how I don’t have time for anything. WAAAHHHH. Shut up you big baby.

I am blessed beyond measure, and I complain? Well the complaint department is now closed. Yes I have been busy, but I asked for it. I asked for God to use me however he wants (I almost typed needs here but God doesn’t need me for anything, he is God). This doesn’t just stop at church, it includes my home life, my work, everything. I want God to use me.

My father use to tell me that there are two types of people out there, those that  &%$#@! about it and those that will do something about it. Well here it is. Buck up, put your big boy pants on and go, fight through the BS and go. Just shut-up and go. There are greater things to be done and it requires sacrifice. Are you willing to sacrifice, for your work, for your family, for your God?

busy but not really

I am busy at work, but we don’t have anything going on.
With the economy being slow it makes for a busy day?
The work I do is somewhat driven by the economy, if my customer isn’t making money then we aren’t making money.
Funny how that works….
So tonight I am in Blytheville, AR to meet with a customer in the morning to try and convince them that we need to do more work for them.
This is the one part of the job that I really don’t like but am really good at.
Well here is my question in all that rambling.
If my customer wasn’t willing to buy our services why would he meet with me?
If he wasn’t open to what I was saying why would he be willing to listen?
Sounds kinda familiar with church.
If I wasn’t willing to listen to what was being said, would I be there?
If I wasn’t looking for something, then why would I show up.
This has really been a reminder to me as to why people walk into a church on Sunday, or why people are willing to listen when you are bold enough to approach them with the good news of Jesus.
One of my biggest faults sometimes is that I am not bold enough.
In my job I will cold call someone out of the blue and try and get my foot in the door for a sales meeting, and you would be amazed at the number of new customers I have picked up in doing so.
So why am I not just stopping people on the street and telling them about Jesus? I’ll call and tell a total stranger about how my company can solve all your electrical maintenance issues, but I don’t tell total strangers about how Jesus will solve every problem you have if you will just trust Him…..
Dang, I think I am going to start a blog category about how many different ways I suck.

Easy like sunday morning

I love serving at Crosspoint Church.

I think I may have said that already.

My good buddy, super fly connections pastor, and hero, Kenny Lopez made a comment today that made me smile a bit.

He was telling Andrew Kulp (this guy is planting a church in Maryland) that our theme song for what we do at Crosspt is Easy Like Sunday Morning.

Ha

Ha, ha,

Ha, ha, ha, ha….

I said I love what God and the leadership staff of this church lets me do, but easy???

I know he was kidding, it tickled me a little.

I have to admit that some mornings are easier than others, but regardless of easy or hard, I love it.

Did I mention I love serving God at Crosspoint.

I do.

If you have reservations about serving or your not sure how you can serve, come find me, I will hook you up.

Oh side note, got a very flattering job offer this past week, very flattering…turned it down.

Felt good to know someone thought I was worth that kind of money, with those kind of perks, especially with the economy the way it is.

Here’s a little song for you Kenny, and seein as how we are a rockin church, I’ll give you the Faith No More cover of this tune.

where the deer and the antelope play

Got home this morning from Wyoming.

36 hours on the road in a tractor trailer can make you tired, I didn’t know you could work 90.5 hours in one week five days.

Some interesting facts about this state:

The population of the capital has less people than Morgan Co.

The population of the state has less people than Morgan and Madison Co. combined.

Antelope are not as weary as they make out on the TV.

Mule deer are HUGE.

Every truck out there has a “deer guard” on it.

The deer usually lose, but they put a hurtin on a vehicle.

Wyoming is my new second favorite state, if you don’t believe there is a God, then go visit Wyoming, this place is breath taking.

Here are a few pictures I took, most of them were made from a moving truck (the first one wasn’t).

I want to go back when I have more time to spend, I’m not driving though.

Thank you to everyone that prayed for my safety.

how do you do it?

How do you do it? How do you fight it off?

How do you fight off that sense of ‘you aren’t getting it done?’

How do you fight off the feeling of ‘what you are doing isn’t good enough.’

Pity party?

Prayer?

Prayerful pity party?

I’ve done both. Maybe I’m not praying the right things.

Frustrating….highly frustrating.

Frustration to me can be a motivator. Can be….

What if you….

had a doctor tell you that you have four weeks to live? What would you do with that time? What if the person that only had four weeks was your dad? How would you spend the last four weeks of your dad’s life?

One of my co-workers is having to ask himself that. Here is a bit of a back story, Robert came into my office earlier this year visibly upset. They had found cancer on one of his father’s rib bones. The cancer had eaten the rib bone from the tip almost to his spine, that rib bone is completely gone. They found this on a routine follow up visit for a bout of pneumonia that his father had shaken off in the latter part of last year. This guy is obviously tough, because the comment to his doctor was ‘I was hurtin there a few weeks ago for a little while’. Wow. The doctor of course refered him to an oncologist and they figured out that this type of cancer is fast growing but can be easily beatin. Well, they beat it.

Fast forward to last month. They were doing another routine visit about the bone eating cancer and they found more, only this time it’s bad. With treatment he would have a year to live, with out treatment he would have 3 months. My friend is hurting, a lot.

As if this story couldn’t get any worse…..He started hurting again and got very sick, they took him back to the hospital to try and get stabilized, only to find that it is growing very fast and that his father has 4 weeks to live and there is nothing they can do. Everytime I talk to Robby about his dad I want to cry. This is difficult just writing about it, I am having to fight back the tears. I have never met his dad but I can see the hurt and anguish in Robert’s face when I ask him about his dad. He loves his daddy.

All I can think about is my dad. My dad is alive and healthy. He is my best friend and I honestly don’t think I will be worth killing for a while when my dad dies. I can’t imagine what he must be feeling. I just can’t.

The redeeming portion of Robert’s story is that his father knows Jesus Christ and that in four weeks he will be whole again. I talked to Robert about this the other day and told him if I don’t get the chance to meet his dad while he is on Earth, I am glad to know that I will see him heaven.

My question to ya’ll is what would you do if you only had four weeks to walk on Earth? My request is that you pray for Robert’s family…..Peace.

almost

The outage is almost over….Thank you Jesus!

work, work, work

It’s outage time boys and girls. I haven’t been able to do much more than work and work, but I’ll be finished up with the outage hopefully Wednesday. What sucks though is Crosspoint is going to two services and I have to miss. God’s work happens with or without me, but I enjoy serving and would much rather be there than here. Oh well…..I am praying for you guys. Peace

pest

I hate wasp nest, especially BIG wasp nest. I don’t know why but they give me the creeps. No, it’s not because I was stung as a child, even though I have been stung several times. I think it is because of a movie I saw once, this image of a dead guy with a wasp nest built around his head, with his mouth open and bee’s flying in and out of it, his lifeless eyes, looking up at you saying ‘hey dude, do I have a bee on me?’

Any way here is a picture of nice one one of my guys found at work.

26 hours

That’s how many hours are needed in the day. There is never enough time to do what is needing to be done, maybe it’s poor time management or overloaded plates, I’m not sure.

Things at work get real hectic around outage time. For those that don’t know what an outage is; an outage is when a plant, in my case Nucor, shuts down all production to perform maintenance. My office has a lot of prep work to do to get ready for an outage so that always means overtime.

Whats the worse schedule you’ve ever had to work?