A Whole Lot Brighter

Ever had a bad day? I sure did this past week and although I’m not normally one to complain, some days almost nothing goes right!

My wife asked me if there was a way to raise the folding table in the garage where she packs suitcases for her charity for Foster Kids. Bending over a low table was hurting her back, so I bought some fancy wood pieces that I thought would work, but they were difficult to drill, and my hand kept slipping, so after two attempts I gave up.

Next, I decided to switch gears and change out an old ivory outlet in the living room. I wanted to replace it with a new fancy white Decora outlet. Normally it’s a quick 10-minute job, but while installing it, my hand slipped again, and I got a pretty serious jolt of 120 volts. If that wasn’t bad enough, after finishing up I noticed that several outlets in our kitchen were no longer working. So I had to go check the breakers and reset the GFI to get things working again.

Finally, I had been putting off installing a new overhead light in our dark garage because I didn’t have some of the parts I needed. So I put $150 worth of gas in my truck (sheesh… that certainly didn’t cheer me up any), made the trip to Home Depot, and got the electrical parts and a motion sensor that I needed to complete the installation. It wasn’t easy and it took me a lot longer than I expected. Plus it was a really hot day, so I was sweating up a storm. As I stood on a ladder attempting to screw the assembled unit into the ceiling, my hand slipped yet again, and the whole friggin’ thing fell to the floor and disintegrated.

Lastly, I figured nothing else could possibly go wrong. But sure enough, after putting my tools away, and watching darkness descend over our neighborhood,  my sweaty hands slipped once again, and I dropped my brand-new cell phone on the hard concrete driveway. I was sure it was broken beyond repair, but I was surprised to see it was still intact. And as I surveyed it for damage, I noticed my daughter had just texted me some new photos of my one-year-old granddaughter, Blakely Rae. Looking at her picture, I realized two things. 1) Babies are God’s best invention and 2) When I hold that precious child in my hands, my hands never slip, and the world just seems to get a whole lot brighter!

Life is a flame that is always burning itself out; 

but it catches fire again every time a child is born.

~ Bernard Shaw