A cute young woman rang our doorbell just as we’d got the kids into bed and eaten dinner. She looked familiar and I panicked thinking she might propose to me or something. 

She said, “My dad and I wanted to thank you for your help with Nelson last night. We were in our pyjamas when he got out and were so worried. I’m sorry he jumped on your kids. Thank you for helping us.” She handed me the flowers and a nicely wrapped giant bar of Toblerone chocolate.

You see Sunday night after we had church at our house, I heard Bill and his friend, “Monkey,” say as they were leaving, “Hey, is this your dog?” This cute little white clean dog went running around in our driveway. I greeted him and tried to encourage Noah to pet him. Noah usually loves dogs but he was freaking out for some reason. Ella, who is more likely to freak out, was standing on the boot of our car and so felt safe. 

I noticed the dog didn’t have a collar and suddenly thought as it seemed to be running somewhere, “I better pick the dog up and hold it.” I thought I might think of a good plan to help the owners find the dog by at least keeping it from running further away from home. That was when this young woman and her dad walked by and saw me holding him. 

I enjoyed having that experience with Ella and Noah. It jogged dog stories from my youth that I’ve already begun to tell Ella at bedtime. 

I was blown away by the generosity of the family that gave us flowers and wrapped chocolate! I feel like a piece of cynicism, sarcasm, and greed was chewed out of my life with each bite of chocolate.

I just took a cold shower. I think I’ve taken fewer than five warm showers this year. The rest have been all cold, using no hot water.

Why? Because I decided to try to take one cold shower every day for seven days. I wanted to observe the emotional reaction, the flinch, as I got into the shower. The challenge of starting something in the face of fear is harder than finishing this thing. I find this to be true of cold showers. I still find it feels cold every time I start one. 

But I’m almost addicted. I didn’t set out to take more than seven cold showers in seven days. But I just keep doing it most of the time. Even though it still makes me flinch every time at the start, I’m glad I did it every time.

I keep asking myself, What’s something that makes me flinch that is still worth doing? I’ve started coming up with things I really want to do, but that I’ve been afraid to start. Or because other fears kept me tied up from doing that thing.

Of course, it is summer time. We’ll see if I still like cold showers when the winter comes.

“A Footnote To All Prayers”

STOMP, ROARRRRRRRRR!!!!!!!!!

For X-mas I got a unique wallet, made of one sheet of newspaper. Mine is a page primarily showing a Volvo ad. Perhaps my friends know I used to drive a ‘77 Volvo nicknamed Chick Magnet.