Bad Stuff's Gonna Happen

I mean let's face it, bad stuff's definitely gonna happen. It's just a fact.

I was once asked by a family member, "how can you love a God who allowed you to get ms?" My response...He never said bad things weren't going to happen, but I couldn't imagine dealing with it without Him. And please don't think for a minute that I go through every day with hymns playing in my mind, free of worry and care. I can honestly say that I violate Matthew 25-27 on a consistent basis.

"Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more important than food, and the body more important than clothes? 26Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they? 27Who of you by worrying can add a single hour to his life?

I copied and pasted it here so I could read it yet again. I've mentally rewritten it to make it more applicable to my life. I don't worry about food or clothes. I have little to no fashion sense, so I wouldn't know enough to worry. I have a friend who wants to nominate me for What Not To Wear. She says it has nothing to do with my style. Oh honey, I may have holes in my head, but I don't have any lesions in the common sense compartment! Eating/drinking? Not an issue, unless Dunkin' Donuts goes out of business and can no longer manufacture coffee. Then it's Game Over!

My worries manifest themselves in the "what if" game. While I don't always partake in it, I do have my moments. God, in His faithfulness, always sends me numerous signs that speak to my worry. For example, yesterday morning, I had woken up all half in/half out of sleep. In my usual morning inventory, I found I could not move my right leg to the side of the bed. Enter PANIC! Oh no...this is it...right leg didn't show up for work and I'm not going to be able to get around well, what if the other leg doesn't show up for work tomorrow, in the words of my grandmom, "this is the worst day ever", husband's already off to work, kids need breakfast...and I'm out of Calgon! Turns out I had it caught up in my blanket and hadn't woken up enough to realize it. Duh.

But I thought of it periodically for much of the day. What if tomorrow's the day I wake up and that inventory doesn't check out? All this was bombarding my mind as I mowed my lawn, you know...the yard I used to mow with a push mower, but now need a Deere to care for...and the worries became so loud that I heard nothing BUT. I started to cry, couldn't quite see through the tears, got a little too close to the drainage ditch and woosh! Right on in it I went, mower stuck in the mud up past the bottom lip of the deck. I jumped off a la Pitfall, the 80s arcade game, and ran all the way up the yard to get my race watching husband. I lied to him and said I was driving along and got sucked into the ditch. He totally saw my tire marks that pretty much drove straight into the ditch. Hey I'm sorry! I retro'ed to little kid mode when I saw how annoyed he was. Truth be told, I get stuck a lot. It's the adventurer in me. I'm the girl who says, "I can make that...oh...no I can't".

The very long and silent walk to the running mower, stuck up to its green parts in quasi-quicksand, was rough. He was surely thinking how limitless his love is for me (not), and I was still in worry mode, thinking, "wonder if he would carry me around if my legs take a vacation". I was standing there entertaining the scenarios, while he was staring down the mower, formulating a plan, wrinkling up his mustache. And then God said, "be still!" Just then, my husband, aka "ox", got down in that ditch, grabbed the backend of the mower, and proceeded to move it up and out to freedom with his bare hands! I thought to myself, "if he can lift 495lbs, SURELY he can carry me!" Have I mentioned lately how much I heart my husband?

Ah yes, Lord...thank you for sending him to me, and for all the other times Your message comes through so clearly via my family and friends. It really helps to comfort me in the storms of life. I honestly have THE best family and friends ever.

And then there are those songs that continue to speak to me at just the right times. I wish Bible verses came to me as readily as song verses, but I guess it's all working toward the same end. This from Addison Road:

If everything comes down to love
Then just what am I afraid of
When I call out Your name
Something inside awakes in my soul
How quickly I forget I'm Yours
I am not my own
I've been carried by you my whole life

So yeah. Why am I afraid? If the inventory doesn't check out, am I not His? 'Course I am. My problem is that I have the head knowledge and something a dear friend and I call "God ego"...where I'm confident in Him. I still need to work on putting it in my heart. Like the title of the post says, bad stuff's gonna happen, but I have the best defense against anything this life can throw my way. Now if I could only stop taking morning inventory and commit myself to focusing solely on God's love for me, I might actually stop worrying! Then again, if I throw caution to the wind, jump up out of bed and a leg doesn't work, I might have to pencil roll all the way to the bathroom. In the morning, I have 2.2 seconds to make it in there before there's a flood. And if I miss the bathroom door and roll down the steps by accident...ok so that visual is kinda funny! Wouldn't be the first time I took a header down those steps...

Here's a link to that song, so you all may be equally blessed: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FjqZPaiYiRs