Rain! A Two-fold Blessing; God is Good to Us.

While I was at work yesterday, Abigail, my 8 year old daughter called me and asked if we could go on our date Saturday afternoon. Let me explain, every year at Christmas we give each of our kids a coupon book. The coupons include things like a get out of jail free card (this will cancel out punishments, although some restrictions apply), a stay up as late as you want, a day off of school(Tracy home schools the kids), and a date out with Mom or Dad. Abigail chose Saturday to use her date coupon. She wanted to go out for lunch at a French restaurant, and then go roller skating. I did not hesitate, and said yes right away, and that we could go. I really was planning on completing several tasks during the day. The yard is in need of a good mowing, as we have finally had some rain and it has started to look green again. I also had plans to look into a problem that Trace has been experiencing with her van. The garden needs some work, and the flowers need to be weeded. I also had planned on finishing up an outside project at our church. All in all I had a very busy day planned. I really did not have time to do the date thing, but I figured we could go, and I could do the work before and after our date.

As I awoke and headed out for my morning run I could see that it had rained quite a bit over night. The ground was completely saturated. While running I often pray. I find it a great time to spend with the Lord. It began to rain shortly after I started my run. I was thanking the Lord for the much needed rain as it has been very dry in our area,and we are many inches below the normal rainfall level. Then it dawned on me that this rain was a double blessing. You may have noticed that all of the projects were outside (we have no garage, so the van will be done in the driveway). So, with the rain from last night, mowing was out, as was the gardening. I couldn't weed the flowers as it was much to wet to do them. The rain seemed to be here to stay a while, and I immediately thanked the Lord for the rain. Not only for the ground, which we did really need it, but also for the projects that I would not be able to do even with no date scheduled. I would have enjoyed my date with Abigail even if I worked before and after, but I would have been rushing and thinking about the work I would not get done, and had to decide which projects would get bumped to a later time. God is so good to us. When we can be so focused on things to do, and a simple day of rain makes us realize that there are things far more important, it is a blessing. I was so happy to spend the date with Abigail, and I never thought about a single thing that needed to be done at home. If it were a sunny day I would have had those things on my mind.

Tracy even said the same thing to me as she was glad of the rain so I would not be thinking of what would not get done during the date.

As for the date, we had a blast. We had our French restaurant lunch at noon. After lunch, we headed down the street to an old fashioned ice cream shop and sat on a nearby park bench swing and enjoyed our dessert together. Then, we headed to the roller rink. I was never a good skater as a kid and that has not changed since I've become an adult. As we headed out on the floor, I began to lose my balance and Abigail grabbed my hand and said, "I will keep you from falling Daddy." Truth is, she did help me keep my balance and it very much touched me. We skated for over 2 hours. I did fall twice, times both of which she did not have hold of my hand. We had a good time. After we left we headed to a local park and spent a few minutes swinging. Then we headed home. As we pulled up the driveway with the wipers on, Abigail said, " I sure am glad we did our date today." With a tear in my eye I said, "Me too, Honey."

God is so good to us.

Father's Day

Well once again I have experienced a great day thanks to my family. My loving wife made 2 delicious coffee cakes for breakfast; one blueberry and one cherry. They were both great. We had another wonderful church service and headed home for barbecued pork chops, noodles and carrots. Once again yum! My daughter baked Pig Out Cake for dessert. After dinner, I was presented two gifts.From Tracy, I received a Jerome Bettis jersey, and the kids got me a snow cone maker and four flavors. Mac gave me sour grape, Autumn gave me rootbeer, Collin gave me fruit punch, and Abigail got me cherry. It was a very hot day outside so we enjoyed refreshing cones together. We lounged around, played a little badminton, watched some Nascar and golf on the tube. We had a light supper of crab dip spread and topped it off with some ice cream. All in all it was a very relaxing Father's Day. I am truly blessed to be a father and thankful the Lord has placed me where he did.



I hope all of you dads out there had a great day as well Happy Father's Day!

Back Home

As I promised, I will try to post at least once a week. (I was a few days off) The last 2 days of vacation included a wonderful Friday in which we flew kites at Jockey's Ridge Park which is a natural sand dune. It was beautiful. There is no way a machine could have created this awesome display that God's hands carved and placed the sand. We flew kites for over an hour. It was great! All you had to do was let go of the kite and away it went. No running full speed for a mile to get the kite up. We then went to the Lost Colony village on Roanoke Island. We walked around and went into another lighthouse. We spent Saturday morning in the pool and went to the ocean for the last time in the afternoon. It was cold as a storm was moving in. We had great weather the entire week. We left at the right time as it rained Saturday evening and for a good 5-6 hours of our drive on Sunday.

We made it back home safely after a 14 our drive last Sunday. We had a wonderful time. The time off from work was much needed. I felt refreshed, although I was not ready to go back to work. I could have used a few more days off. I was however, ready to come home. The outer banks were great and I hope to go back and spend another week there. But there is something about home that I'm always ready to return to. Even though our whole family was together I was eager to pull in our driveway and walk through our doors and sleep in our bed. The key word in the last sentence being our. Something about that which the Lord has given my family, our home. God has entrusted us and blessed us with a beautiful home. We can go and stay in a bigger, more expensive home for a week, and while it was nice, it was not ours. I have felt this way about all 5 houses Tracy and I have lived in. We often take for granted what the Lord provides us with wanting more than we need or deserve. God is so good to us and we need to be thankful for our homes and all that He blesses us with. We are part of His master plan of life and He places us where we need to be to carry out His will.

By the way, as I predicted there were a lot of weeds waiting to be pulled. Collin and I have gotten most of them taken care of. He (Collin) has been a big help in the garden this year.