Author: Paul Silcock

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My Life Is In Flux Right Now

I’m in a state of flux right now. Though it’s early in September, and I’ve had a long planning session for the upcoming year, I still feel a little out of sorts.

My planning went well and I came away from that week with some solid tracks to run on. But when I sit in my office, I don’t feel settled.

The reason for that? – my office is a mess!

During the summer we had a huge rain storm. The church basement flooded and we had to have a company come in to help clean up the mess.

I was away on vacation at the time; my office was locked and there was no need for anyone to go in it.

So when I returned after being away for several weeks, the first thing I noticed was the damp smell and then the ceiling tile that had fallen down.

There had been a leak in the roof and it had soaked through a ceiling tile, which had fallen down beside a bookshelf.

The amazing thing about it all was, though the ceiling tile was still soggy wet, the leak never touched any of my books.

I was sure happy about that, but it left me with a bit of a mess and forced me to make an even greater mess.

I took all the books off the shelf and put them in piles around my office. I then moved the bookcase out from the wall so that someone could examine the situation and put the ceiling back together again.

Well, things are moving rather slowly and my office has been in the same state for a couple of weeks now.

… And that’s why I feel so unsettled in my office.

It’s that same feeling you have when you’ve moved into a new home and you have boxes everywhere. You’re excited to be in the new place but you don’t feel right until all your stuff is where it is supposed to be.

I’ve been meeting with people in another room because my office chairs are being used to support three foot high piles of books.

I also have a bookcase that is standing in the middle of my office.

My office feels more like a storage space than an office. It’s not conducive to focussing on work.

When I look up from my computer, I often wonder if one of the piles of books looks like it’s leaning a little too much. I start to imagine it as the leaning tower of Pisa.

I really hope that I don’t need any of those books. If I do, I’ll be forced to play that block game Jenga with them … and I’ve never been particularly successful at not toppling over the stack of blocks.

I think the sooner my office can get put back to normal, the sooner I will start to settle down for the fall.

Here’s the thing: Many things can come up in life that cause you to feel unsettled – a health issue, job pressure, a move or even a flood. There may be nothing you can do to get life back in order, leaving you tempted to completely lose focus. However, you can keep order in your spiritual life by spending regular, quality time with God. If you do that in the morning, it will start your day off right, even if other aspects in your day are still in flux.

That’s Life!

Paul

Question: What has got you feeling a little unsettled? Leave your comments below.

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I’m Back Droning On About My Drone

Several weeks ago I wrote about my traumatic loss of a newly purchased drone (read here). It was like losing a close friend or pet (kidding).

What you often do when that happens is go out and get another one. You look to make a new friend or go shopping for a new dog or iguana or whatever … not a cat, though.

Well, as I pondered the loss of my drone out on the waters of Lake Huron, I decided that I couldn’t wallow in my sorrow. I needed to start looking for a new one … one that wouldn’t fly away on me, or at the very least would return to me when I lost control of it.

My brother was also in the market for a drone, so we started looking online for the perfect one for us.

We found one that was not too expensive – another important criteria.

We are not experienced and in case we flew the thing into something hard and broke it, or – dread the thought – let it get away on us over a large body of water, we didn’t want to be out a lot of money.

It also had to be easy to fly and have features that let you take your hands off the controls while maintaining a certain height without hovering higher and higher.

Lastly, it needed to be able to return to us if it got out of range or the battery got low.

The one we found was really advanced for the price and, as a bonus, came with GPS.

Within a few hours of each other, we locked our orders into the same website that would be sending them to us from China.

I know that China is far away from Canada … If I booked a flight from here to Beijing, it would cost $800 on sale and take about 13 hours.

If I took a ship to China it would take 6-7 days.

I knew we weren’t going to get the drones in a couple of days.

So we waited and kept checking our tracking numbers.

We noticed a flurry of activity at first. The orders were processed, they were delivered from one city to another in China and then they departed China for Toronto – all in a matter of a day or two.

Then we waited. The tracking information stopped; nothing was happening. Supposedly, the drones left China by plane.

For many days there was nothing new to report. Finally my brother’s drone was delivered about 12 days after we ordered them.

Mine? No news; the shipping status didn’t change. I checked every day and got the same information.

Remember when you were a kid and you ordered something from a cereal box? It always said it would take 4-6 weeks. Those 4-6 weeks felt like 46 weeks!

Well, that’s how I felt. Days went by; weeks went by. Two full weeks after my brother got his drone – a full 25 days after ordering it – it arrived.

That was a long time. Now I can finally get droning.

Here’s the thing:  We ask God for things all the time. Our request might be just something we want, or it might be to see God work in some way, something that is really needed and for a good cause. No matter what it is, we can get very impatient waiting for God to answer. The best thing is not to micro-manage God. When you leave your request with God, the key word is “leave”. Trust Him with the request and don’t be anxious. He will answer in His time.

That’s Life!

Paul

Question: What do you need patience for when it comes to God? Leave your comments below.

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I Can’t Believe I Broke My Streak

I knew there would come a day when my streak would come to an end; I just didn’t want it to be today.

Near the beginning of the year, I started a calorie burning streak that has lasted over seven months.

One of the things I’ve been doing this year to improve my health is to make sure I’ve hit three goals each day. The goals involve the amount of standing I do per day as opposed to sitting, exercising at least 30 minutes each day and burning a certain number of calories each day.

Since January 9th I’ve not missed my calorie burning goal. Along the way the goal has increased several times, yet I have not missed reaching it every day for the last 231 days.

But that all came to an end tonight.

What an awful feeling …

… like your favourite TV show went off the air for the last time: no more Flintstones; no more Seinfeld.

… like a dear friend has moved away or passed away; you won’t see them any more.

… like years ago when we were traveling from Alberta to start work in Kingston, Ontario. About 3 days into our journey, our 5 year old son said, “I want to go home.” His big sister who was trying to comfort him said, “Michael, we don’t have a home.”

It’s gone and it’s not coming back!

I now have to go the next 232 days just to beat that streak.

It’s not that I hadn’t almost broken the streak earlier in the year.

There were times when I was doing jumping jacks in my bedroom 2 minutes before midnight to try to reach the goal before the clock reset.

Each time I was able to squeak in under the wire and reach the goal.

But this time I just wasn’t thinking. I had already accomplished my standing goal for the day and had completed my exercise.

Normally after I’ve exercised, I’m really close to reaching my calorie goal as well. But I made a mistake at the start of the week and hit the submit button on my watch before I adjusted the suggested weekly calorie goal.

As a result, I still had lots of calories to burn after I had exercised, which meant I needed to stay active a little while longer.

But I was tired that night and decided I would go to bed a little earlier … and forgot all about my calorie goal!

In the morning, you can’t imagine how disappointed I was.

… like the time when I was a kid and I lost my iguana outside, about an hour before we were to leave on a two-week vacation.

I was very sad leaving the house, knowing that my pet was on the loose, that he probably wouldn’t survive the outdoors, especially at night.

I’m happy to say that my iguana did survive those two weeks. He was so cold he hadn’t moved the entire second week!

Unfortunately, I’m not getting this streak back. All I can do is start again.

Here’s the thing: The downside about sin is that you feel so rotten when it happens, you may feel that you let others down, yourself down, and God down. You might even experience guilt that prevents you from moving on. But when you seek God’s forgiveness, the good thing is you start again. And starting again IS a good thing.

That’s Life!

Paul

Question: How hard was it for you to get back after you broke a streak of some kind? Leave your comments below.

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I’ve Been Programmed By My Wife

My wife has somehow programmed me to do something I’m against doing.

I just realized I will now do this even when I’m on my own. Have you ever found yourself in those shoes?

You see, for years my wife, Lily, has been washing out plastic ziplock bags and reusing them. It’s something that I just don’t agree with and I’ve told her repeatedly.

I’ve even blogged about it (you can read it here).

When we clean up after a meal there is usually a few things that don’t make the dishwasher, so they get washed by hand.

Lily is the washer and I dry what’s on the rack … but I don’t like drying those plastic bags!

My feeling is they’re good for recycling material; I shouldn’t have to waste my time with them. We should just pull out a new bag from the box when we need one.

But for years she’s been washing them and I’ve been drying them.

Last week when I was on my own at our cottage on my planning/study week, I had to wash the dishes on my own.

I let them pile up over the day and cleaned them up in the evening … or sometimes the next day.

Hey, I got to use most of the dishes in the cupboard instead of the same two or three at the top of the pile. I like the idea of giving all the dishes and cutlery a chance to be used equally.

One day in the pile of dishes I had used, there was a plastic bag I had stored some food in. The plastic bag was in the sink and I didn’t think anything of it. But when I went to do the dishes I found myself washing out that plastic bag.

Without thinking I gave it a good soak, stuck the dishcloth in the bag and swirled it around. I rinsed the soap off it and put it on the drying rack.

When all the dishes were washed, I grabbed the towel and started drying them.

I’ve done this a million times. But when I picked up that wet, clingy ziplock bag, I at once realized what I’ve done …

I’ve become like my wife! I’m now washing out plastic bags to be reused again!

Well, I kicked with myself for even putting that used, dirty plastic bag in the sink and not in the trash.

But there I was holding a towel in one hand and a wet, limp plastic bag in the other.

I stared at it for a moment or two; I considered what my next actions were going to be.

I looked around (nobody was there), and I tossed that plastic ziplock bag in the garbage can.

I had to do it so that I could break the programming Lily has attempted to download into my brain.

Here’s the thing: There are a lot of things we do without thinking – unconscious actions that don’t need to be thought about or decided upon. We just do them. It’s not always a bad thing. If you will consistently involve God in your decisions, actions, speech and thought, you will get to the place where you will automatically involve Him and do what He wants. You will do it because you’re accustomed to it; it will become your natural conduct.

That’s Life!

Paul

Question: What do you need to program into your life? Leave your comments below.

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I Was Stuck At This Red Light Forever

The other night I was stuck at a red light for an inordinate amount of time.

I was on my way to our cottage for my yearly planning retreat. On one stretch of highway, that is only one lane in each direction, there was work being done on a bridge.

I don’t know what it is with little bridges but they seem to be the hardest things in the world to fix. It takes months and months and, in some cases, years to repair them.

This bridge is no exception., I think they could build a huge suspension bridge over a vast canyon quicker than completing the repair work to this bridge.

With the work being done on the bridge, it is down to one lane … That’s it! – one lane for traffic going in both directions.

This bridge is maybe only 30 feet in length, but it completely controls the traffic flow.

When I got to the bridge, and saw about 10 vehicles ahead of me, I naturally thought we would get our chance to cross the bridge in no time.

At first I didn’t even put the car in park; I just kept my foot on the brake. I didn’t think this would take long at all.

Boy was I wrong! The cars coming the other way just kept coming. The worst part was there were breaks in the traffic.

Seven, eight or nine cars would pass by going south and then there would be nothing. Every time there was a break, I thought, “Okay, the light changed and now it’s our turn to go.”

No. Just when I thought it would be time for us to start moving, I would see headlights coming from the other direction and another 10, maybe 12 cars, would drive by.

Ten minutes we waited with no sign that we were going to get a green light in the next little while … or month!

But there was a sign of hope.

Just a few yards ahead of me was a gravel road. I quickly looked at the maps on my phone and made a real fast decision to cut out of the line and take a detour.

No one else was doing it but I thought, “Someone has to start it up.”

I cut out of the line and made a break for it. The detour took me about 10 minutes but I came out well beyond the traffic interruption.

When I got to the crossroads to join up with the original highway I had been on, there was a stop light and I had to make a left turn.

As I waited for the light to turn green – because, of course, there was no way I would get a green light when I approached the intersection – I noticed a truck pass by.

I had a suspicion that I’d seen that truck before.

After I got back on the highway, and caught up to the traffic, I was sure it was the same truck. … And I was in the exact same position behind the truck as I was when we had been stuck at the light.

I didn’t gain one inch.

Here’s the thing: Impatience gets us to act, but sometimes our actions don’t really do us any good. When we are impatient with God, our impatience can lead us to take action that just gets in the way of what God is doing. It might delay things further or worse, it could set us back. Wait on God and don’t let your impatience cause you to try to circumvent God’s plan.

That’s life!

Paul

Question: What delays have caused you to be impatient with God? Leave your comments below.

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It Was A Different Story, But The Same Outcome

I read a story last night … something I haven’t done in years.

Let me explain: it was a children’s story and I read it to a couple of kids.

It’s been years since I’ve read a children’s story to kids, because it’s been years since our kids were little.

The story was new but some things were familiar, like my tendency to change things when I read them or add things to the story that aren’t there.

I actually have the reverse effect on kids that I’m supposed to have.

When our kids were little and I would read them stories, they would end up giggling and laughing and ready for a party to break out.

Lily would have to come along and settle them down for bedtime all over again.

Last night I found myself in that old, familiar situation. It was bedtime for a couple of kids Lily and I were babysitting for the night. … It was actually Lily doing the babysitting; I just came in at story time to give a hand … or maybe disrupt the flow.

Lil handed me the books, so I went into the living room and slumped on the couch. Two little creatures followed me and sat beside me, one on each side.

There were two stories, and they picked which one I would read first. So I began to read.

I was a little uncertain of how it would go; it had been so long and I felt out of practice. I also didn’t know what it would be like reading to someone else’s kids, but I got into the rhythm fairly quickly.

Back when our kids were little, I would stop on certain pages – the same pages every time, in fact – and make comments about the pictures. … A number of years later, our son was reading a story to younger kids at his school. When he got to the page I used to make comments on, he was shocked to find that those comments weren’t actually part of the story.

I’d also read things in the first person, or sometimes change the story just a little. That usually stirred the kids up.

Well, last night the reading was going on without a hitch … nothing to change, only a few comments to be made about the pictures.

Then I came across a word that triggered a song in my head.

Now I don’t know how many times these kids have had that story read to them, but I bet it was the first time that the reader broke out in a rendition of “May the bird of paradise fly up your nose.”

I think they made me sing it three or four times after that! I just hope those little guys’ parents will know what to do when those kids get home, hand them that story book and say, “sing the song”!

Well, it’s nice to know I haven’t lost my touch!

Lil had to do her magic once again. I walked by their room a few minutes after they left me, and she was telling them one of her calming, soothing stories to put them to sleep.

Here’s the thing: If you find that things have been strained with God, that maybe your time with Him has been non-existent recently, or that through disobedience you’ve felt far away, just come back to Him. When you do draw close to Him, you will find that familiar relationship you once had is back again. God never changes.

That’s Life!

Paul

Question: What memories of your time with God do you want to rekindle? Leave your comments below.

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I Just Didn’t Remember Doing It

I recently did something, but then moments later couldn’t remember doing it.

On a daily basis, when I leave the church, I set the alarm and lock the outside door. One day not long ago, after getting into my car, I thought, “I don’t remember setting the alarm or locking the door.”

It bothered me enough that I wheeled the car around to the front door, got out, tested the door, and looked to see if the armed light was red on the control pad.

Yup, I had set it, locked it and walked to my car … without really being conscious of doing it!

I remember my mother telling me that when I was young I would sometimes talk in my sleep. I apparently never made any sense; it was more like muttering to myself.

Doing something in your sleep is one thing; being fully awake and doing something you don’t remember doing takes it to a whole different level!

Maybe when I was locking up I was focussed on something else and wasn’t paying attention to what I was doing. … I’ve been accused of that before.

Sometimes when I’m on the phone with my wife, Lily, she can tell if I’m also working on my computer.

While talking to me, she will throw in a question. When I don’t respond right away, her next statement will be, “You’re on your computer; you didn’t even hear my question.”

I will then pause to listen to the question she asked. But because I’ve been working on my computer and not listening, I don’t always get the background to the question. She usually has to repeat the whole thing again.

She gets frustrated. Me? Just amused.

But again that’s a little different than doing something and not knowing you did it.

I think I have been doing the same routine of setting the alarm and locking the door for so many years that it is ingrained in me.

It’s like it’s second nature; I don’t have to think about it to do it.

It’s like tying your shoes. You don’t consciously think about the movements your fingers make in tying your shoes laces; you just do it. Only if you had to describe the process to someone would you think about each step.

When I was leaving work the other day, and didn’t remember setting the alarm and locking the door, I was just deep in thought about something else and went through the motions like I was tying my shoes.

Now you have to wonder, “What in the world was I thinking about that was so captivating that I didn’t remember my lockup routine?”

Truth? I don’t even remember what so captivated my thoughts that I wiped a few seconds of my life from my memory banks.

But that’s a whole other story.

Here’s the thing: It’s not always easy asking God for help, wisdom or guidance when you are in the middle of something. You are focussed on the matter at hand and not necessarily thinking about God. If you can find a way to remind yourself to check in with God in the midst of your decision or action, the more you do that the more second nature it will become … until you automatically, without thinking, confer with Him on matters you need Him to weigh in on.

That’s Life!

Paul

Question: How would it help you to check in with God like it was second nature? Leave your comments below.

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I Couldn’t Believe The Progress We Made

It’s always interesting to see the progress in the city after being away for an extended time.

There is something about it that’s exciting, seeing what new things are cropping up, wondering if there’ll be something new to do, and new place to eat.

I find it intriguing and in some strange way hopeful. I guess it’s a sign that the city is growing, changing, adapting.

It’s like when you were in public school and your teacher told you to take a bean home, put it in a glass jar and stick a wet paper towel around it.

We would put it under the kitchen sink, but couldn’t wait to look and see if there was any change to the bean.

It was always amazing to see the sprout that would emerge and to track the growth of that new little leaf.

That’s sort of what it’s like to return home and see the changes that have taken place in the city.

I don’t go hunting all over for them. I just look for the progress on my fifteen minute drive to work, along a major route in town.

This year I have noticed lots of progress.

There is a dentist’s office, a stand-alone structure, at the end of my subdivision. I don’t know for sure what they’re doing, but there is now a huge trench that wasn’t there before my vacation.

It’s deep and covers three sides of the building – one more side and they’ll have a genuine, functioning, modern-day moat.

And I say “functioning” because we have had so much rain this summer that there has to be water in that thing.

I’m not sure if the dentist is worried about an army of gingivitis attacking his clinic or not, but he’s going to be prepared when this thing is done.

There are a couple of high-rise apartment buildings that are making serious progress. It’s interesting to see how high they’re getting, and changing the landscape.

Then there are two things I noticed that kind of surprised me. I wouldn’t consider them progress, but they open the door to new opportunities for progress.

One was a RV dealership that has been there for over 25 years, in a prominent spot. You always noticed the trailers in their lot.

On returning home, the place was deserted – no trailers. The building is completely vacant; they are gone.

Then there was an old style motel, probably dating back to the sixties, that closed a while ago. It took up a good chunk of land.

It’s now completely gone. There is not a scrap of evidence that there was a motel or anything on that land.

That was fascinating.

The only thing that didn’t change is the one thing I thought would have progressed: the reconstruction of a section of the mall where the Target store used to be.

You have to wonder if they found an ancient burial ground in the basement or something because the construction hasn’t changed in months.

Here’s the thing:  It is neat to see progress and change in the city, but what about you? Can you say you are progressing in your life, in your spiritual life? It’s easy to just coast along, and not make any headway in your relationship with Christ. Evaluate the last six months or year. Make sure you are doing something to keep your relationship with God progressing.

That’s Life!

Paul

Question: What can you do to ensure you are making progress in your spiritual life? Leave your comments below.

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Exercising Every Day For a Month – Not Bad!

Going into my vacation, I was concerned about one thing – exercising.

You see, I had gone almost six months without missing a day of exercising at least thirty minutes per day. Who wants to break a streak like that?

When I’m at home, I have options. There are always outside activities that I can do like mountain biking, golf, or baseball. But I have a backup when I can’t do something outdoors. I have a home gym that I can work up a sweat in.

Being at the cottage for an extended period of time, I only had the outdoor option … and this summer’s weather had not given me much confidence in my ability to get thirty minutes of outside exercising in every day.

Looking back, it rained every few days. We would just be getting into a pattern of sunny, warm weather when the clouds would roll in and dampen everything – literally.

Somehow through all this I was able to exercise every day.

There were a couple of times my exercise took the form of a power walk, but walking along the beach really fast is not my idea of enjoyable exercise. If I’m going to walk the beach, I want it to be a little more like a slow stroll.

So mostly I rode my bike. When the mountain biking trail I ride was too wet and nasty, I was able to find time between the rain drops to get a half hour ride down to Sauble Falls and back.

I’ve never looked at my weather app as much as I did on this vacation. I’d get up in the morning, look outside, check my app and think, “Okay, if I get my ride in at 10 o’clock I’ll beat the sprinklers.”

… I remember playing golf years go, early in the morning or late in the evening, before they had underground watering systems.

There were hoses and sprinkler heads on the fairways, with water spraying in a circle like a ticking clock.

If your ball landed in one of the spray zones, you would wait for the spray to pass by and then quickly move in to take your shot before the sprinkler came around again.

You had to dodge the water system in those days.

That’s what I was doing on vacation – dodging the big water system in the sky … even down to the last day!

My plan was to get up and get in one last ride on the trails before I packed the car and left for home.

But no way; the rain started at 7 am. That meant exercising on my last day of vacation would have to happen at home. Well, at least it was there waiting for me, with no weather conditions to consider.

My biggest concern going into vacation was being able to somehow exercise every day outside, regardless of the weather.

I did it! I got wet a few times, I caught a few breaks, and even on those days I just didn’t feel like doing much of anything, I still got it done. Not bad at all.

Here’s the thing: In life there are challenges every day. You don’t know when or what form they will take so you can’t avoid them or even make contingency plans. You just have to deal with them as they come and figure out a way through them. When you know this is true, it only makes sense to seek God every day for His wisdom and direction through the challenges.

That’s Life!

Paul

Question: What challenge are you facing today? Leave your comments below.

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I Found Out I would Not Be A Good Pilot

Someone recently told me that I was going to lose my pilot’s license. I did more than that … I lost the aircraft.

It all started back at the end of December when Lily got me a mini drone for Christmas.

It was mostly an indoor drone and I learned to fly it around the house, bashing into things in those early stages of pilot lessons.

On vacation I decided to get a little bigger drone, one I could fly outdoors.

I was pretty happy for a few days.

I flew it around our cottage and got some video of our place and the roof tops of the cottages around us.

Oh, and yes, I also crashed it into things, mostly trees and cottages.

It was just after one of those crashes that my neighbour came onto his deck and called out,  “Paul, you’re going to lose your pilot’s license”. I called back, “I think I’ve already lost it”, as I tried to pick my drone out of a tree.

It was soon after that that I decided it would be neat to take some pictures and video of the sunset with my new drone.

So at the end of the day, just before the sun sunk below the horizon, I went down to the beach and launched my drone.

For maybe 10-15 seconds it flew very well, but in my haste I didn’t realize that there was a wind and it was blowing out towards the lake.

My drone made a turn towards the water. I tried to get it to turn back, but before I knew it, it was over the water and I was struggling to bring it back to me.

I watched it go farther and farther out over the lake … none of the controls were doing what I wanted them to do. I lost visual sight of it, it was so far offshore.

I hit a button that was to automatically bring the drone back to me and I could see on my screen that it was pointing towards shore.

But it couldn’t fight the wind.

Two nights before I had seen a documentary on how JFK Junior’s plane went down on his flight to Martha’s Vineyard years ago.

They said, among other things, he made a risky decision in turbulent weather to fly over water instead of flying along the coast and he got disoriented.

Well, I know how that can happen! In my panic to bring my drone back, I forgot to press a speed button which would have given the drone more power to battle the wind.

From the camera on board the drone, I could see it was still in the air, but then the screen went staticky and then blue.

I lost my drone … somewhere out in Lake Huron, along way from shore. It’s gone.

Only the SD card can tell the real store of what happened.

All I can say is don’t get into a plane if I’m the pilot.

Here’s the thing: Sometimes we are not the best judge of a situation or the best one to make a decision. There can be so many things to take into account and we can’t consider them all. But God knows all the issues, and all the scenarios. If we ask Him to guide us, He will help us make the right moves to keep us moving in the right direction.

That’s Life!

Paul

Question: What decision do you need to take to God right now that is past your skill level? Leave your comment below.