Confession is good for the soul?

Linda had a bad day yesterday (Thursday) . She woke up with a severe pain in her upper back (rib cage) – not sure what caused it. Perhaps she stretched a muscle working in the yard on Wednesday. In any case, she was not able to do much all day. She was sufficiently recovered to go and help June (her sister-in-law) baby-sit Tracy’s twins and her 4)year old Riley. She said it was a busytimeeven with the 2of them there. Tracy & Travis went out with some friends to a smelt fry near Harmony (its a Norther thing, eh?)

I know I have a number of bad habits. Habits that are non-productive and harmful to being who I want to be. Yesterday, I ended up going on a “binge” of playing free cell on the computer. It started innocently enough – Linda & I are doing a presentation at the church Sunday night to report on our Katrina work in Pascagoula. Since she wasn’t up for working outside and it was a little cool, I started making up the Powerpoint and wanted some pictures from the INTERNET – but my connection was flaky so this was taking a long time and I thought I would play while waiting. I hit a game that was difficult and I just couldn’t let it go until got it – which took several hours - so the presentation didn’t get done.

I enjoy doing games & puzzles as a means of exercising my brain but when they divert me from doing the things that need to be done it is “not a good thing ”. Linda says I’m addicted to these things and perhaps it is true – at least it allows me to better understand the “loss of control” that causes those with more serious addictions to ruin their health, bodies and relationships in pursuit of some thing – whether it be drugs, alcohol, work, pornography..Regardless of whether it is a mild addiction or just a bad habit the saying is that “confession is good for the soul” so I’m hoping that this disclosure will help me avoid these excesses in the future.

I did spend a couple of hours cleaning up some more leaves—we are getting there ---

In the evening I went and helped my Dad fill in his census form – May 16 is Canadian census day. I discovered that we were “lucky” because we got a short form – Dad had a long form - I guess they randomly do that to get stats on income and other things related to the life patterns of the Canadian population.

Last night I thought “All in all, not much to ‘write home abouttoday’ and told myself – based on the immortal words from ‘Gone with the wind’ -- ‘Tomorrow’s another day’

This morning did get off to a better start – I was up earlier and had some “quiet time” – I finally got at least some of the stuff I wanted for the Katrina presentation and made good progress on that. Linda was feeling much better and we spent sometime planning our day and doing our daily Bible reading .

My friend Russ Ward had called last night wanting to know I he could use my truck to pickup some building materials. He came by around 9:30, we had coffee and talked for a while then made the run to Home depot to get his stuff. It was great to spend some time with him catching up on the things that are going on in his life.
Friday’s are the day that Linda & I call “our day” – we avoid making (many) outside commitments and we look for things to dotogether—today we are going to the church building to do some work on her classroom – removing snowflakes and replacing them with butterflies—and working out more details on our project to paint classrooms before the VBS in June.

Hope you have a great Friday and weekend
God Bless
Charlie & Linda