Hey, Let Ringling Brothers Know I Found The Missing Clown Car.

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This past week my vehicle, a large SUV, needed to have some work done. Like a good little consumer I took it to the dealership where I bought it for an oil change and left with a service appointment.

Before you point any fingers, they were running a special 21% off any work over $100 and because I bought the vehicle there they throw in a free loaner.

It is important to remember that I’m not exactly petite. Some might use a description like “Lumbering Oaf” to describe me. At Six feet tall, 350 pounds I’m not exactly “economy sized” by anyone’s lights.

As I waited to get my loaner car I asked for the biggest one they had. The clerk, clearly a man with a sense of humor, pointed to a silver car out in the drive area. It was the exact same size as the other two escapees from Ringling Brothers. All that was missing was a baker’s dozen clowns to occupy the vehicle.

Clown Car

I wasn’t sure if he was kidding or not, but it became painfully obvious that he was dead serious. It took a few tries to get in past the opening. I was reminded of my days on submarines. I would have been called a “hatch plug” because I filled the hatch and you could submerge the ship with that tight a fit in the opening. My elderly, recently operated on, knees didn’t like it much either. I had the wheel all the way up, the seat all the way back, and I still had to twist and turn to get in.

Once inside it wasn’t much better. My head touched the ceiling. No, make that: My head was two inches higher than the roof when I sat up straight. It meant I would be driving hunched down. I couldn’t straighten my legs or arms, and I was more snugly inserted into the driver’s seat than Andre The Giant in the cockpit of a Kaiten.

As I drove away the service manager ran out to the car. When I stopped and powered the window down he stood a few feet back and tossed an aerosol can through the open window. “Take this, it will make it easier to get in next time.” It was a can of “Pam.”

My transit home was frightening. I couldn’t see much out of the windows. It was rather like driving a Panzer II and only having the driver’s slit to peer through – small windows, bad angles, and low view point. I figured my outlook was skewed until I pulled in to my garage and had to look up to see the top of my lawnmower. Not kidding, it sat lower than the handle on the Lawn-boy. And, amazingly enough, it had the same engine.

After extricating myself from the soda can I creaked inside the house and went to bed.

That night I left a bit early for work so that I could grab something to eat. My choice was reduced to places that had drive-through service, because I knew I’d never get out and back in without the can of Pam. I’d left it on the counter.

Happily I survived the brush with claustrophobia. Upon returning the car to the dealership the next morning I was relieved to see Bobo and his crew ready to take it back and give me my beloved red beast. It did inform my next purchase in the automotive world: anything but that little clown car.

Sponsorship Sunday – Week Twelve – Loody

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Thanks for dropping in for Sponsorship Sunday. I took last week off to rejoice in the life of my friend Ed. This week I’m rejoicing over these marvelous children who need your help.

Please take some time to read about this week’s resident at Grace Village. And I would respectfully ask that before you go back to The Drudge Report, you pray for three minutes for this child. Perhaps God will give you a nudge while you’re at it and you’ll help that child live a better life.

Thank you in advance for your kindness.

This week’s child is: Loody. Loody’s brother is already sponsored, so how about we make it a pair?

Loody

Loody lives at Grace Village with his brother, Gedeon. Loody loves the Lord and has been given the gift of discipleship, he loves to tell others about God. Loody understands the importance of an education and takes his schooling very seriously. Loody’s favorite subject in school is algebra and he also has a favorite song, Our God is Greater. Loody wants to be a pastor when he grows up so that he can preach the gospel. Loody’s prayer request is for his life to be changed so that he can live a life to please God.

Loody and his brother, Gedeon, are orphans and have no one to care for them and now call Grace Village their home.

Birth Info
Birthdate: November 10, 1996
Place of Birth: Damien, Haiti

It is my hope that one of you will find your heart touched by this child and take up a bit of Christ’s work by sponsoring them for an extended period. My wife and I are sponsoring a pair of sisters and I look at it this way – I only gave up a fast-food dinner each day to change the life of a child. Healing Haiti will do the right things for these children and I have full confidence in their work. I am not affiliated with them, they don’t endorse this blog, nothing like that at all. I just love kids (can’t be Santa and not love children) and know that Grace Village is the difference between life and death for many of these children. Please open your heart and prayerfully reflect on the opportunity God’s giving us to sponsor these children. Some of them have come out of slavery and have some of the toughest lives you could imagine prior to Grace Village.

Just click the link and it will take you directly to the page where you can sponsor this week’s child. And if God is particularly good and that child is sponsored when you get there, please grab another smiling face and change their life instead. My goal is to put Sponsorship Sunday out of business as quickly as possible and take that day off each week. Thank you. God bless you for your generosity.

Some of the finest people you’ll ever meet. The hands and feet of Christ.

Another Day At The Ranch.

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First things first – Thank You for dropping by my blog today.

I consider it a blessing to have you here, and to be able to reach out to so many people every week.

I’m pleased to announce that – well, we’ll do that later this week. For right now I’m just going to thank you all, again, for the kind words after my post about Edzell. Between the different social media sites and my email it’s been a soothing balm on a road-rashed old man’s hide.

There is some lesson to learn in everything we do in this life. We usually aren’t smart enough, or aware enough, to see the message as it rolls by our eyes. That’s especially true when it involves a personal tragedy like the death of a loved one. And if the dog you’ve shared thousands of sunrises with isn’t a loved one, you need to see a doctor and make sure you have a heart.

Edzell held a great spot in my heart. All my dogs have taken hold in my life and enriched me beyond my wildest dreams. In the three days since Edzell’s passing I’m once again in a position to learn from yet another dog.

Over the past six months you’ve read countless (well, I’m sure somebody counted them, I didn’t) posts about my girl Stormy. She’s a rescue dog who had a tough life before coming to live with us this past Christmas. My wife and I have worked very hard to give her the love and understanding she needed to heal. She was very fearful at times and almost always socially distant.

As Edzell walked off the stage, she put on her best outfit and walked to the center of the boards. Once that spotlight snapped on and centered up on her she began to reflect that light. In the past three days she no longer reflects that light: she generates one of her own that is brighter than a thousand suns – her personality.

Stormy has what she always sought: her own home. She is confident that she is “the one” in our lives. We had talked about this months ago when we knew that Ed wouldn’t see another winter. My wife and I agreed that this girl needed some time to shine on her own with no sidekick to steal the scene.

It was the right decision. She’s spending her time in the room with us while we read or watch television. She hung out in the yard while we trimmed a tree and never once made a move toward the gate when it was open. She’s moderated her barking (part super-soaker and part new attitude) and is seeking pets at about ten times the rate she was before Saturday. And last night she hopped up on my bed and slept next to me without so much as a clap of thunder in the neighboring states.

Stormy is shining like the Sun.

Sometimes we forget that lonely people, and creatures, are afraid to compete for that love and kindness that we offer them. Sometimes they just need to be the only option before they feel they are beautiful.

Sometimes we need to look outside of our own perspective and peer at the world through their distant eyes. We couldn’t, wouldn’t, have done anything differently with Stormy. But we were blessed enough not to have another dog standing by to take Ed’s place.

Ed was a kind soul. I think he’s probably smiling right now at Stormy moving up next to the couch. He’s as happy for her as he is for us. We will miss him until we see him again in Heaven. But in the meantime, Stormy is stepping up to the task at hand and doing a radiant job of lighting our lives.

God provides for all of us in different ways. I’m just glad I got to be part of the family where Stormy changes to Sunny. Maybe a name change is in order to match her change of heart.

Selective Quotes Can Cost You Your Soul.

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A few weeks ago a friend of mine put a post on Facebook with a link to her blog www.iliveloud.net. It was hot on the heels of the riot in the Texas State House during a vote on late-term abortion. The article (linked here) was a moving story of my friend’s personal decision on abortion. I’d appreciate it if you’d take a few minutes to head over to her blog and read the article before we continue with my posting.

Now that you’ve read her article, I think you’ll probably agree with me that it is a great example of someone sticking by their convictions and honoring not just God, but their unborn children. I’m proud to claim Jessie Kirkland as a friend. She’s exactly the type of heroic person that I like to hang out with in my life.

Jessica Kirkland

Heroic? Yes. My definition of that word includes people willing to sacrifice their own lives for the lives of others. It also includes people willing to put their life on the line for their principles. Do I advocate risking your life for every cause? No. Not every cause is worthy of such a level of effort. But the ones involving life and death, especially the death of another, are among the reasons one might contemplate such a sacrifice.

The thing that amazed me even more than her blog post was the response. A friend of mine put up a post on Facebook within 48 hours that appalled me. It was an argument, allegedly based on The Bible, that it is not human life until the child draws a breath of air.

Think about that for just a moment. Aside from the fact that it’s ignorant of the book’s message, it’s an example of being able to prove any point, any argument, based on picking and choosing from 66 books and taking one or two sentences out of context. Every cleric I’ve ever talked to, or listened to in school, warned that that little trick was a one-way ticket to stupidville.

I won’t throw the vile thing a link, but if you were to Google “life begins with the first breath” you’ll find a host of these things going back for decades. Almost all of them that I found came from groups with names like (this one is fictitious) “Crazy Liberal Christians Who Defy Your Paradigm.”

The logical extension of the argument (and it was actually made on one of the sites) was that even a baby at day 280 (well past 9 months) who had not yet emerged from the womb is not a human being, and could be aborted with no moral compunctions. The phrase the ghouls (yeah, I’m calling names on that one) use is that it’s “living tissue” but not “human life” until a breath is drawn.

The basis for the argument is the same on each site – they take 5 examples from the Old Testament and extrapolate. The first is talk about the formation of Adam beginning with God breathing life into him. True. First human life was indeed initiated by God breathing life into Adam. Gotta start somewhere, and after that God used his plan for the rest of the human race involving sexual reproduction.

The second item usually cited is that Mosiac Law, the ten commandments we use most often, came from God in an oral fashion. And that Moses altered them to suit his whim. The tangent then tracks off to talk about foreskins and placenta being “living tissue” as well and there’s no big sweat over them “being murdered” so why should an unborn child be any different. Sadly, I’ve spent enough time doing public speaking and debate in my life to see where they get their argument. I also understand the mentality of the woman who told me “George Wallace is secretly a Catholic Nun” during a stay at the Minneapolis Greyhound Depot in 1976. Eh, I have a soft spot for this kind of thing it appears.

This is traditionally followed with quotes from Job, Ezekial, and Exodus. Again, taking things from a limited context and proving their point.

Yawn. It’s boring. And hateful. And stupid. Yes, stupid. I posted an item about a brave friend and why she doesn’t support abortion. The response was, essentially, “Hey, you. Think you’re a Christian because you read the Bible? Well, you missed the part where God says it’s just fine to abort kids until they suck some oxygen through the old pie-hole. So shut up and let us do what we want.” That may be a loose interpretation of what they actually are saying, but it’s close enough for my money.

Yes, I am a Christian. Strangely, I’ve read that other part of the Bible – The New Testament. That one talks a bit about birth – two births and two children in particular: John The Baptist and Jesus The Christ. Some good reading there – about life in the womb, the baby stirring at the prompting of The Holy Spirit. Lots about the sanctity of life in that part of the book as well. I’d encourage anyone who has questions about abortion to give it a read. It might just change their heart.

What’s the point of my blog today? You can justify anything you want (almost) by selectively citing the Bible. But you look like a fool. Moreover, you show what evil lurks in your heart when you do what these articles do in the case of abortion. Beware of how you use scripture – the author is kind of finicky about copy write.

Doggie Update.

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Healing begins once the wound has fully opened. It works that way in the emotional world as well as the world of physical wounds. Our healing commenced with the lovely phone calls, emails, and comments that you all sent after the post about my friend Edzell.

I thank all of you, including my brothers, sister, mom, mother-in-law, friends, and complete strangers who have written such lovely notes and called regarding the death of my friend, Eddie Bo-Beddie, Eddie Spaghetti, Edzilla, Eddie the Paper Shredder… well, the list goes on and on and on. He had more names than you can imagine. But he will always be my buddy Ed.

Stormy has taken the opportunity to step up to the plate and claim a bit of the house for herself. She’s always been a “background” dog – never at the front of the line, always in the other room, seldom seeking favor for herself. She figured out that Edzell wasn’t coming back after a very short period of time yesterday.

The first sign was that she came close when we gave her a big treat. She actually hopped up on the couch between us with the thing in her mouth. And then, for the first time ever, she hopped down on the floor and laid on top of my foot while she gnawed on the bone. That’s right where Edzell would have spent the time – on top of my foot. I always took that as a sign of respect and honor when he did it – it’s just been doubled.

So, perhaps, she was just waiting for the giant shadow he cast to fade in the distance before she stepped into the light and looked for her own penumbra. It’s there, girl, so bask in that light for a while.

I close this update with a video that my friend Debra sent to me. It made me cry. Debra, that’s my job, making readers cry. But I’ll let it pass just this once.