The New Job

So far so good, my new job seems to be working out pretty well. It is extremely odd that the job that God would put before me is in an abbey. But, that's cool I can deal with it.
The hours are really awesome I am home every night with my family (something I haven't done in a while). I am also back to cooking (something I actually love doing) and my stress level has dropped by at least 200%. I was barely sleeping anymore and that was getting really old (not to mention exhausting). I'm not sure if I ever mentioned it or not, but I really hated management. It was actually ok when I worked during the day for a casual dining place where I did all of the opening stuff and placing and receiving all of the orders. I was ok at it too, I think sometimes I am not so good at dealing with employee issues. But, I had to to have a stable paycheck that I could count on. That was pretty much the only reason I went into management. I was never in love with the idea of being on salary. I may try to get salary where I am, I am not completely sure if that would be good or not. I don't want to go back to doing 50+ hours a week, I am really enjoying having a life outside of work. Like today, I was off (2 weeks in a row I got Sunday off woohoo!!!) so I slept late , even though Johanna really wanted to check out this other church, we all over slept. then we did some stuff around the house and later went to the beach. It's a lake near here and so far they have not closed the water this summer, that is really awesome we had a great time just playing around at the playground then in the water.
I have also been able to have dinner every night with my family and that means a lot to me. Yes I took a pay cut. Do I think it was worth it? So far YES!!! I just hope I don't fall behind in my bills, but I think if I am careful we can do this. Besides, how am I supposed to Follow God's plan for my life if I am always working for some corporation to make them the maximum profit. At times it seemed that Sonny's might consume my whole life. I would do things for the business when I was off (which infuriated Johanna by the way) and the days I worked there was no time left in the day for family or anything but work. Even on my days off I would be so spent that I wouldn't be much fun most of the time and I really wasn't doing much work around the house.
Plus there is just the environment of this place that is sort of calming in it's self. I will post a picture or 2 so you can get an idea (not that I can do it justice).
This is the view of Lake Jovita that I see every morning right before I walk into work


and this is looking up at the bell tower just before I walk in the door of the abbey

Finally this is the front of the church that is on the other side of the bell tower picture.
Well I think that is enough for now I hope that this goes well for me because I really like just being at this place. But, I know that even if this goes bad, God will make a way, He always does.
Peace

Regrets My Version

Jeff posted today about regrets. He really got me thinking and man I have a lot of thoughts racing around right now. I Can't help but think that who I am is the sum of my regrets.
I almost posted/said some things today that I would no doubt regret. I am really glad it didn't go quite like that and I am feeling fairly good about life right now.
What that doesn't mean is that I have no regrets. I have a ton. I have hurt the ones I love numerous times and ruined my own life several times as well. I almost lost my freedom for good a few years back.
Mostly I am not a great big brainy guy who reads tons of books or even has a detailed theology that I follow. I was fairly immersed in the Southern baptist traditions as a child an I have a pretty good grasp on the basics of their theology. But mostly I write from my personal experience. I am probably never going to be the one who can link all of these historical events to what is happening now. I think my attention span is too short for that any way( I am amazed that I can actually finish a book that is more than 100 pages ).
Any way , sort of the point of this is getting lost here. some of my regrets are constant reminders to me, of grace. Grace that was given to me once I understood how undeserving I am.
Before, I was proud. Sometimes I still am even with everything that has happened. But thank God He is patient and kind and loves me any way. I can't really prove it, most people would look at my life and think I am far less than privileged and things aren't really that great. But things could be a lot worse than they are. Yeah I live in a crappy trailer in a crappy neighborhood where there are gang symbols painted on the street. I have had to deal with a lot, but I deserve nothing.
God has given me a chance right now to treasure what is important and to try to take care of the ones I love and not just get by. It is so cool the way God makes himself known to me. Like this job I just got. I wasn't planning on changing jobs
But because of certain events at my job my Supervisor and Store manager were both fired and I was marked to be fired. The only thing that kept me from being fired was the guy who was supposed to still have a job, walked out just minutes before I went in on my day off to confront them about why they were firing me and why the staff knew even though I didn't.
But the crazy thing is, I had a job offer before I even knew that I was supposed to be fired.
And it turns out that starting out , this job is a pay cut, but it's only 40 hours a week and I am home every night and I have tomorrow off. I haven't had Sundays off in some time.
This job also comes with health insurance, that's something I haven't had in a while either.
The strangest thing about this is it is for the Catholic church. I am cooking for monks at an abbey. I think it's really odd that this would be the job offer I get. After all I have just about stopped going to church at all lately and I have no faith any more in institutional churches, so I get a job working for the great grand dad of all of those western denominations. Pretty cool huh?
God is amazing!!

Just an update

I don't have anything really important to blog about that I want to make public knowledge (yet). So I figured I would just say that some recent events have been pretty chaotic and nerve rattling.
The situation with my 15 year old gets better then worse( hopefully we will be on an upswing very soon) He is not taking the diversion program very seriously at all right now but I plan to give him a wake up call when we have to report on Tuesday.
That is just about all I have to say about that , except that this really hurts me that after all of this and his seemingly changed attitude, that he would start to take advantage of the situation again just because he feels there won't be any repercussion. I plan on making sure that he takes this seriously, because I really love my son and I really do want him to succeed in this program and have no criminal record at all. But I don't want him to merely get through it, I want him to do the program and become a better person because of it. I know that he has the potential to be a really great man and there is a lot of good in him. He just hides it really well sometimes.

The other stuff I really want to write about that is in the forefront of my thoughts almost all of the time I don't feel at liberty to post because of the extremely minute chance that the wrong person might read it. I do plan on laying out the whole story sometime in the not so distant future.
In other news, we gave Otis to the county 2 days ago. I felt like crap (still do) and I know that in some way I failed him and that is why this happened. He was such a good dog in so many ways and he absolutely freakin loved me for pretty much no reason at all. I did almost nothing for this dog and Johanna joked about what a huge betrayal it was that he would want to come home and sleep with me most nights. I also loved Otis. I am still trying to process the incident and what I could have done to change the way it happened. But the harsh truth is, He was a huge risk. This was the third bite. This was technically "provoked" because of the food issue. I was a little surprised to hear that when the dog officer came to the house.
But the other bites made no sense what so ever and just the fact that he was nervous and was easily frightened into biting was really risky with a dog that weighed more than 3 of our 4 kids at home.
I am vaguely familiar with the theology that points animals not being eternal (beings that is) but deep down I hope I get to see Otis some day again and am able to apologize and tell him how much I loved him and how much joy he gave me.
I hope he wasn't too afraid when they did what they had to do.