I rarely ever allow my mind to stay on a thought that is going to cause me to become anxious. Thinking about a possible outcome in the future that would be bad. There is very little probability that the scene worked out in our heads will even happen so justifying the thinking on the basis of coming up with a solution should it happen is a waste of mental energy. When my mind drifts over to thinking about a possible negative event I start reviewing Bible verses that I have memorized or I start praying for my kids and grandkids from the oldest to the youngest. But today I have had a very difficult time pulling my brain away from thinking “what if” concerning Patty’s hip replacement surgery tomorrow. I know lots of people have had the surgery very successfully but it is still major surgery. I won’t bore you with all the many different outcomes I imagined in my mind and how they played out. I got so mentally weary of continually jerking my mind back from the edge of anxiety and despair that for a bit of time I just gave into it and imagined the worst possible outcome. I decided to go to my office and work on my sermon for this weekend in case things worked out so I wouldn’t have much time this week. Sermon study, thinking, and writing is a total and complete focused time for me. I am in another world and nothing breaks into that world until I choose to surface for a break or I declare it finished. My sermon this weekend is about knowing God in a very real, genuine way and the result of that intimate relationship with the Almighty, Omniscient, holy creator of the universe. I finished the sermon and was quite pleased with what I believed was a good time of God giving me words that came from Him. So far this afternoon I have not had any problem with anxious thinking. We are leaving the house at 4:45 am so that Patty can be checked in by 5:30 am.

Yesterday I finally got my 1949 Ford pickup All fixed and on the road. The C-4 automatic transmission quit working, and I bought another one that was rebuilt and put it in. A friend helped and we finally got it in and it works great. This morning I drove it to church and parked it in the front in the handicap parking spot where everyone could see it. I got lots of compliments on the fine looking old pickup. The pickup is one year younger than I am. It is a 1949 Ford pickup but everything in it is mostly new. The fenders are all fiberglass and new. The bed is steel but still it was all built in 2010. The block of the engine is 1949 but all the rest of the parts are less than 10’years old. An old pickup that is mostly all new. I wish I could do that! An old body that was really mostly all new! Patty is going in on Tuesday for a hip replacement surgery. A brand new hip in an old body! It doesn’t change the fact that her body and mine are getting older and older and it won’t be long now before they just quit working. I have Parkinson’s and my bladder doesn’t work any more and other body parts will probably quit working in the next couple of years. It could be depressing, but every day I remind myself that my citizenship is in heaven and that I am anxiously waiting for my savior to take me home and give me a new body that is eternal. How does that body work? I don’t know but I do believe that God who created everything including the largest star and the ecoli bacteria is more than powerful enough to make my new body.

Our church is having a conference this weekend that started tonight on “Evolution vs Creation” put on by “The Institute for Creation Research”. The guys who spoke are scientists with earned PHD’s in a variety of science fields who knew what they were talking about. As I listened tonight I was struck with a thought, people in today’s culture tend to believe anything on the Internet is true when in fact very little of it is. Also people automatically believe that if it is taught in school it must be true. Evolution is taught in schools as scientific fact, but most of what is taught is theory. I also realized that the experts who support and push evolution as the source of human life do so not on the basis of intelligent reasoning based on scientific discovery and proof, but on an emotional desire to do away with God. God represents holiness, and ultimate authority, and judgment which we as as humans with a great deal of pride rebel against, and what better way to eliminate God than to reason Him out of existence. The Bible says, “it is appointed into to man to die and then comes judgment”. I believe that at this judgment I will be declared by God forgiven and accepted into His presence forever because I have personally trusted in Jesus Christ as my Savior. I believe this because the Bible says it is so. If there is a God He certainly would communicate to us, and the Bible is the most viable source of that communication. I know many who strongly disagree with my belief. I guess we will find out some day who is right. If I am right, those who disagree with me will have a long time to to think about it.

I am sorry I haven’t written my blog for a couple of days. I forgot!?! Seems strange that I could forget to do something that I have been doing almost every night for over a year. But that is the sad truth. I have a list of daily duties that I check every night to be sure I haven’t forgotten anything. I call them my “Daily Dozen Duties”. The list includes Bible Reading, a time of self examination and confession of sins, prayer and other things like that. I didn’t add my blogging to the list because it would have been thirteen duties and it would have ruined my cute, easy to remember aliterated motto. I often forget to take my Parkinson’s medicine until I am reminded by the increased shaking of my hands. I am trying very hard to firmly establish the habit of writing any thing down that I say I will do for someone else. It is so embarrassing to tell someone that I will do something for them and totally forget. Faithful men keep their commitments, and blaming my memory is wimpy. Now with this smart phone technology with an App for notes as well as a calendar that I can set to have an alarm go off to remind me there really isn’t any excuse except I forgot to put it in the calendar. I have been spending about 30 minutes every day memorizing Bible verses trying to keep my memory sharp by the mental exercise of memorizing the Bible. I have the extra bonus of getting God’s Word in my heart and having the power of it work on all my thinking.

My sermon this weekend was about how to become humble instead of proud. That is such an important pursuit in our life. Pride is more of an underlying motive for all that we do than a clearly defined character trait. We were created by God with glory, great glory, but the first time we sinned we lost most of our glory. Romans 3:23 for all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God”. We now have this “glory hole” in us that creates this craving for glory. Most people attempt to fill the “glory hole” with our own accomplishments and the praise we can elicit from people. I often say, ” I can do all the right things for all the wrong reasons”, the wrong reason being to feel good about myself. One of the blessings of being a follower of Jesus is that God the Father will give us glory. He gives us His glory when we remember to ask him for some of it. I often have strong feelings of being a failure in life. I know that those feelings are from the demons that surround me trying to get me to turn my back on the Lord. When those feelings come, and they always do the key to getting glory from God is to ask him for it. When I ask God for s strong sense of his glory he always answers. A person who gets all their glory from God is free from performing for people. That is real freedom.

About the only time Patty has been to the hospital in our 46 years of being married was giving birth to our 8 kids. In 10 days on my birthday she is going in to Salem for hip replacement surgery. I get a new wife for my birthday😄 Patty said that she expects me to wait on her and take care of her for the next month after she gets home. I am not sure what all that means but I bet it results in some interesting blogs. We have both been blessed with exceptional health most of our lives, but the old bodies are wearing out. It will probably get worse in the days ahead, but we are both committed to trusting the Lord and not complaining about the trial and inconvience of health issues. We are both looking forward to when we get to heaven and get our new bodies. That will be nice.

I typically put in about 12 hours on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday and then 10 hours on Saturday and Sunday. On Monday I take the day off to recover from the weekend and on Friday I take the day off to get rested up for the weekend. I enjoy Friday’s and usually work on one of my hobbies or interests around the house with a break for coffee about every hour. Today I wheelbarrowed gravel all over my place. I graveled the path to the greenhouse. I filled in all the potholes in our driveway. I hauled about 10 wheelbarrow loads into my new greenhouse. I spread gravel around the house at the door ways and around the house. It was hard work, but I had a good time and felt good about the work that was accomplished. I am careful to read 12 chapters in my Bible everyday, to pray for family and church. On Fridays I spend an hour praying for the service that God would work in and through me that the sermon I preach would give all who listen a genuine encounter with the living God of the universe. I usually sleep in a bit on Sarurdays so I enjoy staying up late on Fridays eating ice cream and reading in some good books. Thank You Lord for a good day. About all that is left is a half hour soak in the hot tub.

One of the guide lines in my goal setting each year is to learn something new. This is not academic learning but skill learning. Last year the goal was to learn all about aquaponics and to build an aquaponics greenhouse. I bought 6 books on aquaponics, read a bunch on line information, and even watched a 6 hour simulcast on aquaponics. I then built my system and it is going great. This year I wanted to learn all about recumbent trikes and then build one. Finished that project and now I am riding my recumbent trike and am going to ride it to Florida in March and April. I also made a goal to learn Oxy/acetylene welding using a Cobra 2000 welder. I bought the welder and have started fooling around with it, and next year I am going to build a three wheeled car with it. I am also going to take voice lessons and form a male quartet and sing in church. The service that I sing in will probably be a packed house😀Learning keeps boredom out of my life and keeps the energy and enthusisam and passion up. We almost all have an infinite capacity for learning and the more new stuff we learn the more we will grow and the more we can help others to grow.

The biggest expense in raising my tilapia is the electricity to heat the water the fish live in. If the water gets down to 65 degrees the fish will die and they grow fastest when it is up around 80 degrees. I have a hot water element plumbed into the side of the IBC tank that the fish are in with a thermostat that allows me to keep the water at any temperature I want. Today I built me a water heater. It is a bunch of 2 foot copper tubes that I soldered elbows on and connected them into a grid that will sit on top of my wood stove. I have Pex connectors on the end of the copper and I am going to dig a ditch out to my greenhouse, lay some insulation in the ditch, and run the Pex line out to my greenhouse. It will be interesting to see how much it will heat the water up. I might have to much heat gain and have to put in a second tank, and raise some more fish. I have about 300 fish now with most of them being little baby fish that my Momma fish have had. In about another month I should have my second greenhouse done, and then I will have room for 6 300 gallons IBC tanks each which I can raise a 100 fish in. I will also have 12 3X8 grow beds and be able to grow a ton of vegetables. The water from the fish tank goes into the grow beds that are full of 3/4 pee gravel. The water is cleaned going through the gravel and goes back into the fish tank and the plants grow in the gravel like crazy with all the fish poop and warm water and grow lights. Just call me farmer Duke.

Today I was reading the side of a box that had a part I had just purchased for my 1949 Ford pickup. Because I had my head down reading while I was walking I didn’t see the steps and I didn’t see the goose necked trailer either. I stumbled badly as I missed the step and fell forward and hit my head on the trailer, I then swing my hands up and hit the under side of the tongue on the trailer and put a big, deep gash in my hand that spewed blood all over. I fell backwards and landed on my back and lay there I don’t know how long unconscious. I don’t think it was very long because there wasn’t a lot of blood on the ground next to me from my hand. When I got to my feet and looked around I was so thankful nobody had seen me look like a staggery old man. It is bad enough to do what I did, but it is so nice that nobody witnessed it. I am feeling like I was in a car wreck tonight. My head hurts, my neck hurts, my back hurts, oops whining, stop that. Thank You Lord for a great day and keeping me safe. Love You