That's why

Good morning, I pray the day is finding you well. We are still in Flagstaff. We are going to see the Grand Canyon today, I have never seen the Grand Canyon and I am pretty excited about see it. Last night, in camp, a couple stopped by and during our conversation they warned us about the thunderstorms that can happen here. They told us about the rain and the lightning. We had already ridden through a couple of these storms. One storm in particular, as we rode through Nephi Utah, was so bad we had to take shelter at a local gas station. The lightning blew out the transformers and half the town lost electricity. Looking back, sitting in a gas station during an electrical storm was probably not the smartest idea. My wife Laurie grew up in Minnesota, I grew up in Kansas. Both places have amazing thunderstorms. We can talk about them all day. How the thunderheads would come and the sky would grow dark and the lightning would dance across the sky. Back on the farm we we only had one TV station, KLOE Goodland. It was not much of a station as stations go, in fact if you remember the Mary Tyler Moore show from the 70's the newscast was much like that show. I think we even had the original Ted Knight. Needless to say there was not much on TV, it is a good thing we had thunderstorms to watch. Our house had a nice front porch; It had a porch swing and everything. Unfortunately my sister Katie and her friend Mary Ann, Mary Ann lived on the farm down the road. Swung in the porch swing so hard that the eye-bolts pulled right out of the ceiling and so the porch swing just sat on the cement slab, which sat on top the ground, which made up our porch. One day, dad and I were sitting on the front porch watching a thunderstorm roll in; it was more fun than watching KLOE. Dad was sitting in his wooden chair and I was sitting in the porch swing that was sitting on the porch. As the Thunderstorm got closer, and the lightning show was really revving up, dad looks at me and says, "I wouldn't sit in that if I were you." I looked up at him and said, "Why?" The words barely left my mouth when lightning struck the ground in our front yard. The next thing I know I am laying on my back on the front yard, gasping for air, thinking what just happened to me. I am kind of twitching and a little scared so I just lay there. I must have shot ten feet from the porch swing. I look toward the porch, and I see my dad coming to me. In my mind I start to prepare my answer of, "I'm ok thanks for asking." when dad gets to me and asks, "Are you ok? I was really scared when you flew through the air." Dad walks up to me, looks down into my eyes and says, "That's why....now get back up on the porch and sit in one of the wooden chairs before you get hit again." I didn't ask why; I just got up and sat in a wooden chair. Many years later Laurie took me to the emergency room, we thought I might be having a heart attack. They hooked me up to all these electrodes and stuff. The results came back that no, I was not having a heart attack but I did have a reverse "J". They told me that a reverse "J" is an event were your heart stopped at some point. My mother thinks it is from one of those particularly hard hits that I took playing ball. I know differently, I know that it came form the day I asked, "Why." God is a lot like my dad. He will give you a nudge to do something or not do something. Sometimes He will shock you right out of your boots if you don't follow His lead. Sometimes He will look at you and say, "That's why" Looking back, I have learned to not ask why when God gives me nudges to do something, or not do something. I have learned that I make a lot of mistakes but if I do my best to sit in the middle of His will, as best as I can discern it, He won't have to use lightning to get the message through my thick head. My dad loves me, I know that. God loves me, I know that too. I have a reverse "J" as a reminder that I am not smarter than God, or even my dad. My takeaway from that experience, is that when I hear the Spirits soft, still voice, urging me to do a certain thing, I have learned it is best to not ask....why. Blessings,