Nothing like a day in the smokies with my beautiful girls.

Ok, so about a two weeks after praying for patience I said to myself, “self you have lived in Tennessee for 5 years now, I do believe it is time for a Tennessee drivers licence.”  So on Friday my day off with Rachel and Kennedy I decide that the DMV would be a great place to spend the day off. 

First stop, DMV in East Towne Mall. 

Fist mistake, going to the DMV in East Towne Mall. 

These people at the Tennessee DMV might me the most hateful people on the planet besides they guys who take your order at Wendy’s.  The lady that “helped” me ripped me a new one because I was born in Germany and didn’t bring in all my paperwork to prove my American-ness, as if the Military ID Card, Social Security Card and old North Carolina Drivers Licence were not enough I had to drive home and retrieve my ORIGINAL Birth Certificate.

Second stop, back at home. Searched the house for the Birth Certificate, finally I found it filed away with our Auto Insurance and left the house again for round two at the DMV.

Third stop, DMV in East Towne Mall.  

Second mistake returning to the “O so angry, I hate everything DMV” in East Towne Mall. 

I got my number and approached the window with every important document about my life from the last 22 years in hand.  Show the woman my Birth Certificate from the military base in Germany, my Social Security Card, Military ID, Old North Carolina Drivers Licence, 25 bills to prove I live in Tennessee and my check for 15 bucks so I could hopfully get a new Drivers Licence.  Turns out that my NC Drivers licences is so old you cannot read the number on it unless you have extremely good eyes or can read the have hand written number I wrote on the back of the card with black sharpie.  So my new friend at the DMV informs me she cannot do anything for me because she nor anyone else working in the DMV can read the number, even though I am telling her the number and informing her that if she strains her eyes hard enough she could read it. 

At this point I am about to go through the roof, then my friend sheds some positive light on the situation and lets me know that there is another DMV off of Strawberry Plains that can look up my number to make sure I am not an illegal alien and finally get me a new Drivers Licence.  So I gathered my belongings and headed back to the car.

Fourth Stop, DMV on Strawberry Plains. 

Third mistake still attempting to get a Tennessee drivers licence after 4 hours of getting nothing accomplished on my day off.

So I go in, tell the lady all the crud I have been through that day and ask her to please help me.  She looks at me, looks at the Drivers Licence, looks at me, looks at the Drivers Licence, then asks ”What is it you need again sir?”, like she wasn’t paying a lick of attention to me when I explained it 35 seconds earlier.  I re-explain and she tells me that they cannot do anything for me there at this time, I have to call the North Carolina DMV and get an official copy of my driving record, then bring that in and “we can move forward from there.” 

I wont lie at this point I was beyond any words or actions of anger, I dreamed about what it would be like to set every DMV in the country on fire and call it a day! (not really kids, fire and arson are bad things its just a metaphor or simile or something)

Needless to say I wasted about 5 1/2 hours at DMV’s all over east Tennessee on my day off and three weeks later I still do not have a Tennessee Drivers Licence, I finally got my NC Driving Record Monday and will make another attempt at a TN Licence this week.  Pray for me, my patience and the DMV workers.

O yeah and to top this day of patience tests off, that evening I was gassing up my car at Food City minding my own business, I finished pumping the precious gasoline and proceeded to pull away from the pump.  Out of the corner of my eye I see a “piece” rolling up on me.  (for those that do not know a “piece” refers to a junker, hooptie, rust mobile, whatever you want to call a “piece” o’crap car)  I apply the brake slowing myself down from a 2 mile an hour roll to a stop.  As this man drove past what did he have for me to look at?  You guessed it, the o-so-calm middle finger, the bird the original road rage instigator.  Dude that fired me up, I was already on edge from the DMV crap all day and that got me going even more, my heart is pounding out of my chest right now just thinking about it.  The famous “flipping of the bird” is so frustrating is it not?  and all it is, is a finger, I don’t understand how it makes us so mad, but it does. 

Anyways those were just a couple more patience tests that God threw my way to see if I really desired to learn patience.  I believe I am beginning to handle these situations much better lately.  God is testing and I am learning, and I pray I continue to learn.  Be careful what you pray for, God will have fun with you while providing you with situations where that prayer can be answered.

I’m done, but if you need a good laugh about similar situations Dane Cook has some pretty funny sketches about the DMV and the “Bird” if you are interested, I think you can find them on youtube.com (I am not condoning Dane Cook & his language or views on life, its just stinkin’ funny)

outie

….BE TESTED!  I am learning that you have got to be careful when you ask God for things.  Pastor touched on this last weekend when he spoke about praying the dangerous prayer “God use me”.  Trust me, that prayer works (I’m in Children’s ministry now for goodness sake) and I now believe I may have recently stumbled upon the second most dangerous prayer. 

“Lord, teach me patience.”

Holy Crap!  I prayed that prayer a little over four weeks ago asking God to prepare me for the new baby that was scheduled for last weekend (May 18th) but arrived three weeks early, about two days after the patience prayer, SUPRISE!! 

And let the patience be tests begin!  Now do not get me wrong my baby girl Kennedy Jane is the greatest baby ever, she sleeps well, eats well, takes baths well and poops weller than well.  But with every newborn baby comes those stages where baby is just not happy and they like to scream at you to let you know.  I, being a man, always want to fix broken things (crying babies) and make everything peachy.  Yet it is so hard to hold eight pounds of screaming baby in my hands and have no clue how to fix the situation and calm her down.  Enter first test of patience. 

Now at first I must admit, I was failing this test with flying colors, turning the TV/Radio up louder, covering my head with six pillows or just locking myself in my fishing decor bathroom until the storm had passed.  But lately I believe I am doing a heck of a job about 90% of the time, the other 10% falls between the hours of 1 o’clock a.m. and 6 o’clock a.m. and interferes with my sleepy time but I am getting better gradually. 

Patience with the babe is on the rise, so God found some other ways test my patience bone.  I’ll touch on that a little later. 

For now though, babies are awesome, I cant believe I love her so much, and I cant figure out why she loves baseball so much…

 outie