Surrender for Joy By Betsy

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

Joyfully Patient By Betsy Barnes

My daughter, Betsy, a pastor's wife and mother of three, enjoys blogging for close friends and family. Her writing is insightful and uplifting, so, with her permission, I will publish her posts from time to time. You can read them all under Betsy Barnes on the left side of this page.

Patient. According to Webster it means not easily made angry; calm; not hasty. Being patient or having patience means the quality of enduring with calmness; quiet perseverance.

Wow.

Patience is not one of my virtues. I try to be patient. Sometimes. Not nearly as often as I should, though. Impatience grips its tentacles around my chest and seems to pull at the very heart of me. This is why I never tarried long with my lessons in sewing. Or embroidering. Or art of any kind. I'd rather be doing countless other things. Like reading. But even in reading, a seemingly harmless and maybe even beneficial hobby, I'm impatient. Just ask my husband or my mom. They'll tell you how I stay up too late finishing a book. As a kid it was pretty harmless as my books were short and I had very few important responsibilities to handle the next day. But now my books are often 400-500 pages long and I have 3 very important responsibilities to handle every day. They are early birds, so sleeping late isn't an option!

My impatience is carried into all aspects of my life. Moving into a new house (closing day couldn't come fast enough), getting new shelves built and put up, pictures hung, paint on the walls (I haven't even unpacked all of the boxes yet!), waiting for my kids to decide what snack they want (does it really take 10 minutes to decide between pudding and apples?). When I feel the tentacles reach for my chest I try to take deep breaths and remind myself not to use the sharp side of my tongue when I speak. I'm embarrassed to admit that the deep breathing doesn't always work-- I'm especially embarrassed when I remember this:

Proverbs 14:29 He that is slow to wrath is of great understanding: but he that is hasty of spirit exalteth folly.

There's that word 'hasty' again. Anytime I hear hasty I think of Ents from the Lord of the Rings (yes, I'm a LOTR geek). Those of you who are not lucky enough to have read the novels or to have seen the movies might not know what the Ents are. They are talking trees. But they talk very slowly and make decisions very slowly. I don't mean they talk slowly as in with a Texas drawl... I can appreciate a good, drawn out howdy. I mean that it takes them a long time to say anything. It took them several hours to simply greet each other with a proper Ent “Good mornin', y'all”. The young hobbits that found them were, as the Ent shepherd put it, much too hasty. The hobbits didn't understand the Ents' ways and begged for important decisions and actions to be made immediately. But the Ents understood the importance of being diligent and not doing anything until they had vetted every aspect of the issue. They did eventually enter the war against Sauran and bring down Saruman's tower, but it was not done until they agreed that there was a need to do so. I believe it took them 3 days to make this decision while it took the hobbits mere seconds to decide they were going on the “mission... quest... thing”. They didn't even know what they would be doing, where they were going or for what cause they would be fighting. The war was dangerous but they never stopped to think about the consequences.

Perhaps spending an entire morning to say hello is a bit much, but JRR Tolkien (the author) was making the same point as the author of Proverbs... don't be hasty. What exactly is the problem with being hasty? Well, the Hebrew word for folly is anoia and means 'want of understanding'. So those of us who tend to be impatient, those of us who are hasty, are actually exalting, or praising, 'want of understanding'. The bottom line: We praise foolishness.

Looking at it in that light makes me completely feel the abundance of foolishness that I daily exhibit. We are often warned about what happens when we pray for patience. So the next time I feel impatience grabbing at me, I'll not pray for patience. Instead, I'll pray that God will help me to no longer exalt folly. I'll pray that I will have joy in remaining calm and patient.

I have a long road ahead of me.