Yesterday was an extremely difficult day for me. We are transitioning from construction mode to full operation mode at our resort and trying to get our staff trained – it’s like trying to herd cats in a gymnasium.
My day started out horrible and didn’t get better as time marched on. It began when I asked the landscaping crew leader to get his crew to remove the unsightly weeds from my butterfly garden and his solution was to weed eat the garden to absolute ground level and oblivion – nothing is left. My day didn’t get better with time. Various personnel throughout the day screwed up literally every project that they were assigned and I ended up giving out three written warnings. Frustration after frustration occurred until I felt like screaming; finally I decided to go deer hunting to escape the madness.
I’ve been hunting a large and incredibly smart old trophy deer for three years and have barely caught a few glimpses of him during all of that time. In order to avoid spooking him I have not driven into his haunts for nearly a month. Yesterday, true to form I parked a mile away and cautiously stalked into my deer stand, taking advantage of the wind direction to carefully stay upwind of him. I was dressed in full camo from head to toe including face mask and gloves. I was as quiet as a cougar as I silently entered my stand and there I sat motionless for a couple of hours waiting for him to appear. Finally it started getting dusk and I was at full alert. I just knew he would magically appear at any moment and my terrible day would instantly become delightful.
Suddenly I heard a very loud noise that sounded like a helicopter landing on top of my stand. Startled, I looked up into the sky to see if the helicopter was buzzing me or what. When I looked behind me I saw a rattletrap truck with loud mufflers come flying down the dirt road passing within twenty feet of my stand.
I couldn’t believe it! I was totally aghast! I’m in the most remote part of my secure and heavily patrolled 4700 acre plantation and a truck comes driving by my stand in my personal hunting area????
It turned out that it was one of my own plantation workers and he was trying to pick up another worker who had been harrowing a field a mile from where I was. There was a miscommunication between them and he’d driven the wrong way and right into and through my prime hunting area at prime hunting time.
NO – I didn’t see my trophy buck. I didn’t see anything other than the color red! My day ended the way it began – HORRIBLE!
When I got home my wife said that I was in a bad mood and that was unlike me, and that she didn’t like it. I gave her a baleful glare and snapped at her, “I don’t care what YOU like; ‘I’ like being in a bad mood!”
My dinner was not good.
That evening I had a conference call with a sportsman oriented marketing firm for our quail hunting operation, and was lamenting the fact that we lived in such a rural area and that we were having serious trouble recruiting qualified and professional people for the operations side of our resort. Trained professional people are a necessity of five star resorts and five star is our goal, if not five diamond. I told them I was used to working with smart professional people in my other businesses and then I reviewed some of the problems that I’d struggled with that day which left no doubt that I had a long hard road ahead of me in order to achieve our goals.
He laughed and told me about a resort and hunting lodge that he founded in a remote area of Montana. The local town only had 600 residents in totality. Like us he was trying his very best to forge the lodge into a world class sportsman retreat and experience for his high end clients and it was maddening to deal with the inexperience of the limited available work force.
He told me that he was in a rage one day over several things that had been done wrong, and was venting his frustrations in a meeting with his entire staff. He was nearly shouting at them as he told them that they needed to be more professional.
He said, “It begins with your “to do” list, you simply must adhere to your “to do” list – daily! You must live and die by your to do list.
Frustrated and madder than a Doberman he angrily looked around the room and snarled in a heated tone, “Does anyone have any questions?”
One lady politely raised her hand and he curtly nodded to her, and she softly asked, “What’s a “to do” list?”
Hmmm… There is a cliché that tells us “Patience is a virtue”.
Poppycock!
I want a better day and I want it NOW!
Oh all right I realize that patience is a fruit of the Spirit, (Gal 5 – But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness). And I realize that I’m not within God’s will when I don’t exercise it.
Old King Solomon maybe makes some sense out of this, I’m sure he had frustrations galore with 1000 wives and concubines and people working on projects galore of a magnitude far greater than my cheesy little efforts. He sagely said in Ecclesiastes “The end of a matter is better than its beginning, and patience is better than pride”.
I have no doubt that the end of Honey Lake Resort and Spa will be better than its raw beginning and of course patience is better than foolish pride.
This is the Christmas season and I just might get myself a little present to put me in a better mood. I could use some new clothes, especially those that God lays out for me to wear in the verse below. How about you, need any new clothes this fine morning?
Col. 3:12
Since God chose you to be the holy people he loves, you must clothe yourselves with tenderhearted mercy, kindness, humility, gentleness, and patience.