For the PeeMan, “Auto-fill” is an old term with a weird new meaning. The PeeMan has been auto-filling Pee bottles with his autofiller machine for decades, but now discovers it has nothing to do with Pee bottles at all! This is, to say the very least, troubling and even more so when you understand how the PeeMan discovered this new definition.
A few days ago, the PeeMan received a very interesting text. Now, as you can imagine, it is not unusual for the PeeMan to receive unusual texts and emails. For some reason, writing about Pee gets the creativity “flowing” so to speak. This text, however, was way different than the usual. It began with:
“I ate the woman”
Well, that caused the PeeMan to pause and then warily continue to read. To his relief, the rest of the text did not have any more menu items and it did not seem to having anything at all to do with main course. So how was the PeeMan to respond to such a communique? Now the PeeMan’s better half has been encouraging the PeeMan to be more sensitive and diplomatic in his communications because she feels his direct style is not always the best way to go.
So the PeeMan carefully typed into his flip-phone this response:
“Just checking, did you really eat the woman?”
…and the PeeMan waited patiently for the response and within a few minutes, this appeared on his phone:
“HaHaHa, – Auto-Fill – I meant to say: The woman I was talking to.”
OK, now the PeeMan was getting really confused – what in the world did this woman have to do with the PeeMan’s filling machine?? When confused, The PeeMan often finds that a visit to the interplanetary storehouse of all knowledge can be helpful. So the PeeMan Googled “auto-fill.”
After reading the various entries, the PeeMan discovered that “auto-fill” is a feature on many smart phones with one of the highly-touted attributes being something called “predictive text.”
Ok, now we were getting somewhere! But it soon was apparent that it was not anywhere the PeeMan would EVER go! “Predictive text” means that the brilliant, tiny brain in your smart phone predicts what you really want to text based upon the letters or word parts you start typing.
So when my friend started texting “The woman…”– the phone-brain took over and said to itself “I know what she wants to say” and instantly triggered the “auto-fill”, commandeered the key board and changed it all to “I ate the woman…”
Brilliant! How could anyone live without a phone feature like “auto-fill?” The PeeMan is going to try.
Man is made to work and you all know that work of all kinds has been a mark of my life. But like in all things, work can be more than it should be. I have watched all of you wrestle with the role of work in your life and I am sure the struggle continues. You all have been told by someone along the way that you demonstrate a strong work ethic. I have worked hard for many reasons over the years, some of those reasons good, some of them bad and some of them out of shear terror of not being able to provide for my family. But there often have been times, when I have worked harder because I was trusting in God less. Don’t work by yourself, but work with God in all that you do.
Embrace opportunities and go after them with full expectation of success. If it is not a good opportunity it will show its true colors soon, then you can stop, knowing you gave it a shot. An opportunity is like a flower seed, if see it as only what it is now, you will cast it away without a thought. But if you see it for what it can be become, you do everything to help it grow. When God places an opportunity in front of us, its pretty exciting to see what he wants us to learn from it. It could be lessons of success or lessons of failure – but lessons from God, none-the-less.
You’ve heard me say it in different ways, but always try to face any problem with clarity of thought. Of course, at first your vision is muddied by pain, emotion, fear, frustration and all the other emotions that tag along with problems. Push through all that until you can ask yourself what you know and what you don’t know about the problem, and break it down into its smallest components– remembering all the while that God is with you all the way. That is why problems are often opportunities in disguise. Seek God’s wisdom, apply the gifts and talents he has given you and act on each small piece of the problem. The solution will build from those pieces.
That’s right – much to my wife’s disbelief – the PeeMan has been asked for homework help. Not just once either:
You see, we have three wonderfully unique daughters. Erica, the oldest, married with four kids and along with husband Nathan is actively involved in the 
Words from The Peeman 