All in Encouragement
My seven year old said he had something to show me. He was sitting at the table with a smooth, blank sheet of paper. He said, "See this paper. When someone says something hurtful to you," he bends the corner of the paper, "it looks like this. Crinkled." He went on, his demeanor serious, instructional, "And then the next person hurts you," he begins to wad up the paper, "and it does this to you." He repeated this several times until the paper was a legitimate ball of crinkled mess.
A nasty cold as my temporary companion, I find myself sitting for a little longer than normal leading to much needed contemplation and reflection. There's laundry to do, and I noticed today that my bathroom floor is overdue for a good get on my hands and knees scrubbing. But it can wait.
Some of you know our business fell victim to a scam by a fake customer, "Sam Statler." We lost close to $14,000. Basically, a potential customer placed an order, and gave us a credit card which we processed. When the money from the credit card cleared our bank, we processed a wire transfer to a "freight forwarder" for the freight costs which is common place in our line of business as an importer. This practice is something we have done many times before without even a blink.
If we overcome the obstacles in this world, we get to sit down with God on His throne in the next. Isn't that powerful? To know our reward for fighting until the final round is to sit down, to finally rest, with our Heavenly Father. I don't know about you, but that promise makes me ready for another round.
This week has been one of those weeks you don’t want to repeat. It seemed as though one problem stacked against another problem forming an impermeable wall of stress and despair.
As I type these words, I think to myself, "What a cliché topic." I get tired of it, quite frankly, but my feelings about it doesn’t make it go away.
Have you ever had a time in your life when you've asked, "God, if you want me to be successful, why is it so hard?
This week, David and I have gotten one piece of bad news after another creating a string of frustration and disheartened demeanors.
It was happening. I could feel all of the physical symptoms surge through my body. It had been quite some time since the last time this had happened. Probably six months or so ago. But it was definitely happening.
"Well, here I go again," I thought to myself as I boarded a tiny eight passenger plane heading home. "I can do this. I'm going to be fine."
"I had lunch with a homeless man," my husband said when he called me earlier this week from Atlanta. "I'm walking back to the market right now, but I thought I would call and let you know."
I was walking down the sidewalk with my two boys on a normal summer day when I heard music playing in a nearby park. It was a song you used to sing with your band. Each lyric I heard stirred up an emotion deep inside and turning it into tears filling my eyes. Tears hidden by my sunglasses. Tears I didn't allow to escape, because I was in public. Tears I didn’t want to release, because I didn’t want my boys to be upset.
Have you ever had someone hurt you deeply? I have. Have you ever had a hard time forgiving someone even though you knew you had to do so? I have.
When someone hurts us, it can be hard to forgive and even harder to forget. What if the person who hurt us made a mistake and has legitimately changed? Do you still hold the wrong they did to you over their heads?
My oldest is very creative, but he wasn't feeling it lately. For three days, he would say to me, "I don't feel creative." It was making him sad.
We had a talk about our identity not coming from what we could do, and we talked about not letting our emotions control us. Feelings can't always be trusted. A hard lesson to learn for some.
A little over a year ago, my marriage was attacked when we were least expecting it. Before I knew it, I felt like I was drowning in a sea of confusion. Every day was a gasp for air as I tried to sift through and separate the truth of God from the lies of the enemy. When we are weak and broken, it can be hard to decide what is true. It can feel impossible.
Work has been a wild race the past couple of weeks. It's like Christmas, but it's Mother's Day gifts and cards and Cemetery Arrangements instead of Christmas trees, glitz, and glitter. Life, in general, seems to be crazy in May. No one seems immune to all the hustle and bustle the end of the school year brings.
