Celebrating the 17th Anniversary of My Death
Every Day is a Good Day.
The 22nd of January was the 17th anniversary of my death. Fortunately they brought me back. It has been a long and sometimes strange experience. The link will take you to the story of that experience. A lot has happened over that time. It all turned out to be a Blessing in the long run. It is strange how the Lord can show you how Blessed you are.
A few months ago I left my phone on my trailer and forgot about it. It ended up getting run over and I had to get a new one. I thought I had lost everything, but ATT was able to restore all the numbers in it. My daughter and her husband and kids bought me a new computer last year. My son-in-law did the transfer of all the info off my old laptop to my new computer and I was really happy for almost a year till I had the phone problem. It was then I found out my address book and my blog history had been lost in the transfer process. I had a list of all the countries my blog had been read in, last I remember putting one in, I was at 86 countries. I was kind of proud of it. The list also let me know that there were three or four countries that more people read my blog overseas at some points than here. Russia, South Korea, The United Arab Emirates and Argentina are my countries with the most readers. Why I am not sure, but I enjoy it.
There were probably a hundred and fifty names and addresses in the book. Some of them were multiple listings for the same person, my brother had six addresses, his daughter had five. Because I am computer illiterate I just created a new address line instead of deleting. It wasn’t till I got my hard copy of my address book that I realized over the years, I am 74, many of the names I had, had passed away. Actually only 10 or 12 of the names and addresses were good. Taught me a lesson though. Now I put addresses in the phone with the number.
Getting back to the start of the story, sorry about the side track. Thought it might help someone else survive a crisis. That is one reason I write my blog to share experiences to prevent someone else from making the same mistakes, I have.
One thing I noticed this year is that the experience I had in the link at the start was a period of seventeen years and about three months from it happening and my turning my life over to God, or at least feel I was being moved in that direction by God. Then I drove a truck for about twenty years. Which ended when I had my heart attack. So based on that the next three months may be interesting, it has been seventeen years since my heart attack. I have already scheduled up into May. That is when I plan to take my grand-daughter and grand-daughter-in-law for their first skydiving jump at Skydive Chicago. In October I hope to go to the Atlanta Koi Show again, plus I have about a half dozen on going projects. Two of which are starting new businesses I hope to pass on to my grand-kids. Oh yes, I also plan to do some serious pond building.
I remember from reading in the Bible that there was a King named Hezekiah and he was told he was going to die and he cried out to God. God gave him fifteen more years. While he was Blessed because he had been faithful to God, over the fifteen years he had a bit of a falling away.
About 2014 I was convicted by 1st Timothy 5:8, after looking up the word infidel, which means a person who does not know God. It made me realize I needed to step up to the plate so my Great Grand Daughters Mom could get a job and get out of goverment housing. She did and now she lives in her own home which is paid for. All was going good and I had the thought, what happens to all this if something happens to me. That is when the door opened to start my own T-shirt business. Since I retired from trucking I had been giving the Road Angel Trucking Center $100 a month out of my tithe. It was my desire to give more, and the door opened to start giving them T-shirts with a map to their facility on the back that they could sell for $20 each. By buying the shirts and letting them sell them. The money they got went from $1200 a year to over $2000 a year, plus their visitations have increased. They offer free meals, showers, laundry facilities and fellowship to over the road truckers. So my goal is to expand the T-shirt business and give it over to their Mom. My other goal is to make several ponds on my property and raise Koi that they can sell, this project is ongoing, but the Lord is opening all the doors fot it.
Back when I had the heart attack, I think I was a lot closer to God than I am now. I was ready. I was totally at peace with myself. At the point I surrendered to God I had lost everything, my family, my business, my house and even my car. It was hard times. Finally I turned to God and started reading the Bible. I soon realized that I should be tithing to the Lord, but I had nothing to tithe, not even a job. I said all I have is my time and I am going to tithe ten percent of my time to you. For the next four years I spent two and a half hours a day reading the Bible. It was easy till I got a job. God is faithful to His Word and three and a half years later I had back everything I had lost plus some. It was then I decided to start tithing twenty percent to the Lord. I told him that I owed him for all the years I didn’t tithe. So that is why I was doing it. I also told him it was my goal to pay all I owed him. If I did not live long enough, it was his fault. I did that based on the fact that I know God is a Good God and he has a sense of humor. If you don’t believe me read this link and you will clearly see he does, at least he did with me.
If you read my blog long enough you will find I believe God is always present in all we do. Even when I lost my truck driving job I continued to tithe and the Lord continued to Bless me. I went from making about $150,000 a year to $1350 dollars a month. That lasted almost eight years, then he opened the door for me to get Agent Orange compensation and my retirement quadrupled over night. The problem with a sudden Blessing is that it is easy to forget some of the stuff that got you through the hard times. During that eight year period I supplemented my income by making crafts. Which I sold online via EBAY, farmers markets and flea markets. The birds Blessed me. At one time I was going through two fifty pound bags of bird feed a month. Taking pictures and posting them is how I made the money. So I felt I owed the birds. The link will take you to a post with pictures of the things I sold and made. It all started with the need to get rid of the seventy five dollar trash hauling bill, that we paid every three months.
About 2016 I started through a very hard time physically in my life. It came I believe from becoming very lazy because of my heart attack. Pampering myself. I found all the 90 pounds I had lost before my heart attack, plus some. I ended up on insulin and a type II diabetic. Finally after talking to people and changing my ways and especially my diet. I ended up getting off insulin and all the diabetic meds. It can be done. I lost almost sixty pounds in the process also. Thanks to a diet that works that my daughter who passed away had put me on. She was a nurse. I feel better now than I have in years. So I plan to make the best of the time I have left. I lost 90 ninety pounds the first time I was on the diet and sixty this time. My original goal was to lose 140 pounds. Combined I have lost 150 so I met my goal in a way, but I have another 80 to go to get to my ultimate goal which is 220. I weighted 175 when I got out of the Army, but I don’t think I could get back to that goal. But, if God is Willing it could happen.
About 2017 I found a new hobby and kind of turned my back on the birds. My wife recently corrected me on the matter cause the birds were not coming this winter. I told her it was because it was a mild winter. I started feeding them again a few days back and they are showing up again. I only have twelve feeders right now. At one time I had seventeen. In fact this last week I overhauled some of my older ones that needed some maintenance.
My new thing is Koi fish and Koi ponds. I find it fascinating. Kind of wish I had discovered it years ago. I found it on YouTube. I watched a video on Buying Koi in Japan and I was hooked. In fact in the fall of 2019 I took a vacation for ten days and it was all about learning about Koi. I spent the last three days of the vacation at the Atlanta Koi Show. I really enjoyed it and it is past time to write that story.
Even my writing is a Blessing. I spent my last year in the Army in Panama and got drafted into writing for the Command Newspaper. It happened because my commander liked some photos I entered in a Photo Contest. All I got were a couple of honorable mentions, but my commander told me if he had been the judge I would have won several awards. So I got a new job also.
As for this blog it started because my daughter went to Costa Rica and started a blog. She did it to let us know what she was doing while she was there. In August 2010 I had lost my youngest daughter after she fought a seven year battle with a brain tumor and I was in kind of a funk. Angel saw that it cheered me up to read it. So she set me up a blog in March of 2011 and I have been doing it every since. She wanted me to write stories of life so my grand kids can know what I did in life.
The blog has a lot of faith based stories, trucking stories, how-to stories and some personal experiences. Early on I wrote a lot of financial advice as we were just coming out of the 08 collapse and I knew some of the things I had been thru could help others make it through the hard times.
Some people think seventy-four is a little late in life to start a business, but Moses was eighty when he started his trip across the desert. Some people are late starters for whatever reason.
Years ago when I was trucking I met an old man in his seventies or maybe even his eighties and I asked him how his day was going and his answer forever changed my attitude about life. He said,” Young man, any day I spend looking down at the grass, and not up at it is a good day.”
Over the years I learned that the most valuable thing in the world is something you can not buy and you can never get anymore of. It is TIME. Time is our most precious commodity and using it wisely is one of the most Godly things we can do.
A preacher I used to listen to when I was on the road was Duane Sheriff. He had a ministry in Durant Oklahoma that was very awesome. His church, Victory Life, had around a thousand people. It had a food bank that fed almost 8,000 people. Pretty impressive when you consider it is a town of about only 17,000 people. He also had a free tape ministry. His goal was to give away a million tapes a year. I use to stop and help label and pack tapes for shipping when I passed thru the area. Miss it, his church was a very Blessed place to attend.
Getting back on track, Brother Duane had a saying I always liked. “A rut is a grave with both ends kicked out.” If your in a rut it is time to get back into life and live for the Lord. He has tapes on almost every topic. If you read Joshua 1:8 you will see it is your efforts that make things happen, God's job is to Bless it.
Over my years of trucking I was Blessed to attend churches and have fellowship all over the country. The first link is to a post which contains links to about 50 faith based trucking stories and the second link will connect to a story of my experiences in finding a church while traveling the country.
So what is the purpose of this post. To share my blog with people who might like to read some faith based stories. In the ten years I have been writing I have posted almost 280 stories. The purpose of these links is to make it easier to find the faith based posts. I also write on trucking, how-to topics, politics and travel stories. So it may save those interested some time.
As I come to the end of my second seventeen year period, I look back to the start of it all and my Testimony, this posst is part of the first link I posted. I realize we may be near the end. Because of the experience I had it has been my belief that I will be here for the second coming. However having been dead twice already, maybe I misinterpreted what it meant, but I don’t thing so. I know four years ago it could not have happened as I understand it, but changing my diet and getting my health back in order, it might be possible.
My main purpose in writing is to thank the almost 80,000 people who have read my posts over the years. I pray the stories have Blessed you in some way or helped you avoid some of the pitfalls I had. So get up out the rut of life and get back on the road it it applies. Thanks again.
With all the things going on in the World right now, I have to hope and pray I end up with a better outcome at the end than Hezekiah.
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