49th birthday today - and to celebrate the occasion we got dumped on by over a foot of snow. I'm not complaining, as we still love the snow. I recently acquired a snow plow for my pickup truck both to earn a little extra money when it snows, and to plow for the church and a few friends who don't have any means to push the snow around. It beats the heck out of freezing out in the cold on my ATV. I went out at 4:30 this morning to start plowing and got home around 8. So much for sleeping in on your birthday! I learned a good lesson about plowing snow though: plow with gravity, not against it. One of the driveways that I plowed is very long, very steep and very slippery. I tried unsuccessfully to push the snow up the hill, and got stuck several times in the process. Then a friend suggested that I drive up and plow down. Now why didn't I think of that? Must have been some lack in my Auburn education :) Tonight we'll have a special birthday dinner with another friend who shares the same birthday - along with all our kids.
I've been reading "Necessary Endings" by Dr. Henry Cloud -- a thought provoking book. Life is full of beginnings and endings. A time to be born and a time to die; a time to plant and a time to uproot. We usually embrace the beginnings but we resist the endings. The fact is, both are a normal part of God's created order, so why do we perceive one as positive and the other as negative? I am fascinated by the way God reproduces timeless biblical principles in nature: if a vinedresser doesn't prune the grapevine, he will end up with an impenetrable mass of leaves and tiny, useless grapes. He not only prunes the dead and sick branches, but even the excess healthy branches are cut to favor the production of fruit.
Henry Cloud speaks of "The Moment" in our lives when we realize that we have to make a painful decision - quit a job, let go of a dream, end an unhealthy relationship. Truth be told, most of us probably reach a number of these "moments" throughout our lifetime, although we may not see them as such at the time. I remember "the moment" when I realized that I had to leave my previous ministry role. I knew that we (our family) would pay a very high price to make such a change, because it would likely mean that we would have to leave France altogether. This is one of the reasons why we resist these "necessary endings", because they almost always come at great cost to ourselves or our businesses. But the alternative - to remain in the status quo - can be even more costly in the end because of the long-term negative impact upon us or our business. We stay too long because change means risk, and better the devil I know than the devil I don't know. It has been almost two years since we made our big change and the move to Colorado. We miss our many friendships in France, but this move has proven to be the best decision in the long run for our family. The crazy part is that I had no intention of leaving France for at least another 5-10 years, and I had many sound reasons to stay. When we finally did decide to sell our home in Saint Sauveur and pack up all our belongings, we couldn't even say where God was leading us - we had a location (Conifer, Colorado), but no clear direction beyond that. For most of my adult life I've believed, and challenged others to believe, that God never leads us from Something to Nothing. Well, He DOES lead us to take a leap of faith at times - maybe just to see if we trust Him enough to let go of our plans. He was waiting for us here when we arrived, and He's walked the road with us ever since. God is so good.
I'll sign off now - got people to do and things to see.
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