"God Sighted in Sunroom, more at 11…"

A father speaks to his daughters-

"On Lumber, Air Conditioners, Cedar Siding, and Answers to Prayer"

You didn't know God was in your sunroom? Well, he's in mine. What's wrong with your sunroom anyway? I figured he was in every sunroom, maybe I was wrong. Anyway, you've probably read about a serious accident I had while remodeling our sunroom several years ago. And from that, you understand that God was watching over me that day. But I never told you about the rest of that story. God wasn't just watching me that day, he was watching, listening, and answering me throughout that whole remodeling project.

To understand this a little better, you'd have to go back to that time in my life. I was beginning to struggle with my career in pharmaceutical sales and I wanted to make a change. A big change. At first, I wasn't quite sure of what career path I was interested in so I went to Georgia State and did a lot of testing to better understand my interests and aptitudes. The test results showed that I had a high interest in web development and a career in that area would suit me. In order to make the career transition, I knew I would need a lot more education. And, from past experience, I knew that making a change like this without praying about it first would also be a real mistake. So, as I started into the sunroom remodel project, I did a lot of praying about this career change. The project would entail tearing out the walls and ceiling of the old sunroom, rebuilding the framing, adding plywood, exterior siding, a new interior with a higher ceiling, drywall, windows, flooring, all that stuff. Doing all this work gave me a lot of time to myself to think and pray and I was praying specifically about whether or not I should go to graduate school as the way to get the knowledge I would need to enter this new career.

I kept praying and asking God to give me guidance on this grad school idea and to open or close doors appropriately so I would know what path to take. He answered me in the following way. The first thing that happened was the big accident. God was clearly there and watching out for me. That was answer-to-prayer number one. Some time after the accident, I started putting plywood on the outside of the newly framed walls. I was trying to save as much money as possible on this project so I used as much scrap plywood as I could. To use scraps in this manner means that you'll have a lot of small pieces left over that just won't fit anywhere. I went around piecing together the plywood scraps on the exterior to fit carefully around all the windows without wasting any. I had started with a pile of odd shaped pieces of plywood. When I finished cutting and nailing the plywood up, there was none left in my pile. None. Not a half a sheet of plywood or a 1' by 1' piece leftover. Nothing. It was as if I had been given the exact amount necessary to get the job done. No more, no less. Was it a coincidence that I had exactly what I needed? No, it was answer-to-prayer number two.

After the windows were installed, the next step was to put up cedar shakes (shingles) on the exterior. I measured how many square feet of surface area I would need to cover and went to the lumber store. They told me I would need 6 bundles of shakes to cover that amount of surface. Six bundles was rather expensive but I didn't have much choice but to buy it all. These bundles each consist of a few hundred individual cedar shingles all bound together. You take them and individually nail them into place like you would shingles on a roof. You cut them to fit where necessary. I started with hundreds and hundreds of cedar shingles, fitting, cutting, then nailing, fitting, cutting, then nailing. Keep in mind that I'm still praying for guidance and answers to my specific question of whether or not I should quit my job, go to graduate school full time, and go into massive debt to pay for school. Not easy questions for a young father.

To answer my question, for the third time, God presented me with this- Not only did I not need nearly as much as I was quoted, but it turns out that three bundles were enough. And I don't mean that I finished with three bundles where some shingles were left over, or that I used three bundles and broke into the fourth bundle to get the job done. I mean that I reached down to grab the very last shingle from the third bundle, and reached up to place it onto the very last spot on the wall that would need a shingle...and it fit perfectly. Down at my feet, not a shingle was left. Coincidence? No, it is faith. It is an answer to prayer. Still think it's a coincidence? Seriously? Picture yourself with a pile of about 700 cedar shingles at your feet and a bunch of empty wallspace for them to be nailed to. When you're done nailing, there's nothing left. Nothing. To me, if you still believe that's a coincidence, it doesn't mean that you are right, it just means that you have no faith. God is there and he listens and talks to you whether you believe he does or not. But, it takes faith to hear and see him.

What I am telling you is that while you are praying for guidance (notice that I assume you do ask him for guidance), you need to look and listen for answers to prayer. Sometimes God provides answers. Real ones. You just have to be paying attention. And, you just have to have faith that he's really there. He's talking to you right now. Are you listening?

Your Dad

ps- You are listening? Good, now go do your homework, clean up your room, brush your teeth and get ready for bed….

This article can also be viewed here "God Sighted in Sunroom, more at 11…"

Conversions of Faith. How a father chose his religion.

A father explains faith to his daughters. How does a person grow up with one faith, then change to another?

Megan and Jenna,
By the time you are old enough to read and write, you’ll probably know that Grammy is Jewish but I am Christian. While you may be a little young to understand that, I’ll try to explain it. You see, I haven’t always been a Christian. I grew up in a Jewish household. Grammy and Poppy were Jewish. Although we grew up as Jews, and Grammy and Poppy wanted us to know the Jewish heritage, they also didn’t want us to feel completely different from all the other kids we knew growing up. Thus, we didn’t always follow the typical Jewish traditions.

Growing up, most everyone around us was Christian. The only Jews we knew were the people from Temple. So, in our house, we would celebrate the Jewish holidays, but we would also do more “normal” things, like have Christmas. Not the actual celebration of Christ’s birth, but we did have a Christmas tree, Christmas presents, Santa, the whole thing. My parents really didn’t want us missing out on all that growing up. After all, some of those things are the stuff of lifelong memories. Memories that are built from the very earliest parts of our lives.

As a family, we didn’t exactly follow the Jewish religion too closely. We attended Temple fairly frequently growing up, but later, as we were older, we began attending Temple mainly on the High Holy Days. It’s kind of like Christians that only go to church on Easter and Christmas. Anyway, I didn’t have a strong spiritual grounding in the Jewish faith. I think it was meant-to-be that way for me.

I can remember being quite young and wondering why we were Jewish and most other people were not. Later, I understood the core difference between Jews and Christians. While society wants to significantly complicate this subject, it simply boils down to whether or not you believe that Jesus was the messiah. Jews do not believe the messiah has come. Christians know that he has come, and his name was Jesus. Growing up, I didn’t understand Christianity mainly because there were so many different kinds of Christians. Baptists, Presbyterians, Catholics, Episcipalians, Methodists... The list goes on. That’s a lot of confusion for a young man to understand. In the midst of this confusion, I couldn’t boil it down into something that made sense to me.

By the time I became an adult (am I an adult??! Holy cow) I was thoroughly confused and I had a lot of turmoil inside me. Think about it, you have all these Christian religions with different ideas coming at you to try to figure out. And the one thing that really confuses so many people is the little fact the Jesus was a Jew.

Finally, one day when I was in my mid twenties, it just dawned on me. I was making too much out of all of this external noise. It wasn’t confusing at all. It simply boiled down to one question. If I was a Jew, and was alive during the time of Jesus, a Jewish man, and I was standing right next to him, talking and listening to him, would I have believed he was the messiah? That’s it. That’s all that matters. Would I have believed. Forget all of today’s mixed Christian messages. Back up and think about it in its purest form. Would I have believed. The answer is ‘yes’. Of course the answer is yes. It is the only conclusion an open minded person who was standing right next to the man could come to. Remember something, you were standing right next to him, witnessing miracles with your own eyes. What did you not see? What did you not hear? What did you not understand? You were standing right there! Yes, I know you were expecting someone else, I know you were expecting something else. But you were standing right there. There’s no way you didn’t feel it in your heart and just know.

Unfortunately, many Jews who were standing right there hardened their hearts. Just as God chose to harden Pharoh’s heart over and over again in the book of Exodus. He also chose to harden the hearts of many Jews who witnessed Jesus’ miracles. The hearts of Jews today are still hardened. Jesus was not what they were expecting, and to them, he can’t be the messiah. They don’t believe because they can’t believe.

So, what does all this mean to me? For me, it means that I am not simply Christian, and not simply Jewish. I grew up as a Jew, with Jewish roots. I still consider myself to be a Jew. However, I am much different than the Jews of today attending Synagog or Temple. I consider myself to be a ‘Completed Jew.’ That means that although I identify my Jewish heritage, I am now a Christian. I do not abandon my Jewish heritage (any more than Christ abandoned his Jewish heritage). Instead, I complete my Jewish heritage by recognizing that Christ, the Jewish messiah, has come. Christ understood the roots of where he came from, and so do I.

Our Jewish roots tell us about the coming messiah through the Old Testament. And, as the Old Testament prophesied, the messiah came. He is here. He is amongst us now. It’s up to us to recognize him. It’s up to us to decide that although Christ did not “look” the way we expected, nonetheless, we were standing right next to him as he walked the earth, as he spoke, as he performed miracles, and as he fulfilled Old Testament prophecy about the coming messiah. He is the messiah and he called me to accept him. Is he calling you too?

Your Dad

This article can also be viewed here Conversions of faith. How a father chose his religion.

Your dad was er, ah, um, um, ….previously married

A father writes to his daughters about learning from other people's mistakes Girls,
I'm sorry to just blurt out the fact that I was previouly married like that. This particlar letter is a tough to write. Probably much tougher for you to read. But, we sleep in the bed we make (or some other saying like that) so I can’t just hide it from you. It’s a part of who I am, and thus, it’s a part of who you are too. Come to think of it, I don’t really like to make my bed all that much, so does that mean that I sleep in the bed I don’t make? I digress.

Anyway, long ago, way before either of you were born, I dated a woman while we were in college together. This is long before I ever met your mother. Although somewhere in the back of my mind I knew this woman and I were quite young to be getting married, I thought it was the right thing for us. I thought we could make it. We married after we had both finished our undergrad degrees. We didn’t have any children (well, except for Belle-the-dog). We stayed married for 4 years, but, in the end, we had both changed so much from the time that we were first married, that we no longer were the same people. We no longer had the same goals, interests, or even the same love for one another. It ended in an amicable divorce. From time to time I hear from her or from her parents. Particularly I heard from them and saw them at the time of my father’s passing.

Getting married young is not the best idea. One of the most difficult things to overcome is the tremendous amount of changing you do as you get older. When you are in your early twenties, you still have a lot of growing and changing to do. By the time you are in your thirties, you have solidified a lot more into the person you were always meant to become. It doesn’t mean you won’t or can’t keep changing, because you will. Instead it just signifies a time when you are perhaps mature enough to commit to another person.

Think about it this way. Look at a 17 year old. Follow that 17 year old until he’s 22 when he graduates from college. Compare the thoughts, actions, and maturity of this person when he was 17 to now when he is 22. There’s a huge difference. People that get married too young, lets say at age 23, undergo the same amount drastic changes in maturity from 23 until they turn, lets say, 27, as they did from 17 to 22.

All people are going to undergo those changes, but if you try to do it from inside a marriage you find that the two of you don’t often change together. Instead of changing together, you change in very different ways and may no longer recognize your spouse as the person you married.

Now, I know this whole concept of your dad being previously married is shocking for you to read. I know that because I can remember being old enough to understand what it meant when my dad told me that he had been engaged to another woman before he married my mother. He didn’t marry the woman he was engaged to, but being engaged is quite a serious thing. It is hard to picture your parent with anyone other than your other parent. It just doesn’t seem natural, I know.

The things I hope you learn from this are that you have to somehow force yourself to realize that it’s ok to learn from other people’s mistakes. You are supposed to learn from history so you don’t repeat other people’s mistakes. Most people will tell you that ‘experience is the best teacher’, however, I like to add ‘as long as it’s someone else’s experience.’

Your Dad

This article and others like it can also be viewed here Amazing Stories.org