My life is not my own...

As I get older I have come to realize that my life is not  my own to do with as I please. There was a time not too many years ago that  I did pretty much what my desires told me to do.  Before you get any wild ideas about “what I was doing” let me clear the record. When I was young, my father gave me a figurative double edge sword as a gift in life. On one hand it was a good gift and on another it was not very good at all. What he gave me was the ability to build almost anything from scratch.

My father was a “Master Tinkerer” and a “Frustrated Engineer” …however you want to look at it. He could fix, modify, re-engineer, sort out, straighten out, figure out anything that had gears, bearings and belts. There was no end to his imagination when it came to building things out of mostly steel. He would cut, weld, grind….recut….reweld….regrind everything until it hummed like a sewing machine. Without any doubt in his mind, I needed to know everything he knew, and then some. He didn’t mind being the teacher, and I loved being the over zealous student. In my mind….whatever he could build….I could build better and faster. If he could make it hum like a sewing machine, my version would be silent and twice as powerful, at half the cost….all built with used, scavaged parts. I became a wizbang, double fisted fabrication maniac! If I could dream it, I would build it…..or at least start it. Finishing, I must admit, was not my strong suit in the early years. But as time passed and my talents grew, even that was rarely a problem.

The hours that I invested in the craft at my fathers machine shop were uncountable. There was no such thing as working too late if I was immersed in a “project”. Friends and strangers came from all around to bring me “projects” and marvel at the outcome. This all became very addictive to a young man who had limited self esteem. I had found something that brought me attention and accolades. But it only lasted as long as the projects were before peoples eyes. It was all very fleeting. It was my double edge sword.

Fast forward to the age of 45. I had discovered my faith about ten years earlier through a series of “Godincidences” and it too was growing, but I had this marvelous work shop at home with every imaginable tool known to man, and a few tools that mortal man had not even seen yet. I continued to pour out the projects and dabble in the will of God. One day I was feeding the poor, but the whole next week I was feeding my own mechanical passions. Shop time almost always outweighed Gods time.

When my private thoughts were mostly private, they were also mostly mechanical. But God was knocking on my shop door asking for more of my time, and so occasionally I would lay down my welding torch, or grinder or drill and find a little time to do Gods will. Within the last five years, God hasn’t had to knock on the shop door nearly as much…it’s pretty much shut down. Inside my shop sits  a lot of little “temples” where I used to worship regularly. The ghosts of days and nights past still hang out in the garage shop waiting for me to return….believing that I will. But it does not appear that I will return anytime soon.

God has found a lot of  different “projects” for me to do….and most of them have names given to them by their parents. They don’t need me to “grind” on them, they just need my time and my love. They don’t need me to “reengineer” their lives… they just need me to walk with them and try to understand their point of view. And my family has become a very large, never ending “project” ….they need everything I can give. And I am more than willing to give what I can.

My heart has become more of a servants heart by the grace of God….and I am very O.K. with that. I still go into my messy shop pretty regularly, but now the once clean, well organized “project Factory” is just there to hold the occasional screwdriver or wrench that will help me adjust our bicycles so my family can take a ride over to some persons house that needs a visit….. I wouldn’t have it any other way, because that’s just the way God designed it, built it and keeps everything maintained.  Amen.