Strangely, one of my earliest childhood memories, besides the Christmas I got a Baby Alive doll, was reading the words "Jackass" on the wall leading down to the basement of our home. My brother, six years older than me, had penned it there in his first or second grade handwriting.
It was my first known pregnancy. The first time I had seen a doctor to discuss this new life inside of me. I was excited and nervous. David and I had been married for six months when I learned I was pregnant. I had stopped taking birth control three months previously and took pregnancy tests religiously for the next three months.
Something has been stirring in my heart lately. I keep trying to put my finger on what it is exactly, and it's been difficult. It's like all of these pieces and parts in a large cauldron going round and round but not really making anything specific--just bits and pieces.
I'm struggling with how to start this blog post. Usually, I have all the words, but tonight none of them seem to articulate the thoughts and feelings I have inside of me regarding my first mission trip outside of the country.
I guess it was about five or six years ago. Pastor Doc Shell was my Senior Pastor at Christ Chapel in Florence, Alabama. If my memory serves me correctly, a team was either returning from a mission trip or we were sending a team out. I don't remember all the specifics. My home church has always been mission minded--to equip people and send them out into the world with the good news of Jesus.
David opened yesterday's staff meeting with this verse, "Seek God's will in all you do, and He will show you the path to take." Proverbs 3:6
He explained, as business owners, we are always seeking God for wisdom. The decisions we make are an attempt to make our business better for our employees and our customers. The decisions are never meant to make life harder for anyone. Much thought and meaning are behind them--and sometimes a few tears. We're the first to admit when a decision needs to be changed if we recognize it's not working well. It's not fun to fail, but it's necessary in learning what works and what doesn't.
While in the car scanning the stations, a radio announcer caught my attention with an interview he was conducting with an up and coming country musician. The musician sounded charming, so I stopped the scan and listened to what was being said. It was amusing and fun.
After the brief interview, the station returned to its regularly scheduled programming which involved an upbeat song. Whoa! Thirty seconds in, and I was glad my kids weren't in the car with me. I immediately changed the channel.
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.
One of my pet peeves is hearing people say about themselves, “I’m not creative.” I hear it a lot in my profession. It’s a lie so many believe. I’ve begun to find great joy in pointing out to self-proclaimed non-creatives how creative he/she really is. Tell me what you have done during any given week, and I guarantee you I can show you how you exercised creativity.
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?
