The garden shed is 99% complete! I'll blog that one this week after the mess is put away and the tools are cleaned up, back in their racks. Tonight I felt like just sharing thoughts about my life.
The wood plaque\frame is a little project I came up with for Cheryl and I to share. It fills many needs and also makes an excellent example as a backdrop for life. The little rectangles(I carefully cut cardboard to fit each opening so that trimming photos to fit would be really easy)are going to be holding pictures of the "new" babies in our lives. We're still dickering over what age will be the limit for being posted here. I think we'll agree on newborn to age two only. That way nobody will be on that piece of wall for a long time. Cutting the cardboard I thought about how I do the same thing with every part of my life that is under our roof. Every section overlaps the others some, but they are each separate compartments of living that are a part of who I am. The big heading at the top indicates my personal priority in that God comes first! Down where it says "keys" is almost a joke. If we totaled up the time spent looking for keys in our house on a yearly basis it would probably equal the number of hours in a week, 168! It isn't that there aren't specific places for keys to be found, there are. There's one in the shape of a grand piano near the dining room door. There's another on the back of the side door to my office. There's a "key" clock cabinet in the kitchen(all we use that one for is padlocks and keys that fit them). Then there are the hooks for vehicle keys to hang above the workbench in my cave. All in all it doesn't take more than 30 seconds to check where the keys should be when they aren't present. Most often, though, they will be found laying somewhere that they don't belong. Keeping things in their proper places has never been a strong suit of mine. I thought when I got married that problem would be solved...Lol! We're getting better at organizing as we grow older. We had to, it was either that or submit to having many pieces and parts of our lives eternally missing. It wasn't by chance that I shot the photo on the grand. Music is a big part of both of us, and maintaining the harmony in our lives is not easy. Perhaps that is why we both turn often to God in prayer to aid us in working out the harmony that can quickly get lost in the mixing of our spaces. I do wish at times that life was as black and white as the keys on the grand and that everything would fall into order as rapidly in the world as it does in the studio(I haven't been there in a week and I sorely miss it)when we're putting songs together. Once again I refer back to that first priority, God. It seems that no matter what gets to happening in my little spaces, if I'm actively seeking guidance from my Creator everything fits together better and there are fewer parts getting lost along the way. Today's work on the garden shed required the use of several different saws(I think I have about 26 of them 1\3 powered)so several times during the course of the day I had to reorganize them and switch blades and settings. It's a tedious task, but necessary, and one that I put to double use for the purpose of prayer while the fingers on my hands are doing their jobs. I also give thanks for those hands and fingers while I'm at it, and for the abilities God has granted me to use them. They are battered, cut, bruised and abrased by the week's work. Healing will come in time now that the splinters are out. Such is life! It seems that no matter what we're about, if we take the time to be in communion with God everything goes better. I can't wait to see the baby pics up in the foyer! Who knows, maybe some of the keys to our lives will not be so easily lost if we get our priorities straight! God bless, Preacher.
