I am going to tell you about my day.
It began by me waking up at my sister and brother-in-laws
house. They are out of town and I
nominated myself as their house sitter.
The best part about nominating yourself for this type of position is
that it gives you the freedom to come and go as you please and host dinner
parties and reunite with the bed you became so attached to after a year of
living there. My sister and
brother-in-law are very gracious to give me such freedom with their house.
I ate breakfast, made French press coffee, read my Bible and
wrote in my journal and finished the entry off by saying “Jesus I pray that you
would kick Satan’s butt today! All
day! I love you Jesus! You are so powerful! Amen.” (The kick Satan’s butt part is apparently a phrase that a
fun, boisterous lady from my church at home says that my mom shared with me
last night and I’ve decided that I like it a lot)
Then I went to work to begin a day full of a task that has
pretty much been the bane of my existence for the past few weeks. Water toys. Kids, I realized that they are fun to play with when they
are in the water. I myself have found
joy in playing on them from time to time.
But once they are out of the water and they need to be scrubbed and
dried and sprayed with vinyl protectant, their fun decreases
exponentially. It takes all I have
in me to not find the nearest box cutter or pocket knife or sharp rock and rip
them to shreds. They have a
tendency to bring out the worst in me.
But, I knew the end was near. So I wasn’t dreading it too much.
In the chilliness of the morning, while listening to the
Pride and Prejudice soundtrack to make the early morning experience seem more
magical, we tackled the project of getting the 40-foot blob ready to be put in
storage. That experience really
wasn’t too bad.
The next thing we had to do caused me to utter something to
the effect of, “ I’m not big on strategy.
I don’t want to stand here and strategize about the best way to do this. I just want people to think of an idea,
do it, and if it doesn’t work, do something else until we get it done. We just need to do.” I think I have known this about myself
for a while but having those words come out of my mouth were somehow really
freeing. I finally realized why
working with certain people is so interesting and sometimes difficult for
me. Because most of the time, I
don’t care about doing something the right way the first time. I don’t want to talk about or scheme or
plan. I just want to do until we
figure it out. Hmm…this is good
for me to know.
Then it was lunchtime.
I was invited to go on a lunchtime walk with two co-workers. I was excited to do this. I like these people and I wanted to do
this with them. But things worked
out funny and it didn’t end up working out for me to walk with them. And that’s when the day started going
downhill. And quickly. It was such a small thing but I took it
personally and it hurt my feelings.
I started having all these thoughts about how they probably
did this on purpose to make sure I wasn’t with them so they didn’t have to be
around me because they enjoy being with each other WAY MORE than they like
being with me. I felt
unwanted. Unlikable. Ugly. Pitiful. I
started having all these doubts about myself. I felt like nobody liked me. It was crap.
All crap. I was thinking
crap thoughts and I felt like crap.
Then, the job of water toy cleaning got more
complicated. People were offering
suggestions and I took it as them thinking the decisions I had made and the
ideas I had were stupid. I was
frustrated and annoyed. I ended
the day feeling so defeated.
I started the day right. I talked with Jesus.
I read His Word and got something from it. But I failed.
All day I was task driven and terrible. I was a bull on a mission. I wanted this job done. I was sick of these water toys. I no longer cared about being nice to the people that were
helping me. I cared about getting
it done, and quickly. I hate it
when this happens. Hate it. But God is so good! He is so gentle with me, with us, when
we fail.
You see, there is something that I have been praying for off
an on for awhile but in the last week and a half or so I have been praying even
more fervently for it/about it. I
have talked to God about it a lot.
I have journaled about it a lot.
I didn’t know what to do, but I knew I needed to pray and seek the
truth.
Last night, I took a nap for a little bit. I woke up and suddenly I felt God
speaking to me saying, “Change is coming.
Change is coming soon.”
And you know what?
Today, in that situation, change has come! Praise God! He
is so at work! Things are not suddenly
perfect. There is more to be done
and there will be pain in the process, but change is here! So even though I failed to be a vessel
of God’s love and joy today, change is here.
And seeing that change reminds me that God is not done with
me yet. Because he’s changing me,
little by little, and some days even big chunks at a time, because he cares for
me and loves me too much to let me rot in the pit I create for myself. Praise God!
2 Corinthians 5:17
Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the
old has gone, the new has come!
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