An uncomfortable moment

9/29/09 Tuesday
I’ve been out on the tractor all morning. Don’t think I mentioned it but I got the tractor running. After all the frustrating attempts to remove the starter and taking other parts off to try and figure out why it wouldn’t start I had a brainstorm. Kind of. “What if the starter works just fine?” I questioned myself after discovering one part wasn’t connected to anything at all and hadn’t been for years. There is a myriad of wires all hard to see and impossible to tell where they came from. So I took a piece of high voltage house wire and attached it to where the main cable came to the starter. Then I took the other end and Jammed it into the positive terminal of the battery. It worked. What you are looking at is my new starter switch. You can see the scars where I jam it into the battery terminal. It’s not pretty but it works. So I have a tractor I can use again.

I had an uncomfortable moment yesterday, something different for me. As many of you know I’ve been struggling with faith ever since I woke from the coma. This is not unusual for survivors of TBI, a common problem with brain injuries. It’s just been hard to believe in something I can’t put my hands on and touch. But over the years, as I seek God earnestly, this faith is being slowly restored. Oh, I still have a long way to go but I’ve come a long way. So I was going to put a comment on a friend’s blog and found myself hesitating to talk about God, to even mention the name. The thought came that I would be seen as one of those religious zealots who talk about God all the time. You know, the kind of person that folks want to avoid. This is strange because up until now I’ve upset a lot of people because I say what I think without worrying about what people think of me. Suddenly this is a problem? I live in a world where everyone (Alright, not “everyone” but lots of people) wants to conform, to fit in with the crowd, to be popular and accepted. I see compromise and hypocrisy all around me where folks actions don’t match what they say. And now I’m hesitant to talk about God? Then I remember reading where Jesus said that if I was ashamed of Him before men He would be ashamed of me before the Father. So am I becoming a religious zealot? I search for God every day. I seek the truth. Either God is or He isn’t. No in between. If God is then nothing else matters but what matters to Him. Like it says in the book of Revelations, “I would that you were either hot, or cold, but because you are lukewarm I will spew you out of My mouth”. That’ll sit you back and make you think.

So there’s a glimpse of the struggle within folks. Got to get gas for the tractor and pick up mail. This evening we go to UTPB and take a free class on writing business plans.