I
had one of those days yesterday. It started at 4:45 a.m. and didn't
end until 9:00 p.m. There was a mile long list of things to do and it
seemed that everything was resisting my ability to complete the list.
The kids fought all day long, I don't have enough shelving for all my
storage boxes, the vacuum is going out on me, my hair dryer is
smoking... and that was just part of it! Collin dumped out a bottle
of canola oil on my kitchen floor and a bottle of soap on my living
room floor. He also unfolded a bunch of folded laundry. Neither of
the kids wanted to help put away all their toys. The parsnips kept
burning while I was frying them. Cory didn't want to nap. Michael got
home and told me that he had to work on a report for the church
finance meeting the next day (which means I wouldn't get a reprieve
from dealing with the kids AND the household stuff).
By
4:45 p.m. I was ready to give up! I was struggling to keep my temper
in check and found it difficult to resist crawling into bed until
morning. My day was far from over... I still had several things on
the to do list and knew that it would take several more hours to
finish it all.
I
was less than joyful. And about the time I was finished cooking
supper... and was giving myself a grand pity party... I realized that
my day was so terrible because I let it be so terrible. Getting in my
own way of joy. Again. A whole day wasted in a bad mood because of my
poor attitude.
So,
instead of letting the kids eat by themselves while I scrambled to
get the kitchen clean and finish up that to do list, I sat down, ate
my colcannon shepherd's pie and thought about how to get my joy back.
And I remembered one of the first verses that I memorized as a child:
Proverbs
3:5 Trust in the Lord with all thine heart; and lean not into thine
own understanding.
I
didn't surrender any of these problems to the Lord and, so, I didn't
trust Him. I was trying, and failing, to do everything on my own.
There's no room for joy in my heart when my heart won't surrender its
problems to Him. I have to trust Him to work everything out.
Basically, I have to mind my own business. It's His business to work
out finances to buy a new vacuum. He knows we don't have the extra
money right now but, if He wants us to buy one, He'll send us a way.
My heart cannot be light and joyful if I refuse to trust Him with my
problems.
You
might be saying that God has bigger problems to deal with... my
broken down vacuum cleaner isn't exactly high priority. To that I
say-- are any of our problems big to God? The same God can be trusted
to deal with the safety of my family AND my financial ability to
purchase household items. He knows the number of hairs on my head. He
knows the number of babies in NICU. Are the hairs on my head more
important than the babies? Nope. But He still knows them all.
My
kids might have fought all day, but I have to trust that the Lord
will help them remember that it's better to be kind to one another
than it is to constantly fight one another. My vacuum cleaner might
die on me this week, but He knows we need clean carpet! The parsnips
might burn while I'm trying to clean up canola oil, but there's
really nothing I can do about that. I'll just trust Him with our
supper and do the best I can (which sometimes means starting all over
again).
After
I reasoned through my day's problems and remembered that they are,
after all, small trees in a giant forest, I was able to get started
on my list again... this time with a MUCH better attitude! When the
list-doing got interrupted I worked through it, gave it to the Lord
and got back to my list. It took a while, but everything got checked
off the list and I joyfully went to bed.
My
evening turned out to be much more peaceful... and more joyful...
than my day! Betsy
No comments:
Post a Comment