Can you tell the difference between a toad and a frog?

Although I've never bought an album or downloaded a song, I do consider myself a Carrie Underwood fan. I absolutely loved Jesus take the wheel when it first came out. I listened to a parody of it yesterday, the red-neck version "Cletus take the reel". It is the touching story of two buddies fishing from a boat, one falls and asks his buddy Cletus to take the reel so his bass won't get away. OK it may be a guy thing but it was funny and actually a reasonable request given the circumstances. In one of Carrie's new song she tells of closing her eyes and kissing the frog, referring to Tony Romo or some date that was not what she hoped. I'm probably wrong about that because I didn't listen real close because it got me to thinking about how many people in relationships kiss the frog hoping for a prince. Actually, I have seen it work. Some couples do bring out the best in the other, the prince/princess if you will. The problem comes when the kisser cannot tell the difference between a frog and a toad. They look similar but are totally. Frogs like ponds and wet environments. Toads, like the Sonoran desert toad that live around my house, (top picture) don't really like the water all that well. They spend most of their lives underground, coming out only briefly when the humidity is high and shallow ponds are around. I doubt they can swim all that well. No matter how many stars you wish on, how many prayers you pray, how many times you kiss the toad, it will remain a toad because that is all that it will ever be. I really don't know what Carrie was singing about but I sure have kissed my share of toads! Anytime I think my plan or idea is better than the one God may have for me is just kissing a toad! Any kind of self serving disobedience is just kissing a toad. But when God brings what looks like a frog in my life and I actually kiss it, I always end up with a princess. They really are not that hard to tell apart. Here is a few obvious helps. They look different, talk differ rent, act different and are found in totally different places. It's the same with toads and frogs or my way and God's way. the shack discussion guide, study guide for the shack, shack discussion topics

When God Seem Silent

Twenty five years ago, about the time this picture was taken, I began to write a book, mostly for me. The title was going to be When The Heavens are Brass, a poetic description of how we often feel when our prayers are unanswered and God appears to be silent. I was the early 80’s and God was giving me some pretty specific life directions when my world fell absolutely apart. Memory now is fuzzy but it began with the death of my Grandfather, then my grandmother, then a 6 week bout with cancer took my mother. On the way to see her when we got the news she had weeks to live, the engine on my 2 year old car blew up leaving us stranded 2 hours short of our destination in the middle of the night miles outside of 29 Palms. It took 4 months to get it fixed and it was my only car. But I still had 5 kids to get back and forth to California 4 more times in the back of a borrowed Chevy Nova, but that is a story in itself. I entered a business relationship with a friend where fire, flood, theft and his declining health led to its demise and a monstrous debt to repay. Then my partner died. We had 5 small children to provide for and a debt 5 times my annual salary. Believing God had given me my life’s instructions, turned down an opportunity for a pastorate about 2 hours from my (and Deanna’s) parents houses. That church was much larger, had it’s own oil well, really, and offered to build me my own house on 5 acres plus the salary to pay for it. The pressure for me was great and to be honest I did not handle it all that well. Sure, I put on the preacher face when in public but I was so critically wounded in spirit. I felt (Thank you Father for your grace and forgivness for this) abandoned and betrayed by God. All the praying, tears, fighting, anger and every other thing I tried seemed to move God one bit. I was crushed beyond recognition and could tell NO ONE. Of course Deanna knew and my kids felt it but never knew what it was. The one prayer I was aware of that God profoundly answered was for my children. I was teetering on the edge of bankruptcy, totally broken in spirit but I begged God to protect my children from my decisions and their consequences. The business failure and not going to the bigger church pretty much guaranteed we would be poor. Fortunately we lived in a title one area so free school lunches for the kids was a blessing. God provided everything for the children all those years…in abundance. In their memory today we were RICH back then. Everything that was important to them was available from designer cloths to Disneyland trips. I didn’t pay for any of it. I couldn’t. Thank you again Jesus. There was a ton of other lesser pains and pressures at the time but you get the drift of things, probably been there yourself. So why didn’t God answer me. Was He as totally disinterested as I felt he was? I don’t have all the answers to that today, but I do have some. Although I prayed, begged, and definitely yelled loud enough for a god of stone to hear, the one thing I did not do early on was LISTEN. I spent all my time in the arguments I had with God…ok I called them prayers but if you would have observed me from a distance you would have thought it was an argument…telling Him HOW, When and Why He had to fix my problems. It was a long time before I finally ran out of physical and emotional energy to keep the argument going and could listen. What I know now is that God was not silent, I was just not taking time to listen. The other thing I did not do was surrender my will up front to be obedient to whatever God wanted from me, thereby MISSING what He was definitely doing the whole time. Sure my plan was to be obedient, but I wanted time to consider the options, tweak it with my keen insights, you know, just in case God missed something. I fooled myself into believing true obedience contained any opt out clause. I think I may have developed the original Hedge Fund. Thank God I lost my battle and learned. Sort of. I had a bigger do over some years later, but that one was more like Jacob wrestling with God. It was quite literally life and death. Sorry, I don’t have the freedom to put that story in print. Call me, I will tell you of God’s amazing delivering power. My wife says it is one of the truest miracles she has ever witnessed. It was over when He broke me with His incomprehensible infinite love. Today I am back there again…well not really back there, same song third verse EXCEPT this time I am taking time to listen AND negotiations with God is NOT an option. I have already agreed to cooperate in whatever He is doing because I have total confidence (ok probably more like almost total) in His Love and plans for me and he promises they are GOOD. Doni just emailed the chorus of a new son Unredeemed, from Annie Smiths blog. Click the link to listen to it. It will only be available for 3 days!: I love it:

Places
Where grace is
Soon to be so amazing
They may unfulfilled
They may unrestored
But when anything that's shattered
Is laid before the Lord
Just watch and see
It will not be
Unredeemed

http://audreycaroline.blogspot.com/2009/04/unredeemed.html

Living the Dream, avoiding the Nightmare

Doni with the camper on a 1972 Datsen (Nissan) Pick Up. 1975

Doni on the Honda 350 scrambler (camper in back ground)

We lived just to the left of the white area.

Thirty-five years ago I got my first motorcycle. It was a Honda 350 Scrambler. It was designed for off road driving, but lighted and licensed for street riding. In it’s day it was incredible. Dee and I lived on the outskirts of town (one block long) on a high spot in the middle of a dry lake. It was about 5 miles by road to the church where I ministered or 4 miles cross country. Of course, being cost conscious and gas in the high 60’s (cents) I had to save where I could so I would often take the most direct route across the dry lake. Did you know there is no posted speed limit on a dry lake? I discovered the short cut quite by accident, literally. I was riding home from church and was going to fast to negotiate the corner with the sand on the road. I hesitated for a second which caused me to hit a 2 foot dirt embankment. Being a scrambler instead of a street bike, the bike did what it was designed to do and literally jumped the embankment, landed in the dry lake and kept on going. When my heart climbed back down into my chest where it belonged I realized the near accident was actually the bike telling me it did not like to ride on pavement, preferring the sand and trails. That embankment became my usual launching pad to a great ride home. Things were going pretty well with the scrambler as I was learning to become one with the bike and know and trust it’s capabilities. One day I was out doing some pastoral visiting…I really was…in an area that was filled with rolling hills and no traffic. I opened up the throttle going down one half mile long hill, hit around 85 at the bottom and rocketed up the shorter slope. There was a little hiccup at the top of the slope and in a flash the scrambler and I were probably 8-10 feet in the air. As we passed the crest of the hill and a small flat top I could see from my birds I view that the road swept sharply left in the area I would soon be landing. I made a quick mental check during the final approach and calculated that at my speed and altitude I would immediately upon landing have to lay the bike to the left or launch again into the vastness of space off the side of a mountain. To tense up or hesitate now meant certain serious injury and destruction of the bike…at a minimum. As the bike softly settled back onto the pavement I put it into a hard left. The tires grabbed and we shot straight down the middle of the paved road. When we caught up with my heart a couple miles down the road, I swore I would never do anything so stupid again. And I didn’t. For a week. But the rush, the ride overruled my short lived wisdom and I soon found myself going back down the same road at the same speed seeing the same bird’s eye view of the canyon below. I stuck the landing one more time in perfection, this time my heart staying with me for the whole ride, only racing a little faster for a second. This was really fun. Stupid but really fun. My father (a heart patient) bought a Honda 350 street bike... to cut down on gas expenses he said. Really, he bought it to ride with me, which we did. All my teen years he had been flat in his back in bed and now, post heart surgery, he had a little more endurance to do some things with me instead of just watching me or listening to my football games on the radio. The announcer always started the play call with “big Don Zimmermann is over the football”. Ridiculous! I was 165 lbs playing with and against guys over 100 lbs heavier! Anyway Dad and I road the valley together several times just to be together. We didn’t even pretend we had a reason to go, we just went because for the first time in our lives we could. That all came to an abrupt end when dad froze at slow speed, hit a small dirt embankment and flew over the handlebars, breaking his collar bone. He had a street bike, not a scrambler. It definitely did not like going off the pavement. In the hospital he vowed to get right back on the bike, but pain and wise counsel convinced him he was too old to learn to be one with the bike. He never rode again. Statistics warn that if you ride a bike you are going to fall or get hit. I had beaten the statistics so far and continued to ride. Dee and I did not have much money and had a growing family. We wanted to buy a camper for our truck but the only way to do that was to sell the bike. I was debating…until my brother in law Dave dropped my bike on a sand covered corner near the church. Dave was a far better rider than I and I knew then it was only a matter of time before I wrecked. I sold the bike to help pay for the next dream we realized: a camper. Good decision. From time to time I would borrow a sports bike and always feel the urge to get another birds eye view. It took 30 years to get past that. When I did get apst it, I got my dream bike. Never did try to get up with the birds, just enjoyed the wind rushing through my hair. Ok it is the hair on my arms but that still counts, and besides I always wore a helmet! By God’s grace I am one of the few to ride and never put a bike down I lived my dream and avoided the nightmare. Thank you Father for your blessings to me.

The Bike

I had been off of bikes for near 30 years when Daniel and his b-i-l Josh rolled this classic into my driveway. It was in the process of being restored but missing parts to the carbs. It was not long before I had Jim, Doni's husband, looking everywhere for the parts. It took over a year but he finally got the parts. I put the parts together with a pro shop and after a few adjustments it ran like a dream. It was a great bike to get reacquainted with riding on, more like riding a bicycle. I got comfortable on it quickly and enjoyed riding. Jim started looking for a bike for himself and found my dream bike, the red Honda. I took it on a quick test drive and knew if Jim didn't buy it I would have to. He didn't, I did and it was great. And when I sold it today I got the same thing for it that I originally paid. Not a bad deal really. A free ride for 3 years. (I know, insurance etc, but it was worth it.) I don't know if I will ever get another bike...but I kept my helmet and leathers just in case. Father always has a few surprises.

Loss in the family?

It was time to say farewell to a friend this AM. Seems like I have been doing a lot of that of late. Today my treasured bike rode off without me. I say friend because we had some great times together and I did accomplished a life long dream of riding through the Mountains and backroads where I grew up. My dad and I used to ride there together, but never on a bike like this one. It was all I thought it would be and more. We were a perfect fit. And I kept my promise too. I never pushed it to the critical edge flirtering with whatever it is you flirt with when your doing something really stupid. The fellow who road it away had been dreaming of owning one for 15 years, so I know they will be happy together. If you think a motorcycle cannot be happy you have never ridden one down Yarnell hill. People come from hundreds of miles around to ride that nine mile decent from the pine to the desert flats in a oneness with their bike that is never felt on the broad strait roads of city life. But Definitely the motorcycle is smiling because in those curves the bike and rider become one. Together they do something that neither could accomplish by themselves. In the oneness each has a sense of satisfaction in fulfilling their individual purpose....to be ONE. If that sounds to romanticized to be true, consider this. The gap between me and the motorcycle is not nearly so great as the gulf between me and God. We are the created, He is the creator. He is God. We are not. Yet HE invites me to become one with Him...infinite as the gap is...and when I do, in those twists and turns of life, I smile knowing in the center of my being that for this I was created. I may never own another bike but I can still know a oneness that thrills me to the core of my being. I'd reccomend that ride to everyone!

Knowing

Without a doubt the American Dream has been the greatest social accomplishment by any society in the history of man. NO empire or civilization has come close to realizing the potential or prosperity of this great social experiment based on Christian morals and principles. Don’t bother to argue with me about this. I am really irritated that the ignorant masses who never read anything but listen to the revisionist historians and blindly follow their agenda of doom. I sympathize President Jefferson’s lament that the blood of patriots and tyrants must be mixed to keep the democracy going…but I KNOW something the masses do not know. It HAS to be this way. This is exactly what I have expected all of my life. It is exactly what Jesus said would be happening. I know some of you are arguing in your head that preachers have been saying this for the past 100 years and the end is not yet. But have you read what they read and wrote at the time? They were PROJECTING what was soon to happen…and they got it exactly right. The difference is NOW it has already happened. Israel is a nation and has been for a generation+. Everything including the initial red heifer for sacrifice is ready for the temple and some is at the foot of the temple Mount. A potential type of mark of the beast is now being done on animals, complete with tracking systems. You can put it on your child if you want. A one world banking system of Revelation order has been in place for years and the G20 conference going on right now is talking of using a different standard than the US Dollar. Not surprising, Russia and China are making a case for it. (According to John's Revelation, they are the two big players in the end). There is a lot more but that is enough for me. I KNOW WHAT IS HAPPENING. No, I don’t like it but yes, I guess I really do. My problem is what to do with KNOWING. Like Nickolas Cage in KNOWING I want to pull everyone off the train, but they don’t want to get off. You can see the clip at WingClips.com.

No you don't!

Doni and me in 1974

I was young and was sure I knew exactly what I wanted. I walked into an industrial tire repair shop in Monrovia California and boldly declared to the grungy man in charge that I wanted to purchase the biggest tube he had available. He sized me up for what I really was and responded, NO you don't!, I felt challenged, and repeaded with full confidence, YES, I do. He simply answered No you don't. A little frusterated and way to arrogant I reiterated with an air of underserved confidence, Yes I do...You don't know what I what it for. He just said, OK, It will cost you $3000, it stands 9 ft. tall and weighs 500 pounds. I wish I could have seen the look on my face, it must have been a deflated red glow. In my best to recover I confessed, your right, I don't. What do I want? He pulled the tire pictured above from a barrel and blew it up for me. It was perfect, and only $30. What fun we had on what was dubbed the USS Fat Albert. We never went to the beach or lake without it. a dozen teens could stand on it without tipping it. Am I ever glad I finally asked the one with the real knowledge what it was that would meet my needs. That grungy old guy really knew his stuff. Sometimes I still forget and try to tell God what it is I want instead of doing the really wise thing and ask Him what it is he has for me. I should know better by now. I'm glad I have this picture to remind me. The shack discussion guide, The shack study guide.