Hawaii things ~

When I was a boy I lived in Hawaii for five years. From when I was
age 3 to 8 he was stationed at Hickam Air Force Base on Oahu in Hawaii
I have a lot of good memories from there! Memories of playing in the yard, going to school, watching Bozo the clown and Saturday morning cartoons that were fun and silly my brother was born in Hawaii and I remember helping him as he grew.

I remember as part of a school program I participated in King Kamehameha Day. I remember wearing a Hawaiian shirt and a lei and sitting on grass with a bunch of other students while hulu dances and other shows were happening.

I remember my aunt and uncle came to visit us while we were there. I don't remember a lot from their visit but I do remember that he enjoyed eating poi, the mashed taro root food the Hawaiians made. I remember my parents being so puzzled as to why anyone would like that tasteless food, but he loved it!

I remember I had one jacket and it was made of opaque vinyl with the Hawaiian flower the design underneath it so you can see it through the vinyl. When we left Hawaii and went to Texas the first weekend we were in Texas it snowed. I had to wear a Hawaiian jacket in the snow which was funny.

I remember when we left Hawaii I had a window seat on the airplane. I remember looking back as we took off and seeing all the lights on the islands in the night. They were beautiful! And even though I was leaving it was such a cool thing to be on an airplane and to see the lights from above that it helped me not be too sad. Plus I was only eight years old so I got over that pretty quick.

I remember going back to Hawaii as an adult. My wife and I took our rental car onto Hickam Air Force Base. I was able to find where I had lived. We drove up and down the street and finally parked and got out just to go and look at the duplex where I spent so much time. It was a cool feeling to see the tree that I probably played in and the palm tree in the front that I had sprayed water on wasps and played with my army men in front of. It was nice to be able to show my sons where I had grown up, something I couldn't do without a long flight.

Whenever I hear old-time radio shows that use a Hawaiian theme or weave something from Hawaii into them I enjoy them. I also enjoy shows based in Hawaii - we watched all of the latest Hawaii 5-0 series with the new young actors that came out back in the 2000's.

A lot of good memories about Hawaii!

Holocaust museum thoughts ~

It is fascinating to have gone through the Holocaust Museum in Israel. Such sadness.

One of the interesting reactions I had was the question of being part of a "people". So many Israelis feel like they're part of something bigger than themselves. Something bigger than even their family. And so the biases and concerns of people foreign to them become their own in some way.

I have none of that genetically. I have some of that as part of my belief system as a Christian. I have a lot of that as a citizen of the United States of America. But having been raised in freedom and encouraged to pursue my own place that's what I've done.

And that's okay. To me that's a hindrance not a limitation. I remember a Jewish friend at work that filed an EEO complaint about Christmas lights because he felt like Hanukah was getting unequal treatment and as a Jew he was offended. To satisfy his complaint and repair the situation he was encouraged to put up a Star of David. And he did.

The Holocaust Museum in Israel is a sad memorial to a very sad time in the history of our planet. I moved very quickly through it and I will remember just like I remembered these events before I went there. What sadness. And what hope that it will never happen again.

Potato salad ~

When I was growing up potato salad was a treat saved for special events. Holidays during summer, dinners that Grandma and Grandpa's house, or other things like that. We very seldom had potato salad outside of the special event.

My wife has continued that trend. I get potato salad once every couple of years. Usually in response to something going on. Recently there is a death in our church and my wife was making potato salad for dinner for the family. And I got to have some potato salad before it was all taken away.

I love potato salad! The German potato salad that's warm is not my favorite, but the blend of potatoes with eggs and egg yolks and celery and spices and other things well refrigerated tastes great to me!

I enjoyed the potato salad that my wife made recently. She is an excellent chef and does great things in the kitchen. She makes amazing potato salad! And I enjoyed it.

I don't need to eat a lot of potato salad because of the carbs. But when I do get it I enjoy it.

I love potato salad!

Anniversaries and awards ~

As a manager responsible for some of the people where I work I have the honor of giving awards to my people. That's the fun part of being a manager. Where the other part about chewing people out and giving direction and expectations and all that stuff isn't quite so much fun, giving the awards is awesome!

One of the main awards that we give where I work is a work anniversary. Not annually but every five years we give a certificate and a pin. So when somebody reaches five years of service eventually HR sends us a certificate and a pin and whoever is that person's immediate supervisor gets to present it to them. Over the years I have presented many different pens. Recently I was honored to have an employee who reached 40 years of service at our agency, which was amazing! I had the facility manager present that to him and he felt very good about receiving it. Didn't matter that it was almost a year late, which is normal and actually pretty quick for our HR department, but we still got it to him.

What's funny is over the years I've noticed differences between the generations and their attitudes about awards.

The generation before mine was all about the gold watch and the plaque when they retired. The expectation was for some sort of covered dish dinner or dessert celebration and they would finally bring their family and see where they spent all this time doing shift work in the middle of the night and early hours of the day. But that desire for the attention and celebration of reaching the point of retirement was huge for them, especially the managers. The worker people still wanted something but it wasn't quite as big as what the managers wanted and expected. And tended to set up for themselves.

My generation is different. Most of my people that have retired or received awards that are part of my generation didn't want a big deal made of it. They don't want any attention, they don't want to be seen or noticed, and at retirement they just want to fade off after their last shift and be left alone. They tend answer phone calls for a month or so but after that they don't return phone calls. My guy that just got his 40 year certificate is one of those where he is preparing to retire in a couple months. He is adamant that he does not want any kind of party or celebration for him. I'm planning on sending him something in the mail so that he can't turn it down but other than that we're not planning anything.

I have to admit I tend to be that way also. I don't really want to make a big deal about myself, I don't want people to know that I've crossed some sort of line so that they don't make fun of me or something. It's already bad enough being left out and treated like the old guy, which is on the verge of making me want to file something. I just don't really want to be noticed. And I just want when I do choose to leave my agency to fade off into the distance.

The generation after my generation is different. They're all about getting the award certificate and the pin. It reminds me of everybody getting a participation trophy when they were younger. These people are all about the getting of the award but they don't make a big deal about it. They just want to receive it because it means something to them. It's good to see, but it's also different and weird in its own way.

I'm hoping that I can stay long enough to see what the generation after them does but that's hard to tell. I'm close to retirement and my wife keeps saying I'm too young to not work anymore. I explained to her that it's not that I won't work, I just won't have a boss anymore. I'll get paid to not work!

I look forward to that award...

Christian prayer struggles ~

Struggles with prayer new pair a Christian. As a Christian I pray to an unseen God. The creator of the universe hears my prayers and responds in different ways. Either I get more peaceful about something because I know that I lifted it up, or I have seen things happen in people and things around me that could only have been done by my God.

An example that I point to in my life happened when I was going to college. My dad had arranged for me to be able to live in a one bedroom house on my grandparents property. This is so that I could be out of their house since I have lived in an apartment already and they had moved my brother into the bedroom and there really wasn't another bedroom for me to stay in. But it also gave me the freedom to live without interrupting everything going on at my parents house. My grandmother was very uptight because the little house had not been lived in for quite some time and things had been overgrown behind it. There was a shed in the corner of the property behind the little house and plants and stuff had grown up around that shed to the point to where you couldn't see the leak on the property. My grandmother really wanted me to be able to see the leak. She would say that repeatedly whenever I would visit with her and grandpa. And she would tell mother that we really need to make it so David can see the lake.

I prayed about. I asked God to make it so that I can see the lake. And I felt peace about giving that over to him waiting instead of going out and starting the tear stuff down and spending days clearing years of overgrowth.

A storm came through and my grandparents said that they heard something that sounded an awful lot like a tornado in the thunderstorm. But they wouldn't very much damage anywhere. And they said that the little house was fine but the shed was gone. The shed that was blocking my view of the lake was gone! I considered it an answer to my prayer.

Now when I pray I talk to God about things and try to listen. I have a folder on my cloud platform for storage where I keep text files, each one a prayer request for a person, couple, or group. And in that text file I have the details of what I'm praying for and record any answers that seem to happen. It works well for me, because I recorded several answers to prayer.

But lately I've been struggling with a couple of things surrounding prayer. I started meditating a couple of years ago. I resisted meditation because it seems so new age and uncompatible with Christian life. But as I've gotten into it and read more about it I am thinking more and more of meditation as a time to listen to God. I quiet my mind, I focus on my breathing, and I listen. I don't always get much but at least I'm taking 10 minutes a day and making myself available to hear. Do I expect God to speak to me in an all audible voice? No. But impressions and thoughts are always nice.

Of course that makes me wonder if I'm the one generating the thought or if it's actually something that's coming from God. Always a question, not really any answer about that. That's where I have to lean on faith.

Another struggle that I'm having is ending every prayer with the words "in Jesus name". When I read the Bible I read that Jesus is told his disciples that whatever you ask for in my name will be done. A lot of people take that to mean that he's like a genie and if you read your Bible enough and you say the prayer in Jesus name enough that it will happen. I tend not to think that because I know that people have free will and it's hard to know who will do what and why they will do it and whether God can overcome that or what or if he even should,. There's a lot of times when people make choices that are pretty much final and they know overcoming it and the repercussions will splash all over everybody around that person. Sad but true.

But neither do I like the having to say those three words at the end of every prayer to make it a "real" prayer. I tend to pray in a conversational way and I don't want to tell God what he is going to do, remind him you know you did this and you did that and you said this and so you have to do what I'm asking you to do right now. I just never think of it that way. I hear a lot of people pray that way and they raise their voices and they repeat it over and over and quote Scripture in tie things into a nice neat bow so that God can't make any choices except do exactly what they said to do. Those people tend to be the most frustrated and the most disappointed that I know because it doesn't happen their way.

And so that's where I struggle. Praying and developing that relationship with an unseen God and hope and have faith and then live my life knowing that I may never see what I asked for and it may never happen in my lifetime if it's not God's will is not going to happen it's all very strange!

So I struggle with prayer. I pray. And then I go about my life. Fun!