Feeling a Bit Like Job

I've had plenty of opportunity to practice what I've been preaching this week. It seems that Satan has taken my first blog posts of the week as a personal challenge. On a scale of 1 to 10, I'd have to rank yesterday as about a 0. If it could go wrong yesterday, it did. I was in tears by the end of the day.

I woke up to the wonderful present of dog puke on my family room floor -- and it wasn't even my dog. We're dog-sitting this week, and our visitng dog -- a beautiful and well-behaved golden retriever named Bunny -- ate our dog's food. Not an issue normally, but she's allergic to his food, so she threw it up.

While dealing with the dog puke, my oldest daughter got up. She had pink eyes with bags under them and had been up half the night because her ears hurt. She had already missed one day of school this week and been to the doctor, but it was pretty clear she would be staying home and we would be going to the doctor. This would normally not be a problem because I work from home. But, yesterday, I was supposed to teach Bible study in the morning and go into the office to work in the afternoon.

After her doctor's visit where we came home with eye drops and antibiotics, my wonderful mom volunteered to watch my oldest so I could go to work. There were a few other extremely trying moments in my morning that I promised my oldest I would not share in a public forum. Suffice it to say that by the time I went to work, I was feeling a bit like Job. I was afraid to even ask what could happen next for fear we'd end up in the emergency room.

Clearly, the things that I'd shared on this blog this week were hitting home and turning someone toward God. And just as clearly, Satan was working overtime in my life to make me throw up my hands and quit. You see, just like with Job, Satan wants us to be ineffective in our faith. When Satan asked to test Job, he asked "“Does Job fear God for nothing?” Satan replied. “Have you not put a hedge around him and his household and everything he has? You have blessed the work of his hands, so that his flocks and herds are spread throughout the land. But now stretch out your hand and strike everything he has, and he will surely curse you to your face.” (Job 1:9-11)


God didn't stretch out His hand and strike everything Job had, but He did allow Satan to test Job. Some of the things Job went through were horrific. He lost his family. He became ill. He lost his wealth. Satan's main goal for Job was the same goal he has for us -- if he can't make us turn away from God, then he wants us to be so busy questioning God and putting out fires that we don't want to turn to God for comfort.

I'll be honest, several times yesterday, I thought about what I had written this week and thought "Why did I do that?" It seems no matter what I write about, I quickly find an opportunity to practice it in my own life. Yesterday, I was struggling to find the feathers of faithfulness that I had written about early in the morning.

Yet, I had something that Job didn't have -- good friends who believe mightily in God's faithfulness. Job's friends told him to curse God and be done with it. Job not only had to fight his own doubts and frustrations to trust in God's faithfulness, he had to fight against his friends really bad advice.

When things continued to go badly after I got off from work last night, I called a good friend of mine. She listened to my frustrations, commiserated mightily and promised to pray. After I finally got the girls to bed, my next door neighbor and I went for a walk. Despite the late hour, she was willing to walk the neighborhood with me and the dogs, listen to my pathetic story and offer encouragement and laughter. I came home feeling better about my life and like I might be able to tackle another day tomorrow.

Without those two girls, I probably would have curled up in my bed and cried myself to sleep last night. As it turned out, I even managed to have a halfway decent conversation with my husband before we went to bed.

Because, sometimes, even for adults, God's faithfulness is hard to find. Some days, it's all you can do to survive, and you simply need someone else to remind you of God's promises. You need someone to be the arms of God, to offer you a tangible reminder. That's where our friends come in. God provides us with friends because He knows this life is too hard to do it by yourself.

Proverbs 27:10 says "Do not forsake your friend or a friend of your family, and do not go to your relative’s house when disaster strikes you— better a neighbor nearby than a relative far away." Friends matter, and they make our lives a better place in the midst of a disastrous day. They become the tangible hands and feet of Jesus to remind us of God's presence in our lives when we can't seem to find it.

I'm thankful for those friends in my life, and I hope you'll take a minute and thank Him for those people you call friends in your life, too.

At the End of My Rope

I pray in the shower nearly every morning. Some days, it's the only time of my day that I get entirely to myself. Yesterday morning, my prayer went something like this:

"Dear God, I appreciate the confidence you have in my ability to handle things, but don't you think we've had enough? My hands are rope-burned from slipping down this rope, and it appears the knot at the bottom that is holding me up is beginning to fray. Could you please make my kids well, my deadlines met and make me be a nice person again?"

Perhaps not the most inspiring prayer, but it was honest. You see, I can't remember the last time both my kids went to school for an entire week. I think it was sometime before spring break. Amoxicillin has become the sixth food group around here. I haven't had a full night's sleep in a while. I'm behind on my deadlines for a freelance project. I'm not sure when the last time my kitchen floor got mopped was. And our family is dealing long-distance with all the emotions involved in moving my grandmother into a nursing home facility today.

Our Easter Sunday started with my husband and I going to church mad at each other. Despite the beautiful exterior of our family in their new Easter dresses, we were defnitely not in a joyful mood. The stress of the past few weeks has definitely caught up with me. Many evenings, I don't want to treasure the moments with my kids -- I just want them to go to bed.

None of the things that have happened in our family are huge or terrible, but the combined weight of all of them has turned this once loving and happy mom into something of a shrew. And you know what happens when mom's attitude is out of whack, right? Everyone's attitude begins to need an adjustment.

Now that I've shattered any illusions you might have had about what goes on in our house, I want to share with you the verse that I'm clinging to these days. It's a short verse, but a great reminder of from where our strength comes. Ephesians 6:10 says "Finally, be strong in the Lord and in his mighty power."

You see, that rope I'm clinging to? It's going to fray and swing with the trials of life. No matter how many knots I tie in it, they're going to come undone. All the little burdens of life are going to eventually be too much weight for my grip to handle, and I'm going to fall. Unless I'm letting God put his hands over mine, and I'm using his power to give me strength.

So often, when trouble heads my way, the first thing I try to do is solve it myself. You know what these past weeks have taught me? I control very little, and I certainly don't have enough strength to keep from falling. I don't even have enough strength on my own to control my attitude. I need God. I need the power that He offers because on my own I will fail. Every. Single. Time.

So, when life has you feelling like your rope is fraying and you feel like you're headed over the cliff, tap into the only source of power that's going to keep you going. Join me in throwing up your hands and letting God take over. Because His power is more than enough to handle the accumulated weight of all those little things that are causing your rope to fray. It's His power that will allow you to once again find joy in your role, and your family will thank you.

Mercies in Disguise

I heard a new song on the radio the other day called Blessings, sung by Laura Story. The words to the song so stunned me that I nearly had to pull over the car to listen. If you haven't heard it, check it out here:

The words to the chorus are:

‘Cause what if your blessings come through raindrops

What if Your healing comes through tears

What if a thousand sleepless nights

Are what it takes to know You’re near

What if trials of this life are Your mercies in disguise

I know that God uses difficult things in our lives to help us grow, but this gave me a whole new perspective on the tough stuff that happens in life. Now, God never causes bad things to happen to us, but He doesn't always stop things from happening. The consequences of sin are that we live in an imperfect world with death, disease and tragedy.

But this song made me stop and reflect on the fact that sometimes it takes those things to get my attention. Sometimes in order to get as close to God as possible it takes a tragedy for me to draw near to Him. Sometimes the trials of this life are His mercies in disguise. I look back at moments in my life when I've dealt with stuff that at that moment I could not possibly believe I would find good in, but I find that those are the moments when my relationship with God grew the most.

If you look back on those moments in your life when you were at your lowest, you will probably find that God was right there with you, carrying you along. You may have felt closer to God at your lowest low than you did at your highest high.

Teaching our kids to look for God in the midst of trouble is an important part of helping them mature as Christ followers. Following Jesus doesn't put some magic shield around us that keeps us from dealing with any of the tragedy that happens in this imperfect world. Our kids need to know that God is there in the good times and the bad times, and they can rely on Him on all the time.

• When things don't go your child's way, remind them that God is always near. Draw your child a picture of a fork in the road. Explain that every time we hit a crisis, we can go down one of two paths. We can walk the road with God or we can walk away from God. God never moves, but we choose to walk beside Him or far away from Him. Walking the road with Him doesn't mean that the crisis will go away, but it does mean we can draw on God's wisdom and love as we walk that road.

• When your child is in the midst of a crisis, pray with her. Show her how to ask God to be with her and to help her deal with whatever comes her way. Ask God to be visible in the way He shows His love to her. Ask for wisdom in dealing with the issue.
• After the crisis has passed, help your child identify ways in which he grew through the crisis. Talk about anything good that has come out of dealing with the issue. Ask your child how he feels about how God helped him throughout the crisis. By identifying the ways in which God used something bad to create something good, you help your child see God at work. Remind your child of Romans 8:28, which says "All things work together for good for those who love Him."

Whatever crisis you're facing today or will face in the future, keep in mind that sometimes difficult things allow us to see God more clearly and feel His presence more keenly. They are His mercies in disguise.