Good, quick, or cheap

     Which would you choose? It is a simple fact of life that you can only choose from two of those three options in any given circumstance of life. This can be good and cheap, but then they won't come in a hurry. They may be quick and cheap, but then you will sacrifice quality on the altar of speed. They can be good and quick, but price will certainly be at a premium in that case.
     Then there are different types of people. There are the perfectionists, who will never cut corners when quality is concerned. There are those who don't like to put in more work and effort than necessary. To them, quick is always a priority. There are others, who will put in any effort to save money, often sacrificing a lot of time, and losing quality in the process. Which type are you?
I've been discovering that quality is very important to me. I don't care if a job takes a little longer, as long as I know it is well done. I will usually never buy the cheapest product on the market, because I've discovered that it usually isn't worth the savings to have it break or wear out so much more quickly. I do a job properly, so I know I won't have to come back shortly and fix it or do it all over again. It's just who I am. I used to get frustrated with my dad for being a perfectionist, only to discover I am one myself.
     So, which do you choose? Think about it. You can only choose two. If you think you are getting all three you are being conned.

A very special hectic week

Last week seemed like a very long week! But a week filled with blessings just the same...

On Sabbath evening we had made the decision to travel to Sydney the next morning, to pick up the dining table we had bought three months before, and which one of Cherith's very obliging relatives was keeping for us till we could make the trip. But the real reason we were making this last minute trip was because Cherith's uncle was moving house, and offered us the piano that was in the house he was vacating, as he couldn't take it with him.

That piano caused us a little bit of agonizing, as we tried to decide if it would be worthwhile. Cherith loves to play piano, and is fairly accomplished, so it was obviously a fair inducement for us. The piano in question however, was approximately 110 years old. I had to wonder if it was in good condition/playable, and whether it would survive the rigors of a 500km trip without serious damage. Then again, pianos, especially very old ones, tend to be back-breakingly heavy (anything up to 450kgs for an upright piano like this one), and the question of how we would get it unloaded at our end was a bother too. With all this in mind, and after Cherith's brother, who had seen the piano, said it looked in fantastic condition, we decided to travel down on Sunday.

So on Sunday morning, we went to Cherith's parent's house to borrow a trailer, helped get the trailer shipshape, (which included rewiring the trailer's lights, and welding one of the support braces underneath), and just after midday we were on our way to Sydney.

On the way down, we were still trying to organize one or two people to help us load the piano onto the trailer, with very little success. We finally arranged to stay overnight in Sydney, at the same household that had sheltered our dining table for the last few months, and as it was 7:30 by the time we arrived there, didn't stay up long before going to bed...

110 years old. Sounds beautiful.

The next morning we loaded the table into the trailer, and the 6 chairs that go with it into the car, and set of to meet up with Cherith's uncle to see what could be done about the piano. We met him, took one look at the piano, and fell in love :D... It is a beautiful piano, which in spite of it's age is well preserved, and plays quite well. It didn't take us long to realize that we were NOT going to get this piano into the trailer with just two of us to do it. He left to pick up a friend of his, who in miraculous coincidence happened to be in the neighborhood waiting for his car to be serviced and had nothing to do in the meantime. With his help, and a lot of groans and strains, we managed to slide it onto the trailer, and then had to work out a way to put the table into the same trailer. Not the easiest feat, as the table is a 1.8 x 1 metre solid timber extendable table. In the end we had to stand the table upright to fit it in, strapped everything down, and started the trip back.

In Cooranbong we stopped in to show Cherith's grandma the piano (she had been very keen for us to be able to pick it up). It was after 3PM by the time we left Cooranbong, and the trip home, which usually takes about 6 hours, and with a heavily loaded trailer on would take even longer, began.

I had been planning to go back to work the next day, but wasn't sure that would eventuate now, considering how late we would be getting home. In the end run it was about 10:30PM when we arrived at home, tired, having done 18+ hours of driving in the last 32 hours.

The next morning we tried to see if we could get Cherith's father to come over and help unload the piano, and the neighbor also agreed to help. A lot of push and shove ensued, before we realized that one door was slightly (about 8mm) too small...The neighbor had some tools handy, and quickly modified the doorway to fit the piano through, and finally it was in our lounge room. Then the table and chairs were put into the dining room, and we promptly celebrated this feat by having breakfast around our new table with Cherith's family...

Finally we have a dining table in our dining room.

I tried to go to work that day... But I couldn't work for very long. In hindsight, I probably shouldn't have tried it, and just rested. But that's me. But the blessings for the week didn't end there.

On Thursday, Cherith had her appointment for an ultrasound. We got to see the baby for the first time, and hear it's heartbeat again. It was surreal to see him (or is it her??) kicking and wriggling on the monitor. It was just such a special moment. Cherith was a few days short of 14 weeks pregnant, and it was interesting to see the level of development evident even at that stage of pregnancy. It was easy to see the heart beating, and hear it ticking away...

And just when you thought surely that has to be all for one week...

Our next door neighbor, who had helped us move the piano (and is our landlord's son), finished installing the chimney and sealing the roof up, just before it started raining on Friday afternoon. So now we can enjoy our cozy fireplace even when it's raining :). God's goodness and ability to provide never ceases to amaze me.

Oh, and he even provided the fuel money for our trip to Sydney... We could never have gone otherwise. Isn't He good?

A thousand ways to provide. And a thousand opportunities to provide. A thousand reasons for me not to stress. A thousand reasons for me to learn to relax and leave things in His hands!

1 + 1 = ?

Maths is a subject specifically designed for tormenting children with... Adults too sometimes...

But there are some things even maths won't work out...
1 + 1 = 2, right?

Well, it does, sometimes... But 1 + 1 can also be 3.

About 2 months ago, my dear wife and I, one bright and sunny morning, discovered that 1 (her), and 1 (me), was soon going to = 3. That's right. She is busy working on a new member for our little family. Life is great, right?! :). So it is. She was shocked, I was excited. From memory, I believe I even went so far as to jump up and down... Very undignified I am sure, but at moments like that, who cares!!?

Cherith had been feeling just a tad nauseous that morning, and in a fit of cheekiness, I suggested that it may be more that a disagreeable breakfast. Her response was to take a test, and lo and behold, my snap suggestion as to what might be happening turned out spot on. So it's a baby. And seeing as the only options are boys and girls, I guess we are having a boy... Or a girl........

So that's it. Sometime near the end of November or the beginning of December our little family will be experiencing a population boom. 

Last week we had the pleasure of hearing the little rascal's heartbeat, still very quiet, but definitely ticking away steadily. It was a strange moment, in the doctor's office, listening for that faintest beat. Somehow, it brought to mind the awesomeness of the thing. The baby was at the time approx 2 inches long! Imagine the size of it's heart?? That is one tiny ticker. But there it was.

It made me wonder how many people who want an abortion would still have one after hearing their own baby's heartbeat for half a minute... I don't know, but I think a few would change their mind. The heartbeat makes it real, alive, palpable. It is no longer an ignorable fact, but a living being. It makes it seem so much more like killing, because at some stage during an abortion, that little tiny heart stops.

Of course, many people have miscarriages, many unavoidable (at least seemingly). That too is a death. Hearing that heartbeat made me think of how traumatic that would be. I had never before understood why it was such a horrible experience, emotionally, for someone to have a miscarriage. But there's that heartbeat, ticking away... Living.... Only waiting to be born......

Keeping out the cold.

So the cold weather is coming. A week ago I was leaving for work with the water frozen in the windscreen of our car. So the temperature is steadily settling into it's winter rhythm. But there is a difference. We now have a fireplace. :)

Thanks to some help from Cherith's youngest brother, (who was staying with us for a few weeks while he worked nearby) who managed to move the 140kg stove into the lounge room for us, and my father-in-law, who is a carpenter and worked on fitting the chimney, we now have an amazingly snug and warm living room. Even my office, which is next door is feeling distinctly less chilly.

Growing up my family had a woodfire in the lounge room, and as my bedroom was at the opposite end of the house, it meant that in the mornings there was quite an incentive to race to the fireplace (which my mum would fire up at about 5AM every day in winter), and warm ourselves around it. It was one of those situations were things had to get worse to get better. I'd have to leave my moderately warm bed, race up the freezing cold hallway, through the dining room, and into the lounge room, for a nice toasty morning! Now I get to be the one who stokes up the fire in the morning, and get the house nice and warm for my wife! :).

Just remembering that, made me think about the saying 'things sometimes have to get worse before they can get better'. Very few people start life with everything in their favor. It takes hard work, and the proverbial 'blood, sweat, and tears' to make improvements in life. Just the same way a person has to brave the cold morning in order to start the fire, a person who wants to get somewhere in life has to start with step 1. You can't jump to the ending when life is all rosy and easy, smooth and comfortable. Life is generally tough to begin with. But that's no reason to dodge the tough streak. The key is to work through the tough spots in life, and keep your focus on the things that are important, and not let yourself get depressed by whatever difficulties you may be facing. Life is good. And it really doesn't matter what anyone else thinks of your life circumstances. The key is that you are happy with where your life is going, and are prepared to weather storms in order to be able to enjoy smoother sailing that so often follows a difficult time.

Dad.....

06/07/1946 - 06/04/2012
Ernst Robert Dammasch

Born and brought up in post war Germany, my Dad came to Australia permanently as a young man. By the time he left Germany, he had completed an apprenticeship as fitter and turner. Here in Australia he met and married my Mum. That was a little over 36 years ago.

I only turned up on the scene much later. By the time I was born, they had celebrated their eleventh wedding anniversary. And I was the fourth, in a family of five. By the time I was ten, Dad was working very long hours as a truck driver, trying to make ends meet, and support his family. But there are definitely a few happy memories with my dad from those days...

At the time, dad used to ride a motorbike to work and back, and usually only came home on weekends (He often worked 60+ hours a week, and we lived a long way out in the country). Every Friday afternoon, we (My younger brother Henry and I), used to run outside at the sound of his bike coming up our street, racing each other to make it to the gate first. It was hardly a fair race, because I was 6 years older than Henry, and at least 12 inches taller, but it was unusual for Dad to get to the gate before we did. Why that was so special, I don't even know, but it is.

Dad drove a truck almost identical to this one for ten years...

Then occasionally I would get to go for a ride with him in the truck. Sometimes he would even drive up our street. Somehow it made me proud to see the big semi trailer parked there. Maybe it was just because I was a little kid, and big trucks were impressive, but in any case, I was proud of that truck. I even remember the number plate of the truck! (He usually drove the same prime mover, and they just hooked different trailers on it depending on what he was delivering)... Usually he delivered for Woolworths. Sometimes I went with him for long rides. On Sundays he would often go from Brisbane to Kingaroy, several hours drive, and I'd love going with him. He'd tell me about his work, about the problems of driving a truck, of some of the impossibly difficult places he'd had to reverse a truck into, etc. I was with him when his front passenger side tire got a puncture. To this day I can remember the sound. A brief rattle as whatever did the damage got flung out of the tire again, and then the sound of a tire going quickly flat. We sat on the side of the road for an hour waiting for a repair truck. One day we arrived at the destination to find a badly stacked pallet had collapsed. Whoever had done it, had stacked heavy things on top of tissue paper rolls and delicate things, and it just collapsed.

One weekend, Dad and I went camping together. Just the two of us. We went to Gympie, saw the big pineapple, and camped next a lake there. I remember riding up there with him on his bike (A big touring bike). We put our drinks in the lake to chill them, and warmed up our food over a campfire.

When I was in my late teens, Dad had to stop trucking for a living for health reasons. He had done over ten years of full time truck driving for Linfox. Ten years of work in which he occasionally would have worked less than 50 hours a week. A year or two later he worked on the farm with me for a few months.

Anyway, if I was going to keep reciting, I could keep going forever. There were unhappy times too, but why bother with those? I'll always remember the good times. Happy times.

There are regrets too. But they are pointless now. Sometimes I wish I had gotten to spend more time with him. Then I wish I had called him more often in the last year or so while I have been away from home. I guess you don't really miss someone till they are really gone.

So this is goodbye to my Dad. I hope to see him soon.

It's quiet.... Too quiet.....

It's 9:30 in the evening, and the house is empty, except for myself, a few mice, a spider or two, and just possibly a rat in the laundry. My wife is on her way to visit family for 2 days, and as the saying goes, you only know what you had when it is gone.... Who would have thought that in a few hours I could miss her so much?

I'm getting tired... I should go to bed, but it just doesn't seem right. There's a 5' 1", clue eyed, curly brown haired person missing! And what's worse, I love her, so I'm going to miss her something awful. Maybe I'm just being silly...? Maybe I shouldn't miss her? Well, I can't help it. I love my wife, and revel in her company.

And when she gets back, I 'm going to give her a very big hug, and tell her how much I missed her, but words can't really express it. "I miss her".... Three simple words... But I have missed other things in the past, and it just doesn't compare with missing my wife. It's not even in the same scale.

So I just need to survive the next few days... That might be harder than you think... I have to make my own meals, :D....

Everything that glitters, is not gold....

Have you ever heard the saying, "Not everything that glitters is gold"? Well, funnily enough, it's true. In almost every aspect of life, things appear to have a varnish, but in most cases that varnish is scarcely 'skin deep'.

Buy a used car with a shiny paint job, and you may get a very practical demonstration of this principle. Own it for a few months, and it may just fall apart on you, while another car which didn't look so flash, keeps ticking over.

They say that when the Cullinan diamond was discovered, the worker who found thought that he had found a chunk of glass, and only made a closer examination as an afterthought. The result was the largest diamond ever found on earth. But it wasn't discovered as a shimmering piece of diamond, ready cut and waiting to be sold. It looked like an ugly lump of glass, hardly worth looking at. What power transforms a lump of glass into a piece of incredible value like the 'Cullinan'? In the case of the 'Cullinan', it was a man named Asscher, one of the most famous gem cutters ever to have lived, who, after days of examination, cleaved the stone, removed the impurities, and brought to the world a masterpiece of unrivaled excellence. But until the impurities were cut out, the stone would reflect no more light that a lump of coal.

The uncut Cullinan. Not much to look at...

Some people are like a diamond. Not much to impress at first, but with incredible value, often invisible to those around them, until something shows the diamond for what it is. Others are no more than fools gold. They make an exciting impression, seeming to charm all in their wake, but of little value to those around them otherwise. They may be entertaining company, but when the heat is on, they don't prove to be the real thing.

There is a reason that God 'looks on the heart' to judge people. If He looked on the outward appearance, He'd be fooled most of the time! But He isn't. People see the outward appearance (and I don't mean looks here, it can be anything from personality to beauty...), but they cannot judge the impulse of the heart. The person who acts charming in public, often has a very different manner when behind closed doors. There is only one thing that can motivate a person through every act of life, to be true gold. And that is love.

When Jesus came to earth, He was nothing special to look at. The Bible says He had no spot or blemish, but He didn't stand out of the crowd in appearance. People crowded to Him because He loved them. He longed to bring hope into their lives. And He loved them still, when they were nailing him to the cross.

Do you glitter only when things go well, or does even the heat of difficulties show you to be the true metal? It is your choice, but it isn't something you can change on your own. You need to have someone come into your life and cleave out the impurities in your life. And Jesus is the greatest 'gemcutter' in the universe. He can turn anyone into an incredible diamond, if only that person surrenders everything in their life to Him.

Try being a diamond. It is a lot more valuable than fool's gold....