How did you do?

The point is, none of us remember the headliners of yesterday. They are not second-rate achievers. They are the best in their fields.. But the a pplause dies. Awards tarnish. Achievements are forgotten. Accolades and certificates are buried with their owners.

Here’s another quiz. See how you do on this one:
1. List a few teachers who aided your journey through school.
2. Name three friends who have helped you through a difficult time.
3. Name five people who have taught you something worthwhile.
4. Think of a few people who have made you feel appreciated and special.
5. Think of five people you enjoy spending time with.

Easier?
I love this

The lesson: The people who make a difference in your life are NOT the ones with the most credentials, the most money, or the most awards. They are the ones who care.

Share this with those who have made a difference in your life.

“Don’t worry about the world coming to an end today.
It’s already tomorrow in Australia .”
(Charles Schultz)

A San Carlos, California, man sued the Escondido Public Library for $1.5 million. His dog, a 50-pound Labrador mix, was attacked November 2000 by the library’s 12-pound feline mascot, L.C., (also known as Library Cat). The case was heard in January 2004, with the jury finding for the defendant. In a further case which was resolved in July 2004, the plaintiff in the previous suit was ordered to pay the city $29,362.50, which amounted to 75% of its legal fees associated with that case.

In 1994, a student at the University of Idaho unsuccessfully sued that institution over his fall from a third-floor dorm window. He’d been mooning other students when the window gave way. It was contended the University failed to provide a safe environment for students or to properly warn them of the dangers inherent to upperstory windows.

In 1993, McDonald’s was unsuccessfully sued over a car accident in New Jersey. While driving, a man who had placed a milkshake between his legs, leaned over to reach into his bag of food and squeezed the milkshake container in the process. When the lid popped off and spilled half the drink in his lap, this driver became distracted and ran into another man’s car. That man in turn tried to sue McDonald’s for causing the accident, saying the restaurant should have cautioned the man who had hit him against eating while driving.

Here are the Stella’s for the past year:

7 TH PLACE:    Kathleen Robertson of Austin, Texas was awarded $80,000 by a jury of her peers after breaking her ankle tripping over a toddler who was running inside a furniture store. The store owners were understandably surprised by the verdict, considering the running toddler was her own son.

6 TH PLACE:    Carl Truman, 19, of Los Angeles, California won $74,000 plus medical expenses when his neighbor ran over his hand with a Honda Accord. Truman apparently didn’t notice there was someone at the wheel of the car when he was trying to steal his neighbor’s hubcaps.

Go ahead, grab your head scratcher.

5TH PLACE:    Terrence Dickson, of Bristol, Pennsylvania, was leaving a house he had just burglarized by way of the garage. Unfortunately for Dickson, the automatic garage door opener malfunctioned and he could not get the garage door to open. Worse, he couldn’t re-enter the house because the door connecting the garage to the house locked when Dickson pulled it shut. Forced to sit for eight, count ‘em, EIGHT, days on a case of Pepsi and a large bag of dry dog food, he sued the homeowner’s insurance company claiming undue mental Anguish.

Amazingly, the jury said the insurance company must pay Dickson $500,000 for his anguish. We should all have this kind of anguish.

Keep scratching. There are more…

4 TH PLACE:    Jerry Williams, of Little Rock, Arkansas, garnered 4th Place in the Stella’s when he was awarded $14,500 plus medical expenses after being bitten on the butt by his next door neighbor’s beagle – even though the beagle was on a chain in its owner’s fenced yard.

Williams did not get as much as he asked for because the jury believed the beagle might have been provoked at the time of the butt bite because Williams had climbed over the fence into the yard and repeatedly shot the dog with a pellet gun.

Grrrrr .. Scratch, scratch.

3RD PLACE:   Third place goes to Amber Carson of Lancaster, Pennsylvania because a jury ordered a Philadelphia restaurant to pay her $113,500 after she slipped on a spilled soft drink and broke her tailbone. The reason the soft drink was on the floor: Ms. Carson had thrown it at her boyfriend 30 seconds earlier during an argument. What ever happened to people being responsible for their own actions?

Scratch, scratch, scratch. Hang in there; there are only two more Stellas to go…

2ND PLACE:    Kara Walton, of Claymont, Delaware sued the owner of a night club in a nearby city because she fell from the bathroom window to the floor, knocking out her two front teeth. Even though Ms. Walton was trying to sneak through the ladies room window to avoid paying the $3.50 cover charge, the jury said the night club had to pay her $12,000….oh yeah, plus dental expenses. Go figure.

1ST PLACE: (May I have a fanfare played on 50 kazoos please)

This year’s runaway First Place Stella Award winner was Mrs.. Merv Grazinski, of Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, who purchased a new 32-foot Winnebago motor home. On her first trip home from an OU football game, having driven onto the freeway, she set the cruise control at 70 mph and calmly left the driver’s seat to go to the back of the Winnebago to make herself a sandwich. Not surprisingly, the motor home left the freeway, crashed and overturned. Also not surprisingly, Mrs. Grazinski sued Winnebago for not putting in the owner’s manual that she couldn’t actually leave the driver’s seat while the cruise control was set. The Oklahoma jury awarded her, are you sitting down, $1,750,000 PLUS a new motor home. Winnebago actually changed their manuals as a result of this suit, just in case Mrs. Grazinski has any relatives who might also buy a motor home.

Well we had our first major decision to make together; do we fix or replace her car? In the end we decided to replace it. One of her close friends recommend a used car dealer which was going to be our first stop in shopping for a new car. Well it ended up being our only stop. They had a 1992 Pontiac Bonnerville in mint condition. Granted it still had about 100,000 miles on it, but if you do the math that’s less than 7,000 a year. On top of that it appeared to have been garage kept. The price was a bit more that I wanted to spend, but with her trade in, it was a bit more palatable and far, far better than anything else in that price range.

I can tell you I feel soooo much better knowing that she is a much more reliable car. and I love her nick name for the car, “The Love Boat”!

Preparing for Marriage

1. Preparing for Marriage – The Journey Begins
2. Preparing for Marriage – Great Expectations
3. Preparing for Marriage – Purpose
4. Preparing for Marriage – Roles

As you know I have been working thru the book “Preparing for Marriage”, well this past weekend my fiancé finished it up. There really were no surprises for the both of us except, for me, that having children is actually a commandment/purpose for marriage.

There was one chapter in the book outlining core roles for the husband and wife as defined by God and I though I’d share. They broke out by the core role of the husband and the wife’s response to his role and the core role a wife and the husband’s response to her role. The key verses for the husband’s core role are:

For the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church, his body, of which he is the Savior. Ephesians 5:23

Now I praise you because you remember me in everything and hold firmly to the traditions, just as I delivered them to you. But I want you to understand that Christ is the head of every man, and the man is the head of a woman, and God is the head of Christ. 1 Corinthians 11:2-3

The point they make with these verses are that a husband’s core role should model that of Jesus; a servant leader assuming responsibility for the overall direction of his family and to serve the needs of his wife and family. He is also to maximize his wife’s gift and abilities. The wife core response should be submission as outlined in the following.

Wives, be subject to your own husbands, as to the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife, as Christ also is the head of the church, He Himself being the Savior of the body. But as the church is subject to Christ, so also the wives ought to be to their husbands in everything. Ephesians 5:22-24

Now the wife’s core role as defined by the following verses.

Then the LORD God said, “It is not good for the man to be alone; I will make him a helper suitable for him.” Genesis 2:18

Older women likewise are to be reverent in their behavior, not malicious gossips nor enslaved to much wine, teaching what is good, so that they may encourage the young women to love their husbands, to love their children, to be sensible, pure, workers at home, kind, being subject to their own husbands, so that the word of God will not be dishonored. Titus 2:3-5

This can be boiled down as the wife’s role is to be a helper-homemaker and to submit to her husband. And the important thing I take from this is God is also our helper. God is not less by being our helper so wives are not less by being her husband’s helper.

The husband response to his wife’s role should be to honor and praise her as outlined in the following verses.

Her children rise up and bless her; Her husband also, and he praises her, saying: “Many daughters have done nobly, But you excel them all.” Proverbs 31:28-29

You husbands in the same way, live with your wives in an understanding way, as with someone weaker, since she is a woman; and show her honor as a fellow heir of the grace of life, so that your prayers will not be hindered. 1 Peter 3:7

In today’s culture that can sound very scary, sexist or any other negative you can think of., but the way it all washes out is husbands are to serve and submit to his wife; just as their wives are to serve and submit to her husband.

Click here to view the embedded video.

The back-story…
On my way home from her place one evening we were talking about rings and she commented, “I would be happy with a ring from a Cracker Jack box if it meant that you loved me and wanted to marry me.”

The ring…
I’m unashamed to say, yes, I did buy the ring from and online jeweler thru eBay. The size and quality of her diamond ring far exceeded what I would have been able to afford had I went to a retail jewelry store. As a kind of cool side fact, the ring was from Israel.

The surprise…
OK, it really wasn’t much of a surprise that I was going to ask her, after all we did go look at rings together and I also had asked her for her father’s number. Yes, I even asked her father for his blessing. So if it wasn’t going to be a surprise that I was going to ask, that just left me with “when” and “how” and even “when” wasn’t going to be all that of a surprise. I tried to come up with something clever for “how”. Remember that statement about Cracker Jacks?

The plan [A]…
The night before (that would be Friday November 16th for those keeping track) I was planning to ask her I went to the store and bought some Cracker Jacks. I quite skillfully opened up the bottom of the box, dumped out the Cracker Jacks so I could find the prize — I guess this would be a good time to mention that the ring hadn’t actually arrived yet! It only had shipped from Israel on Tuesday November 13th.

The plan [B]…
I ran to Clair’s at Park City and bought one of their fake engagement style rings for six bucks. — So I attached the fake ring to the prize with a twisty and put this little note on the back, “I love you. IOU a ring.” Then I put the prize with the ring attached back into the box with the Cracker Jacks making sure the prize and ring were at the top. I then, very carefully, re-sealed the box. Unless you looked very closely one would not have been able to tell that someone tampered with the box. Think about that the next time you buy something at the grocery store! I managed to get all this done only moments before she arrived at my place for dinner and a couple movies.

The next morning (that would be the 17th) I checked the tracking status of my package. Guess what? It said it was in Lancaster. But would I get it in time? The mail usually arrives about 12:30–1pm, so I made sure I was home. Every car that passed my heart raced only to be disappointed when it wasn’t the mail person. Finally she arrived and she had a package. Was it my package? At first I couldn’t tell. She kept picking it up, only to set it back down again. Excitement and disappointment ensure each time. Finally, she got out of the car and with the package! It actually had made it from Israel in only a little over 3 days! I quickly sign the package confirmation slip, ran to the garage with a couple friends and tore open the package, tearing the paper work in the process. And there it was, everything I imagined to be!

The plan [C]…
Since I had already rigged the Cracker Jack box with a fake ring and not having time to rig one with the new ring, I needed a new plan…

While she was in another room I put the ring under the sofa, still in its box, and thru the Cracker Jack box where she was going to sit. When she came from the other room, she picked up the Cracker Jack box and set it down on the coffee table before sitting down. And there it sat, but only for a few moments, though still long enough for me to wonder if she was actually going to open it! She reached out, picked the box up, opened it, saw the prize, started to pull it out and then paused…

The look was priceless, or at least confusion. You see, earlier that day we went shopping for the items that I was going to need to make her dinner, a dinner I wasn’t actually going to make. Guess what was on the list? Yep you guessed right, Cracker Jacks, to cover up the fact that I had bought some the night prior.

…she pulled the prize and ring out of the box, removed the ring from the prize and put it on. While she was doing this, knelled down by her feet and asked her if she liked it, to which she said, “Yes.” I then said, “Well I don’t.” as I pulled the real ring from beneath the sofa and opened the box. “I like this one better.” I swapped the rings on her finger and asked her to marry me.

Oh, all this was happening while the previews were playing of the movie we were going to watch. After the movie I told her I have another surprise. I made reservations to take her out to dinner to the Catacombs. The whole shopping for dinner thing was just so I could buy the Cracker Jacks in front of her. Any way we went out to dinner. The food and wine was excellent.

Coffee anyone?…
After dinner we went to a coffee house that my church was hosting. For those that don’t know, that’s where we first met. That was one of the main reasons I chose the day I day did. Because of the coffee house, what better way to end the evening!

One last thing…
I have to mention, no sooner than we walked thru the door, Doug was up at the mic announcing our engagement!

Any way… I’m back, so keep glued for more frequent posting.

PS [to self] Yes I know no one actually ever reads this thing LOL…