Bittersweet

I've spent the last 6 days cooped up inside my house.  Oh the fall season and it's sickness!  It's been a bittersweet few days.

The bitter:

- I'm going stir-crazy!  I love to be active and love to be outside, so sitting inside for 6 days trying to get better...it's a tough thing for a guy like me.

- I've had to miss a few things I'd like to do - get-togethers with friends, small group, etc

- While you might think, "Oh, six days at home, that's awesome!  It's almost like a vacation!", that's so far from the truth.  There are several reasons: 1) I'm constantly thinking about work, and everything that needs to get done...and with every day that I'm at home, I'm thinking about how much more I'll need to do because I'm falling even more behind.  2) As mentioned above, I haven't done anything - fun or work around the house.  For some that's a great vacation, not so much for me - again, stir-crazy!  3) I've been feeling terrible.  Hence why they're sick days - because you're sick.


The sweet:

- I've spent 6 days at home with my wife and son.  And while I can't do much with them, it's been nice to enjoy their company for an extended period of time.  Despite all the horribleness of the 'bitter' above, this part has been really nice.

- I have a newfound respect for my wife.  I always knew she worked hard at home while I'm at work, but sometimes it's easy to forget just how much she does.  This past week I've seen it first hand - taking care of our son and keeping him entertained (which in itself can be a huge task), keeping the house tidy, making meals, running errands, etc...  She's keeps the house chugging along.


I'm feeling better and am planning to be in at work tomorrow.  So long bitter!...but I'll miss the sweet.

Food for thought

Get it?  Food for thought?  Because it's Thanksgiving...  I'm hilarious.

What are you thankful for?

That's the standard question we all ask and are asked on this weekend.  It's a great time to reflect on the blessings in our lives, and there are so many.  Our families, jobs, food on the table, our warm homes in the winter and cool homes in the summer, money in our bank accounts...the list goes on.  One big one is freedom.  This Thanksgiving weekend, a church will be bombed somewhere in the world.  It won't be in central Ontario because we don't have to worry about that - we have freedom to worship.  Big thanks for that.

But to look at the larger picture, Thanksgiving is one weekend out of 52.  How many other times this year have we stopped just to give thanks to God?  These blessings listed above are not just Thanksgiving blessings, they're with us everyday of our lives.  So why don't we remember them and give thanks for them more often?  Probably because we're used to them.  Probably because we take them for granted.  Probably because we forget how lucky - blessed - we actually are.  Probably because we're selfish and every other day of the year besides Thanksgiving, we complain about how little we have and we want more.

A few years ago I had an epiphany.  We don't give thanks NEARLY enough.  We ask and ask of God, but give thanks so much less.  Let's be honest, a 10 minute prayer would consist of one minute of "Thank you God for..." and nine minutes of "Okay, here's what I need..."  God loves to hear from and help his children, but still, shouldn't it be the other way around?  It's a privilege to talk to God, not a right.  We don't deserve to talk to Him, so it's a bit inconsiderate when all we do is ask.  No one likes that friend who just uses them, but doesn't really want to get to know them.

Tell me if this rings true...you've got a big event coming up at your church/family/personal life.  You spend months in advance praying for it.  You organize prayer meetings at your church, make sure you spend time in prayer everyday as a family, spend lots of time in personal in prayer asking that all would go well.  The big event comes, everything goes perfectly.  You're thrilled!  On a high!  So thankful to God!  You get together with your organizing committee/family and you have a celebratory dinner for a job well done.  You make sure give thanks to God.  And then it's done.  Months of prayer in leading up to it, and a few short, measly prayers afterward to say thanks.  Doesn't really seem equal, does it?

Friday

Ah, it's Friday.  I usually post pretty serious stuff, but today...yep, it's Friday, enjoy a laugh!

 

Pornography

***warning, adult content***

Pornography is everywhere in our world today.  I started looking up statistics but quickly realized that it's impossible to measure just how much pornography is on the internet, and how many people access it on a daily basis.  Sufficed to say, it's A LOT in both categories.

I have had my own struggles with pornography in the past.  I'd say that most young to middle-aged males likely have, and lots of females too.  Having come through it, I'd say that I still have to be very careful about what I look at online or on TV, because it's very easy to allow yourself to slip...and then once more...and before you know it your free-falling.

I came across this article that I had to share.  It's by a former editor of a racy magazine in the UK.  This man had a kid of his own and suddenly realized what he was doing through his job.  He quit and instead starting looking into the harmful effects of pornography.  His results are startling, especially what he finds with young children.  Be warned that the article is a bit graphic, but I think it's important to read and understand - for parents and kids alike.  These were a few things that specifically caught my attention:

- that kids were accessing pornography through Facebook

- the age of the kids who had watched porn and things like sodomy (starting at 12)

- this quote from a 19 year old that he interviews - "'Every bit of spare time I have is spent watching porn. It is extreme. I can't hold down a relationship for longer than three weeks. I want porn sex with real girls, but sex with them just isn't as good as the porn."  (That last line perfectly illustrates how porn creates a false image in our minds of what sex is...an image that can ruin real sex with your spouse.)

- at the end of the article he says, "We need to get tech-savvy, and as toe-curling as it seems, we are the first generation that will have to talk to our children about porn.  We have to tell our kids that pornographic sex is fake and real sex is about love, not lust."

Here's the link to the article.  Give it a read, and take the last couple of lines to heart.  We need to do our part.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-2432591/Experiment-convinced-online-porn-pernicious-threat-facing-children-today-By-ex-lads-mag-editor-MARTIN-DAUBNEY.html#ixzz2g35y6wZt

N.B.  I used to never talk about my own personal struggles regarding pornography, but then I realized that the more you open up, the more you realize that you're not alone - and you can pray with others, lean on each other, and help each other.  As Christians, we too often live as isolated islands when in fact we're supposed to live in community.  We are all human, which means we all struggle with the same things...yet for some reason, most of us don't want to admit it.

Renovations

This is an exciting couple of weeks for me.  My wife and I are taking on our first REAL renovation project in our place since we moved in 3 years ago.  Over the years I've done minor-to-medium things to a couple rooms - painted, fixed leaky sinks, fixed appliances, stained furniture, etc, but this is different.

We're completely gutting our laundry room and rearranging it.  That means sawing wood and pcv piping, painting, filling in holes, building shelves, drawers, sliding doors, etc...  And we're hoping to do it on the cheap, meaning we're doing the work, and hoping to do a lot of it from scratch.

I love working with my hands, and my goal is to become a handyman around the house.  I've started with the projects mentioned above, and I'm hoping this project takes me to the next level.  My dad was a handyman and I thought it was really cool that he could fix pretty much anything.  I wanted to be like that too, but I unfortunately didn't learn very much because it was always so boring helping him - my job was always to hold the light..a necessary but incredibly monotonous task.  Now though, I'm excited to get my hand dirty and build something!  As it's the first real go around, I don't expect it to look perfect, but I'm excited for how it'll turn out!

Summer highlight

At the beginning of this summer I blogged a picture of what I was super excited about for this summer - lots and lots of kayaking!  However, my summer ended up taking a very different turn than that, and I was only able to get out about 5 or 6 times all summer (which was far less than I wanted).

One day after that blog post, I went for three-part interview to become a volunteer firefighter with Oro-Medonte.  A few days later I got the good news - I had been accepted!  BUT, it was going to be a long summer of studying and training, with a test at the end.  And essentially, that was my summer.  Most of my free hours were spent reading, and I was in training about twice a week - one of those days usually on the weekend.  It made for a long summer with long weeks, and as mentioned, I didn't get to do much of what I wanted like kayaking and day-long road trips...but I had my test at the end of the summer and it was all worth it in the end because I officially got on with the department last week!

It was a relief, and a reminder that if you want something, you have to work for it.  Yes, I missed out on a lot of the activities I was hoping to do this summer, but I think it was a pretty good tradeoff...

My son is pretty happy about it too

Vacation

I was on vacation last week, an oooohhh, it was a good one.  I told my wife that the sign of a great vacation is all the scratches, cuts, aches and pains from all the adventuring.  I'm not usually a guy who can sit still for very long, I'd much rather be doing stuff.  Last week was a great mix of hanging out and being active.

I was at Muskoka Bible Centre (MBC) for the week.  That was great in itself because MBC is really a neat place.  They bring in speakers in the morning and evening, and Dr. Steve West from a church in Guelph was there last week.  Brilliant guy, taught me so much, I really enjoyed his messages.  Additionally, the food at MBC is ridiculously good (I gained a few pounds...).  And they have activities like canoeing, kayaking, volleyball, etc.  I took my own kayak, but it was nice to go canoeing with my wife and son.  So yes, MBC was awesome...

Here's where it gets really good.  I made it my mission to do lots of stuff while we were there - and we did.  In fact, there were a few things on my list that that I couldn't fit in!  The highlights - golf at Huntsville Downs, climbing a waterfall, ATVing through some crazy terrain, sliding down the Port Sydney rapids (which this year are flowing very high and fast), and perhaps the highlight - cliff jumping!  A 38 foot cliff that was absolutely awesome!  I have pictures and video of most of this stuff but it was taken by different people on different cameras.  When I amass it all, I will edit this post to show some of the adventures.  Oh, and we went into Huntsville and walked around a couple of times.

Thanks Huntsville and MBC, I had a blast!