garage door

by

The Third Time Is Not Always A Charm

They say there is a first time for everything, but I say there is a third time for some things.

the third time is not always a charm

What I’m referring to is the mistakes we make. Sometimes we can learn from our mistakes. There are other times when we just keep repeating the same mistake over and over.

If you do something for the first time that ends in failure, you may not want to try that again.

I know of people who had a car accident when they were first learning to drive. They were afraid of repeating their error so they decided not to ever drive again.

I think mistakes are important for us to learn from. They shouldn’t scare us away. We should use our mistakes to make corrections, to change the formula, to improve the process. 

That is why I keep using my garage every day. I don’t park outside the garage; I drive my car inside. 

The reason I tell you this is because the other day I drove my car into my garage door. 

You might be thinking that anyone can make a mistake, but this is not the first time I’ve done it.

This is the third time I’ve driven into my garage and wrecked something.

There is another saying, “third time’s a charm” … well, not when it comes to garage doors, it’s not. 

The first two times were a little different. I had a bike on top of my car both of those times and so I didn’t really hit my garage door but the frame above the door – one time destroying my bike rack and the other time knocking the side view mirror off my car.

This time it didn’t involve my bike, but the bike rack still gets a starring role in the story.

Usually when I come home from work, I hit the garage door button when I turn the corner onto our street. That way the door is almost up by the time I get to my driveway. 

This particular day last week, Lily was shovelling the driveway when I came home and she had the garage door already up. 

So when I hit the button, the door started closing instead of opening. As soon as I saw that, I hit the button again, but that only stopped the door. It didn’t send it back up. 

Meanwhile, I was smiling at Lily as I passed her on the driveway until “BOOM!” … The door was just low enough to catch the top of my bike rack.

I probably would have snuck under the door if the rack had not been there, but the lock on it is jammed and I can’t take it off.  

The accident pushed the bottom panel of the garage door off the track and put a good-sized dent in it. Now the alignment is off and the door doctor says I will have to replace the panel. 

At least we don’t need to replace the whole garage door. 

… And just maybe, after the third time, I’ve learned my lesson.

Here’s the thing: It is good to know that God will forgive you when you sin – even if it’s not the first time you have sinned that way. This doesn’t give you a license to sin, but it does give you hope that your failings can be forgiven even if you haven’t learned from your past mistakes.

That’s Life!

Paul

Question: What failing do you need to learn from? Leave your comments and questions below.

Subscribe to my blog and receive posts like this one delivered to your email inbox.

by

The Secret of Optimism

I think optimism is something that every one of us would like to possess. Optimism is a “hopefulness and confidence about the future”. It is being hopeful of a successful outcome.

glass-half-full-640x360

I wrote that definition not because I think some people don’t know the meaning of the word. I wrote it because optimism is such a foreign concept to some, that seeing a definition might stir them to the possibility of experiencing an optimistic thought.

Yes, some people are “glass half empty” folks and others are “glass half full”. It’s how we are wired and for good reason.

I always say that if Lily followed my thinking we’d have lots of fun but we’d be broke, and if we did things Lily’s way, we’d have lots of money but man, life would be sooo dull.

We need both perspectives. We’ve been given one, but we need to appreciate the other.

Regardless of how we are wired, there are times we need to see good in the bad, and find contentment in disappointment.

The other day, I came home from work and, as usual, pressed the button to my garage door opener from the street behind my house, so that when I turned the corner onto my street and reached my driveway, the door was already up.

It’s like I’m driving into the bat cave. If my neighbours looked out the window they would wonder why my garage door goes up when there’s no car in sight, only to then see my bat mobile (I mean, my Hyundai Accent) come bombing around the corner, up the driveway and into the cave.

I bet my associate wishes he had one right now. But that’s not the point of my story. … I got out of my car and with my back to the garage door, I pressed the button for it to go down.

As I fumbled for my keys to open the house door there was a huge bang. I jumped, and almost dropped the keys.

I couldn’t tell if something really big and heavy had dropped or whether the ammonium nitrate in our fertilizer triggered a small explosion (our lawn has been doing well this year).

As I looked around the garage, I noticed that a wire on my garage door was loose. Then I saw that the spring for that door had broken. My immediate reaction was, “No way! This couldn’t happen at a worse time.”

You see, we had just booked a company to come and replace our other garage door for the next day. Now, we would need the second garage door fixed as well.

I just shook my head. But then I thought, “Maybe the timing on this couldn’t have been better. The repair guy is coming tomorrow; he can fix both garage doors in one visit!”

Yes, it did add to our expense, but we didn’t need a whole new door (just the spring assembly).

The great thing was it could have happened the day after the repairman came, or a week or month later. Instead, that door broke just in time to get fixed the very next day.

Here’s the thing: When you experience a glass half empty circumstance, don’t just settle for that perspective. There is greater value in looking for the glass half full perspective in that circumstance. God will always provide something of greater value than what’s on the surface … if we will look for it.

That’s Life!

Paul

Question: How have you turned a half empty circumstance into a half full one? Leave your comment below.