I slid around the edge of the roof of the house removing the gunk that had collected in the gutters. Being a musician my hands were such a vital part of my life, I always came away with them skinned up from the adventure.

Cleaning out gutters didn’t phase me at that time and I often hopped right up there no matter how high it was moving around easing the path for the rain water.

It had become a nice supplementary business to the lawns I mowed as a kid. I started those when I was around 10 and pretty much continued through college.

Even as I had achieved some notoriety performing for the Grand Ole Opry and major concert events around the country, I still mowed, raked and cleaned gutters for those long established clients I had built up through the years.

I once heard Tennessee Ernie Ford say as his career was developing, one of the criteria he looked at before moving on from something to bigger pastures, was to make sure that there was more cows in that field than the one he was already in.

I don’t think that is what kept me doing for those folks. Many of them were like family, some older and I knew it would be hard for them to find someone to replace me after so many years of my helping them. But eventually I did have to phase out of all those extra jobs and move on in life.

I even recall feeling a bit of guilt in leaving a couple in particular to find someone else to meet those needs.

While I think back fondly on those times sitting up on the roofs working with my thoughts about what I would do with my life flooding through my mind as I looked out around the neighborhood, unlike my younger self, I am no longer anxious to jump up on the roof to think.

However, I still spend time each day, thinking about what God has in store for me in life.

Dreams never seem to fade; there is always something new that is just over the horizon.

A new record, a new book, a new job, a new friendship, a new way to serve and accomplish something for someone else.

These days I still like to look out over the neighborhood as I think. Instead of sticking my hands down in the muck and filling up a bucket with it, now I find a high point on a mountainside, sit there with God’s word and take in the beauty all around me as I read, think and pray.

Perhaps it is something in the genes that I discovered as a kid looking out from those roofs, that there is an almost innate desire within me to be high up – in the mountains looking out and drinking deeply from God’s creation. It seems to renew my soul and provide a perfect backdrop to dream and ask for God’s guidance and His inspiration to know how to illuminate the path that He has in store.

Have you found your rooftop? Do you know where you can be inspired to make a difference?

If you do not have a place, I hope this week you will take some time and find a place to restore your soul as you dream for your future and what you can make happen in your family and community that will make our world a better place.

 

I struggled to catch a breath as I leaned up on my pillow, trying to find the next clear bit of air and pull it into my lungs.
I often wondered if there would be another breath but there was an endless desire to keep trying.
As a child, like many others I suffered from a multitude of ailments that made my stay on this earth sometimes tenuous.
One of the results of the multitude was asthma that left me with weak lungs that often seize up making exerting myself a dance with living on the edge.
With the caring effort of my mother and dad, rubbing me down in mentholated rub, beating my back to loosen my lungs, keeping a house as clean from irritants as possible, I know my survival would have been unlikely.
There came a morning when I was about five that I did not awake. I relay the account as shared with me, since I was unable to experience it from a conscious prospective.
After calling my name several times to raise me from my slumber with no avail, my late mother came in to find me laying in my bed, the sight scared her, her boy there, still, staring up at the ceiling, lifeless. In her words, “Your eyes were set back in your head and you were not breathing.”
She grabbed me up wrapped in the quilt that I was sleeping in, threw me over her shoulder, picked up the kitchen phone calling the doctor’s office, saying, “I’m bringing him in.” She jumped into our blue 1964 Chevy Malibu and as she said, didn’t stop for a single light as she drove the five miles to his office.
She rushed through the waiting room and the receptionist jumped up, opened the door realizing I was in distress and the immediately took me into an exam room placing me on the table.
The doctor questioned why she didn’t take me to the emergency room. Her reply “He’s here now, do something.”
So he did, with only what he had on hand he started trying to revive me and sent the nurse to get a shot of some kind.
He administered the shot and then turned to mom and said, “All we can do now is pray.”
That’s what they did, pray over my lifeless body with no signs of hope.
After a few moments of prayer, I began to breath and the life that was gone was restored. What accomplished this? The doctor’s sharing his skill with limited means; or the prayers of them standing above my lifeless body calling out to God to not allow the senseless death of a toddler.
Whatever it was, their faith, medicine, it allowed me to breath again, and grow, struggle, and cling to life again and again, as I battled more childhood adversities carrying me to adulthood. He allowed me to learn, and work, and give, and pray for others. He has allowed me to serve.
For me that day was God’s miracle of life that He gave me initially and He chose to give it back to me because that five-year-old had something more to do for Him.
Once again when I was in my twenties, a water-borne illness had me near death with no medical means of improving my situation. It was mother’s unceasing prayers by my hospital bedside that drew me back to health.
There are two times when I know God intervened in the course of the frailness of the human body and allowed me to continue.
Each day, I know that I fail in using the opportunities He affords, and sometimes I find myself bogged down in my own hopes and desires. But then I remind myself, my presence here is His gift to me, that He has given more times than I can count or even know about.
I try to remember that is my work here to give back and so I pray I always remember and act accordingly. Prayer is a gift – use it, give it, share it.