“Nail In The Tire Of My Life”

It’s been a busy summer. After hibernating for the past year due to the pandemic, we are pretty much on the move again. You may recall that a few weeks ago we did a two week road trip to the Midwest… into Michigan, Indiana, and Tennessee to visit family and attend a wedding. Once recovered, we have been in the midst of receiving family visiting…. enjoying our new grandbabies, weddings and showers. It’s been great to stir things up again. 

At the same time, I have to admit that my wife Judy and I are very different. She is the classic extrovert who seems to gain energy from each new activity and extravaganza. It reminds me of the old monster movies where instead of “killing the monster with the shot of electricity, it makes him stronger”… not that Judy is a monster…but she thrives on each new activity. For me on the other hand, I can be like a battery that gets worn down with each activity. I need time to recover…to get my battery recharged. 

Part of my “recharging” is working on my “to-do” list…. looking it over, what needs to be done, starting to knock it out. I get recharged by knocking things off my to-do list as opposed to adding new things to it. I don’t like surprised additions to the list. Recently we had a couple of surprise repairs to the car… another nail in the tire (some 2 or 3 in the last several months) and our skylight wouldn’t close…. auuugh. I’m not happy with my new hearing aids.. probably 4 or 5 visits back to the store…. and several doctor’s appointments that didn’t go perfectly. Much of this is just aggravating and not major problems. I’m embarrassed to bring up these “paper cut” type items when I know so many who have major illnesses and trials. Really, I should just shut up. What if I was in a men’s group with St. Paul who had just been rescued from a recent imprisonment and I start complaining about the “nail in my tire”… it would be really bad… it would be ugly…..Paul would probably punch me in the nose. 

So, is there a point to this BLOG …. yes there is. The point is that we need to focus on gratitude and not allow the daily aggravations of life get us down. There are so many things to be grateful for.. to thank God for. At our evening meal Judy and I take a brief time to just thank God for our many blessings of the day … to thank him for the repaired tire and the trip to the hearing aid place and for our family and for so many, many things. God is so good to us. We have so many things to be grateful for. Sure there are the ongoing aggravations and the occasional big trials, but Christ is always with us to help us. 

So Lord, I’m sorry for being preoccupied and too often murmuring about my little aggravations. Help me to be grateful for the many blessings you have poured out upon us and leave the rest with you. And Lord please help my friends who are carrying serious crosses at this time…. show me how I can help them instead of focusing on my “paper cuts”.  And all will be well with my soul.