solutions

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There Are Too Many Voices In My Head

Sometimes when you tell people your problems, they make stuff up. They don’t have a better solution to your predicament, but they come across as experts anyway.

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Even when you tell them what remedy you’re trying, they disagree and give you a fix that you don’t want to have to resort to.

People do this all the time.

Recently I got a new pair of skates (you can read that post here). They are awesome skates but there is one issue that I was having with them.

They were rubbing and causing about a 2 1/2” long rug burn on each ankle.

It wasn’t too bad the first time it happened, but then I played hockey a couple of days later before the rug burns had healed. That time it kind of opened the wounds up and made them a mess.

If you know anything about rug burns, they take a long time to heal – longer than a straight cut. So the next time I played, the scabs quickly opened up and it was very sore to play at first until I got used to it.

I knew I needed to do something or they would never get better … well, at least until after the season.

My solution was bandaids that were long and padded. I found some at the drugstore that were four inches long. I hoped that covering and cushioning my ankles would stop the disaster they had become.

I figured all I had to do was get the skin healed up. The skin would get tougher so that this situation wouldn’t happen again.

The next time I played I tried out my bandaids. Surprise, surprise – they worked like a charm!

There was a little blood but it was minimal.

This is when all the experts came to my rescue. As I was taking off the bandaids, the guys in the dressing room turned into Dr. Bob or something.

They all had solutions. My ankles still looked pretty messy so they didn’t think my solution would work.

The “back of a pack of matches” physicians had to give me their second, third, and fourth opinions. “Wear socks”, one said. Another one said, “Cut the foot part off a sock and just wear the ankle portion”.

Others agreed with the diagnosis and said there was no other way. “You have to put something over your ankles.”

I disagreed but smiled and said, “We will see.” They all trashed my solution.

Well, I’ve been doing the bandaid thing for a month now. I’ve stopped wearing one on my right ankle and it’s crazy – like magic, the skin has toughened up and I have no more issues!

The other ankle is almost ready to go. The next skate I’ll take the bandaid off and give it a shot.

Maybe Dr. Silcock does know best after all. … I’m sure glad I didn’t cut up socks and wear them like sweat bands around my ankles!

Here’s the thing: Other people will be the loudest voices in your life and it will be easy to listen to them. They are well-meaning voices and they may even have good ideas for you to follow. But the best voice to listen to is the still, small voice of God. It might be hard to hear God’s voice over all the other voices, but if you listen closely you will hear Him and He will give you the best advice hands down!

That’s Life!

Paul

Question: How do you hear God’s voice over other voices? Leave your comment below.

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Why Projects Always Take Longer Than You Plan For

Maybe it’s just me, but any project I take on turns out to be more than I bargained for. It doesn’t matter what it is, nothing is as simple as I think it’s going to be. Something I think will take 10 minutes will take a half hour.

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The other day I decided to fix a broken standing pole lamp that Lily really liked.

I took some measurements and headed to the hardware store. I was hoping for an all-in-one-fix-your-standing-pole-lamp-diy kit, but though I looked everywhere, I couldn’t find one.

I scoured the electrical section and found wire that I needed. There were two gauges to choose from; I picked the heavier gauge. I grabbed a switch and a socket that looked about the same as the original ones and headed home.

So I purchased three items and, as it turned out, all of them were different that the original items in the lamp. But for some reason, I figured they would work just fine … and that’s all Lily cared about. She wanted the lamp to work.

It’s like the instruction sheet mentality, where you think, “Who needs instructions? Just do it and don’t worry about spare parts; it will all work out.”

Well, my first problem was in replacing the wire. The opening in the pole was tight; I should have bought the lighter gauged wire. But I was going to make it work! So I forced it in and, yes, it probably took 3X longer than I thought, but I got it done.

I was surprised that the socket went on really quickly. That should have concerned me. When something is that easy, it usually means I forgot to do something. But I was on a roll and moved on to the switch.

I realized that I bought an on/off switch when the original had been a dimmer switch. At that point I didn’t really care. Lily was going to have light, and when you have light, why in the world would you ever want to dim that?!

With the switch in place, I plugged the lamp in and flicked that switch. Voila, it worked! I thought this was one of the easiest projects I’d done in a long time.

That’s when I went to put the lamp shade on and realized why the old socket was different from the new one. It was used to secure the shade to the lamp.

I had to take off the socket and use the old one, and that required me to use solder. … I can’t solder worth a darn and it took me forever to make the change.

When my project was finally complete, I didn’t stand back and think, “Great job, Paul. You did it again.”

I placed the lamp stand in the living room, turned my back to it and walked away thinking, “I don’t want to look at that lamp for the rest of the night.”

Here’s the thing: Sometimes we want to fix our problems in life with ideas we’ve tried before or recycled approaches from some self-help source. The best approach, however, is to seek God for a fresh solution to your problem. Ask Him to apply His power to the problem at hand. He will use the right materials for the job.

That’s Life!

Paul

Question: What gives you the greatest frustration in problems or projects you have?  Leave your comment below.

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We’re Selling Rabbit Fur Coats, Cheap!

For the last 18 years, my wife has organized a street BBQ with our neighbours. I’d like to say that it’s Lily and I who put this on, but I don’t do much more than clean off a few chairs and roll our BBQ out to the street. She does all the organizing.

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What happens is at 5 pm, I roll our BBQ out to the middle of the street (we live on a keyhole cul-de-sac) and, magically, the neighbours start to show up with their chairs, food and drinks.

It’s not a big event; there’s just ten houses on our street. But we do invite past neighbours (alumni) to attend.

We’ve had the police drive by a few times, but they’ve always just joked with us. Maybe it’s because we have a retired corrections officer on the street, and maybe they have a secret signal (like the Masons) that tips other officers to their occupation. Maybe not.

This year a conversation started about the rabbits. You know, those cute little fury things some people keep as pets. Not on our street! Everyone hates them – even the women, especially the women!

It seemed to be unanimous that everyone was looking for ways to keep the bunnies from eating the flowers in our gardens. Some have tried human hair, moth balls, soap, and cayenne pepper. One owner said she put Frank’s Hot Sauce in the garden, but I don’t think that’s right, wasting good hot sauce on those varmints.

One neighbour has put chicken wire around all his little gardens. Sure he has his flowers, but it’s harder to see them through the chicken wire. One guy sits on his deck with a garden hose in hand and spays the little hoppers when he sees them.

As we were talking, we looked over at our house and there was a bunny hopping up our front walk to our door, like he was going to call on our turtle, Winston, to come out for a race or something.

These rabbits are not afraid of us, either. They just look at us with those innocent eyes, and remain very still like they are thinking, “I can see them, but if I remain still they won’t even know I’m hear nibbling on their lilies.”

At the BBQ, there was talk of pellet guns, and setting up a camouflage blind in one of our backyards to hunt them down, but we never got too far with that. We talked of rabbit stew and selling rabbit coats but these ideas didn’t get off the ground either.

In the end, it was still every household for themselves against the rabbit population on our street which is rapidly growing among an aging human demographic.

It was fitting that, as my neighbour and I were returning some things to our backyard, a little bunny, no more than a week or two old, appeared in front of us and then scurried under our deck. I really do think they have plans to overrun us.

Here’s the thing: It’s amazing how we can come together over something as silly as a bunny problem. God wants us to come together around Him, which should be easy. Sadly, in the end, we often end up everyone for themselves. It just should not be.

That’s life!

Paul

Question: How would you deal with a bunny problem? Leave your comment below.