Christian walk

Vision and Mission

/ Gary Tucker / Leave a comment

We arrived in Missouri to work at Whetstone Therapeutic School and Ranch in late March of this year. During this time I find myself thinking about vision and mission statements more than ever. What are they and do they ever get changed or revised. Which one is easier to fulfill? Do individuals, couples or families need one or both? Are they a chain of bondage or a road map for life’s journey?

We had a vision for our boys for the kind of men we dreamed they would be when each reached adulthood. The vision drove the mission to raise them. Most times they challenged the mission and we made some adjustments but only within what we believed the vision would allow. We also had times of celebration and vision casting at certain times in their growing up years. It wasn’t always easy but now they’re all adults and living lives of service to their respective communities (and are out of our house).

So, what does this have to do with our present situation? In 2008, Brandon Maxwell and Jeremy Thompson (Whetstone founders) were fundraising at our church and mentioned this role of grandparents. There was not a space for it to be checked on the postcard so Kristin wrote it in. The journey of vision was cast that night that sometime in the future we would move to wherever Whetstone was, we would move there and serve for two years in the role for grandparent. This was before Whetstone was a reality and just a vision for them. So here we are living in Missouri and finding that the God’s vision for us was much larger than ours. And his vision and calling would stretch us far beyond what we thought we had the strength for.

How do we craft a mission statement for a God sized vision and still fulfill the existing mission statement of the ranch . For me it’s one small statement at a time instead of one big all encompassing one. We are here to work for and to help Whetstone. That includes the residents and their families, the facility, the staff and their children, the board, the program, fundraising and local churches/community members that help support the Ranch.

The focus of this post is the fundraising portion. As I have said in earlier posts, I love to ride my bike and want to use this passion to raise money for Whetstone. Last month I was privileged to be back in Colorado for the Stonewall Century in La Veta and the money raised was designated to help pay for a new air conditioner. This month I will be riding in St Charles Missouri and next month I will be riding in Springfield. The plan is to ride either a metric century (62.2 miles) or a full century (100) every month that we are here. The goal is to reach $4000 for the Ranch to fund some specific areas.

Wood shop $1500 (additional tools and supplies)

Office remodel for new therapist $2000

Air conditioner $500

I am asking you to join me as I ride for Whetstone and give for any of these areas. You can visit the website: https://secure.qgiv.com/event/garcenrid/

Thanks for perusing,

 

Gary

Reflections

/ Gary Tucker / Leave a comment

Today, the last day of the year, a good portion of the population will take stock of what has happened during the year and reflect on it. While this reflecting is happening, deep down in the subconscious another thing is taking place. The New Year’s Resolution list is forming and coming into the conscious mind. I think we all do it to some degree. It seems to be part of our nature. So I say “enjoy it” for what it is. Resolutions rarely get done and most are forgotten by the end of January. But reflections are different. Think about what I/we may have done this last year. Or how have I/we grown in our relationships? Who did I/we get to meet this last year and how has that impacted their life or how they impacted ours? Relationships are the stuff of life and we get to choose each day how we will interact with those around us. Are we a blessing to the people we meet? Let’s reflect on those things as we move into 2015.

 In regards to my current project for my in-laws, I was finally able to log some time on it this week. The work thing keeps getting in the way but I will post again about it soon.

On another note, thank you to all who have read my blog this year.

Thanks for perusing,

Gary

Memory Minders

/ Gary Tucker / 1 Comment

We were blessed this Christmas Day with 8″ of snow on the back patio. It reminded me of the scripture that says that “we will be washed whiter than snow” by the blood of Christ. We had a great day making memories and I pray that you did as well.

While I enjoy Christmas, Thanksgiving and a few other holidays, I truly look forward to the Winter Solstice and the lengthening of the daylight hours. Again, another reminder of the grace of God who created the universe.

But this post is not about holidays. Three months ago Kristin and I were wearing shorts, t-shirts, and hiking boots as we were in Maine celebrating our 30th wedding anniversary. We were staying in Greenville and found the Moose Mountain Trail. It was one the those trails that went straight up the mountain and was made out of granite steps and tree roots. Going up was a challenge due to the steepness of the trail but descending seemed worse because of the pounding that our legs were taking from the granite steps. And there was the tree roots that tried to trip us with each step. There was one part of the trail that did not have any steps but did have an abundance of tree roots. One of these reached up tripped KT and she came down hard on a small stump that was only about an inch in diameter and eight inches high. She left  a piece of skin about four inches long and half an inch wide on the stump. I left it there as well. It look like an accordion bellow all scrunched up and I knew it would not go back where it came from. It’s probably still there. Anyway we patched up her leg and hiked the remaining two hours back to the car. Her leg did the usual swelling and throbbing but she would not quit. We still hiked almost every day of our trip and even scored some “over-achiever” points on her Fitbit.

We did finally see a doctor a few weeks after we got back and he said it was healing fine.  KT even talked about getting a tattoo to cover it. Now it has been three months since that day and she has this reminder of our 30th anniversary.009I can only imagine the stories she will share with our grandchildren sometime in the future.

Write back and share some of your memories and the reminders.

Thanks for perusing,

Gary

Where’s the Rants?

/ Gary Tucker / 1 Comment

You may have noticed the name of this blog is” Old Man Rants ‘n Rambles” and you may be wondering why I have not posted any rants. The answer is that while I have not posted any I have written five or six of them. But let’s back up a bit and discuss the reason for having what I call a “Rant Space”. My poor family has endured my many rants through the years and just sort of rolled their eyes or brought them up later just to have a fun laugh at dad. Now that I have my “Rant Space”, I can rant to my heart’s content and no one knows it. To my way of thinking, a rant is a great way of releasing toxic, bile infested junk that finds its way into my thought process. It’s a lot like experiencing a hard day at work and then coming home mad at the world. Unless I have a way to release it like a “serious” run or a hard hill climb on my bike, the dog will get kicked or I will yell at the wrong person at the wrong time. Think George Bailey in “It’s a Wonderful Life”. So when when the bad toxic junk creeps into my mind I simply write a rant. I will usually let it sit for a few days and then trash it. I’ve learned that President Lincoln would do the same thing for his generals. Write them a nasty letter, telling them to get on with it or whatever he would say and then he would burn the letter.

But, “aren’t you a Christian?”, some one might say. As if being a Christian saves one from having bad days or thoughts. I just say, yes I am and Jesus still loves me. I was reading from Galatians 5:19,20 this morning and it says that the “works of the flesh are obvious” and it lists real some nasty ones. Then in verse 20 it lists ” hatred, discord, jealousy,fits of rage, selfish ambition, dissensions, factions”. Those sound like the seeds of rants to me and I don’t want that for this blog. Then in verse 22 it says “But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. Against such things there is no law”. That seems to be a better way to live, to walk and to write. I want this space to honor God and rants cannot do that. Besides, it would only give my boys more ammunition to laugh at me even in a loving way.

Thanks for perusing,

Gary

Process

/ Gary Tucker / Leave a comment

This is he day that the Lord has made; Let us rejoice and be glad in it.

Psalm 118:24

 

We are born and eventually we die. The stuff in between is where and how we live. The time that we have and what to do with it is ours to use how we seem best. Some people are type “A” people who always seem to be in perpetual motion and cannot sit still. The goal (whatever it may be) is always in front of them. Do not get in their way. They cannot help themselves. That is how God wired them and they are of great benefit to the world. There are also people who do not have any focus and cannot spell it. They have a “when the Spirit moves me then I’ll act” mentality. Or we might say that they dance to different drummer. They also drive the type “A” people crazy, especially as employees. Then there are people like me who are what I would call process driven. When I am getting ready to, let’s say build something, I envision it in my head, draw it up and then build it. I enjoy every bit of the process. If I have to stop to sharpen a chisel or a saw, I enjoy that as well. To me, it is all part of the process of living, enjoying the journey all along the way or finishing the product that I may be building.

I cannot imagine hurrying through something just to mark it off my list. I know folks who have long bucket lists. They want to “get er dun” so that they can move on to the next thing. That may be their definition of living life on purpose but not mine. In my mind that never allows a person to master anything except marking off items. I would rather experience a few things in life and enjoy every part of it. One of the things that I am enjoying right now is the planning of our trip to Maine next month. KT (Kristin) and I went out and bought a travel book and have been pouring over it. We found out the best flight for our schedule. We’re researching the different parts of the state and what each has to offer. We are having fun doing the process.

I believe that when we slow down and enjoy the process, it makes the end be even more enjoyable. Just like building something, I enjoy planning it, building it and using it.

Thanks for perusing,

Gary

Enel’s Salad Hands

/ Gary Tucker / Leave a comment

This is a story of beginnings. Both for my family and a young foreign student named Enel. As many of you know, we are the parents of three boys and outside of Kristin, we have never had the experience of a female staying in our home for a long period of time. Enel is the oldest of four daughters and grew up in a small village in Estonia. She came to live with us last August for her last year of college. How she came to live in our home is a subject for another story. She came to us sort of shy, very quiet and with her boyfriend, Sean (but he did not live with us). He did show up at the house a lot and sometimes late at night. Watching the interaction between the two, I could tell that she did not have much experience with boys. Fortunately for Enel, my youngest son Dylan and I had plenty of experience with boys. We showed her how a young man should treat a lady. We gave her lots of privacy, but also how to stand up for herself. We even made sure that when Sean would come to pick her up he always came to the door. I don’t think that we ever left the toilet seat up, at least not on purpose.  I think she learned her lessons well.

It was a fun eleven months watching Enel grow into poised young woman even though she ate some odd things like salads and some kind of smelly fish. She would haul her food up the stairs and lay it all out on the counter and begin to assemble her meals. She loved her salads and would even put salad stuff into the blender for her morning smoothie. And during this time, we watched as Sean and Enel grew in their relationship and got engaged. So now Enel has graduated from college and has thrown herself into full blown wedding mode. There are wedding things (glue guns, craft things, spray paint, table center pieces) everywhere. If it could be associated with the wedding it was in our house. Pressures were mounting, patience was being tested and Enel had to use all that Dylan and I taught her during the last few weeks. It was truly a sight to behold.

Now we come to the next beginning. Sean and Enel had a cool website for their wedding where we found the gift registry pages. As we were looking over the items I saw that they had picked out “salad hands”. The picture was rather small, so we decided to go to the store and look at them. Here is the picture that I took while in the store. A pair of bamboo, machine cut, boring looking hands. There were six pairs on the rack and everyone of them looked the same. I knew that they would work fine, but not for Enel. This was a girl who packed up, left her family, came to America and ate so much salad that she would wear out a pair of these hands in no time. I could not buy them for Sean and Enel.

IMAG0026

These kids needed something just for them.  So I told Kristin that I would make them a pair.

Custom Salad Hands            image

So I did and I’m actually using them as a launching pad for another section of this blog  called “Stuff I build”. Over the next couple of days my middle son, Collin, will be taking pictures of items that I have built over the years and posting them to the site. These are all hand tooled using re-purposed wood. These hands are made from pecan cut out of a headboard  given to me a few years ago. The black wood is Ebony and the white letters are Holly  inlaid into the Ebony. Sean and Enel are currently on their honeymoon and do not have a clue about any of this, but I do hope that they will get many years of salads out of these hands.

Thanks for perusing,

Gary

God’s precious gifts.

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I had a dream the other night that actually woke me up. I had dreamed that I did wake up but had lost all six of my senses. You may be saying “Gary, you only have five senses: hearing, touch, taste, sight, and smell”. You are right but I believe that common sense is just as important as the other five. More on that later.

Can you imagine the impact on my life if the dream were true? I would not be able to taste or smell my coffee or even know if it were hot. I’m not even sure if I could find my cup or would know when it was against my lips. In my life, this would a bad thing.

Now, think about a young mother with a newborn baby and the ramifications of not having her senses as she tries to nurture her child. How lost would she be in a world like that?

But now consider, without our senses, we would not smell the “aroma of Christ”  in our fellow Christians (2 Corinthians 2:15). We could not touch the hands of Christ as he wants us to (Luke 24:39). We could not “hear what God says” (John 8:47). We could not “taste and see that the Lord is good” (Psalms 34:8). And in Proverbs 3:21-26, Solomon encourages us not to ” lose sight of common sense and discernment”. I’ll address that sense in a later post.

God has given us these precious gifts to use for him and others. Yet too many times we complain about a variety of things that have no bearing on life here and eternity later but are just baggage that we carry through life.  I would say that we should be grateful that we can worship him with ALL the gifts he has given to us.

Just my rambles,

Gary