Like a day where you wake up to your teething child crying {for the third day in a row}, and then walk downstairs to find your kitchen is crawling with ants? Then, after much squashing, vacuuming, and mopping, when things seem to be finally calming down, your baby boy locks himself in his room, not once, but twice, and you can't find the only screwdriver small enough to pick the lock so you have to listen to him scream while you frantically search? And over it all, there is a little girl's voice shooting questions and suggestions at you and demanding answers to each of them so that you can't think and your brain starts to turn to mush and you begin to go cross-eyed with the effort of not imploding?
Yeah, that was my morning yesterday. That was why I didn't blog, didn't return phone calls, didn't really want to have much to do with anyone unless they were going to take my all of my responsibilities away from me for awhile.
I thought about moving to Australia.
Then I had this little bit of Scripture float through my memory. I've been memorizing James, and it is amazing how often verses will waft through my brain because I'm hiding them in my heart. In chapter four, there is a wonderful section about how we aren't in charge of ourselves. It says,
"Come now, you who say, 'Today or tomorrow we will go to such and such a city and spend a year there and engage in business and make a profit.' Yet you do not know what your life will be like tomorrow. You are just a vapor that appears for a little while and then vanishes away. Instead, you ought to say, 'If the Lord wills, we will live, and also do this or that.'"
This doesn't sound like the American way, where we pull ourselves up by our bootstraps and can do anything we put our minds to. It won't sound like a comfort unless you know my Saviour, but to me, this is a wonderfully restful passage. You see, we can plan, but we don't know the future. God does. How many times have we planned on doing something, but our plans were thwarted? Our plans are not necessarily His plans, and because He is all powerful, His plans will prevail. They've been determined since the beginning of of the world. Because He is Love, they will be the best plans for us. Jeremiah 29 tells us that God plans for our welfare, not evil, to bring us closer to Him. That is a wonderful thing to remember during hard times!
Realizing how temporal my time is {just a vapor} helped me to gain perspective on the events of the morning. They were fleeting and not quite as bad as my first impressions. Even though Jack was crying, he was much better than in recent days. His teeth had poked through. I conquered the ants {for the day}, and had a very clean kitchen floor to boot. I found the screwdriver, and put it over his door so that the next time I would be prepared {I've already used it twice since, little stinker}. And Ella really was trying to help, and was remarkably sweet through my glum outlook and snappy answers. I just couldn't see it.
Just so you know, today has been a better day, and, if the Lord wills, I will live, and stay in Wisconsin with them, even when they are stinkers.
Note: this is a post of my application of these Scriptures in this instance, and does not in any way exhaust the depth of these verses or concepts. I am merely journaling how they ministered to me this week and hope they provide encouragement to you.
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