meals

by

When Someone Is Present It Is Always Special

It makes a big difference in how you feel just knowing someone is present.

when someone is present it is always special

For the last week, my wife has been away and I’ve been on my own.

Lily said she was going to worry about me, but her biggest worry was whether I would eat all my meals at fast food restaurants. Her plan was to stock the freezer with as many meals as she could cook up beforehand.

The day before she left we were talking in the kitchen before dinner. When she checked on the food in the oven I was surprised to see she had two trays of meat cooking in there. 

I asked, “What’s all that for?” and her reply was that she was preparing it all for me to eat while she was away. 

You’d think that was a great sacrifice for her to do that for me. Really her motive was to hopefully keep me from spending money at McDonald’s, Swiss Chalet or my favourite wing place. 

Well, I did eat all the meals she froze for me, but I also ate my share of restaurant food too. 

During the week on my own, I noticed a couple of things.

I certainly had time to do things on my own, what I wanted to do … things just for me. 

But I found that my life has a number of built-in responsibilities, so I didn’t have all that much discretionary time on my hands.

If I wanted to watch a movie at night, I really could choose the movie of my liking. I didn’t have to consider what Lily might like to watch.

But I had a couple of meetings that happened to be in the evenings and I worked late a couple of other nights. That didn’t leave me with many nights I could sit down with a good action flick of my choosing. 

I also found myself doing things that I might not have done if Lily had have been home. Like the night I decided to open my computer after dinner and spend a little time finishing up what I had been working on during the day.

I guess I just had the freedom to do what I wanted to do, when I wanted to do it, no questions asked.

But I noticed something else about the week. It was quiet in the house. 

Other than a little tinnitus ringing in my ears, there were no other sounds. There were no sounds of a chair moving in the other room. There was no sound of footsteps on the hardwood upstairs.

The house was very quiet; you could hear every click that the clocks were making. 

I realized then that there is a feeling you have when you know there is someone close by. You don’t have to be in the same room; you don’t have to have a conversation. There is something special about having someone present in the same house.

Here’s the thing: We often think of God having a thunderous voice, possibly a harsh voice. But when He wanted to talk to one prophet, He talked to him in a whisper. It’s not easy to catch what God might be saying to you through scripture or while you are praying. You really have to pay attention and listen carefully. It’s like He whispers to you. The reason God speaks in whispers is because He is close by. God is near you. And it is special having someone present with you all the time. 

That’s Life!

Paul

Question: What do you appreciate about the presence of someone in your life? Leave your comments and questions below.

Subscribe to my blog and receive posts like these delivered to your email inbox each week. 

by

What Your Freezer Reveals

Our freezer has gotten pretty full this week and it’s not that we have found all kinds of great deals on food. That would be a reasonable conclusion, but that’s slightly off the mark.

freezer

My wife, Lily always looks for great deals on food. I’ve watched her comb the grocery store flyers that come to the house. If the flyer is from a grocery store it goes into one pile and the rest of the flyers get bunched together in another pile.

Sometimes I have to hunt for the Best Buy flyer amongst the hardware store, drug store and all the other random ads.

But not the grocery ads – they are all separated out, stacked together so that it is a smooth transition from one to the next.

Lily will shop at probably three or four grocery stores a week looking for the best deals on produce or meat or what have you.

I had a conversation once with a retired gentleman who now had some time on his hands and took on the task of shopping. He knew where I could get the best deal on grapes. I was amazed he knew that information. I just smiled and later passed the details on to Lil.

I don’t shop. Lily doesn’t even really like me to go with her. She finds things in the cart that she would never buy that adds to the bottom line and nullifies all the painstaking work of searching for deals in the flyers.

But still the freezer is getting quite full. It’s because Lily is making meals and freezing them. She’s pretty pleased about it too. You see, she’s going away for a week and she’s freezing these meals for me.

That’s right, me – the guy who’s not great with knives, nor does he work the stove or oven very well, either. However, I’m not too bad at making the microwave sizzle … thus the frozen meals.

Lily’s happy for a number of reasons. The first one being that she loves me and feels she’s taking care of her husband while being away. But close behind, on the heals of that reason, is that she doesn’t want me to eat out while she’s away.

And you might think she doesn’t want me to eat out because I’ll just be eating greasy food that’s bad for my health. No, the main reason is she doesn’t want me spending money while she’s away.

She’s making all these meals, and she’s hoping I will eat them.

You see, while she’s spending money, living it up in Florida with her mom and sister for a week, she doesn’t want me to be living it up, spending money and clogging up my arteries on some of my fast food favourites.

I realize that by writing about this I’ll have a few extra eyes on me and voices speaking her motto of “don’t eat out”.

Well, all I can say is my son is still around and he’ll probably need me to take him out for a few meals.

Here’s the thing: There is something about us that we can have what we need right before us but we still long for something else. It happens in many areas of our lives and it leads us to spend money on what we shouldn’t, expend time on the needless, commit sin that is harmful to our souls. Take stock of the resources you already have in Christ; build them up and keep your heart from wandering elsewhere.

That’s Life!

Paul

Question: What do you find yourself wandering to? Leave your comment below.