Pecked by a big duck

Some days you just have one of those days. Do you know what I mean? You got out of bed, the sun was shining and then…. you make a mistake that takes more effort than you would like to spend on fixing said mistake, plus you feel really bad about having made the mistake to begin with. Then you get notified of a problem that should have been solved months ago but the person who promised they had fixed the issue actually hadn’t done a thing so now not only have you been lied to but your problem is still there. So what do you do?
I called my mom and whined, so don’t do what I did. Then I got to work on fixing my mistake and I asked God for help so I would know how to fix my mistake. Then I went to deal with the person who had left me with a problem that they had sworn they had fixed. (I’m not being petty, the problem was costing me financially.) As I was debating on which ‘YOU LIED TO ME!’ Emoji looked the most condescending I felt a Holy Spirit twinge. That feeling that says, ‘hang on. Don’t do it that way.’ That feeling led me to finding the phone number of the person in charge, and being able to deal with my problem directly. I am also proud to say that I did not even mention the name of the person who had being screwing me over to their boss, not once….almost….but I didn’t do it! When I got home my problems and mistakes were on the mend and I could see how God had led me to the right solutions for all of them.
That’s what God does. He doesn’t always stop us from having bad things happen, but He does help us through them in ways that help us see Him. There will always be things that make us feel like were being pecked away at slowly by a duck, but those things will fade and sometimes we might look back and realize how truly minor our pecks were. Don’t let the pecks drag you down, shoo the duck away and keep walking!

So cool

My old math tutor, (I hate math, I have no shame in having had a tutor,) said to me once, “you don’t have to keep worrying about being cool after you stop being fourteen.” She was speaking of herself and a rather unattractive, yet warm, jacket she was wearing. I laughed. It was a laugh at the sad reality that hit me when she spoke those words, she was wrong. We try so hard in this world to be – for want of a better word – cool. We want the coolest toys, the coolest tools, the coolest jobs, the coolest friends; and like a seagull at McDonalds, society feeds us these things.

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“All you neighbors have it.”
“Every actress is drinking it.”    
“Every great man should own this.”

Even your everyday fellow shopper standing in line, “so what do you do for a living?”
You tell them,
“Oh really? Why not get a real job?”
………really guys?
Either you’ve heard this happen, or have been unfortunate enough to have it happen to you.
Ladies and gentlemen! You are great! You! As yourself! Doing what you do! You are God’s creation! Let me hear an ‘amen’ if that is good enough for you! …….Silence?
That’s the problem. God’s plan, the role He has given you for your life is no longer good enough, simply because some random person says so. That is sad don’t you think?
Who are we trying to impress? If we aren’t making God smile than who are we doing it for? Ourselves? Hm. Good point. Because God said ‘do everything that is right according to Lauren, and in all your ways make her happy.’ Oh, no, I suppose He didn’t say that.
Now that everyone is offended let me get to my point. It is totally fine to make yourself happy. But at what cost? Is trying to look cool, act cool or hang out with the ‘cool’ group making you truly happy? Or is it adding a lot of stress and work to your life? Or worse of all, is it taking away from who God intended you to be? The world doesn’t need another super star, it needs a -you-. Whoever you are, whatever you do, we out here need you! Let who God made you be enough. Let the fact that God loves you and is proud of you be all you need. After your fourteen, you don’t have to keep being cool anyway!

Sometimes we get what we want only to realize that it’s not what we need. God sometimes gives us what we want, but He always gives us what we need. Look at the Lord’s Prayer; it asked for provision and protection, help with our own needs to be better Christians and forgiveness for times when we aren’t the Christians we should be. Does it ask for a bigger house? Does it ask for new shoes? A cooler car? A fancier job title? Nope. The only time the prayer (that Jesus told His followers to pray) asks for anything that is not a direct need for daily life, it asks for God’s will to be done. It could easily be argued that Jesus prayed for a lot of things and that this was just one prayer that He recommended, but I am simply using it as an example not an argument. My point is, what we want isn’t always what we need. Sometimes what we want is a tropical vacation, but what we need is to fix the foundation of the house we own. We could not know about the foundational needs of the house and end up going on the tropical vacation anyways and then later when we discover the problem with our house our money has already been spent on the vacation. Jesus always knows what we need. He sees everything that is going to happen. So, when what we want comes up, sometimes He stops us from having it because He knows that it will get in the way of what we need and in the end what we need is always more important than what we want. It’s not necessarily a happy thought, however, it is something that I am sure has happened to you in the past, because I know it has happened to me. There have been things that I have wanted with all my heart, but for some reason God didn’t answer those prayers; then later the need arises and I realize, If I had had my want, I wouldn’t have been able to deal with my need. Just a little food for thought.

White

The color white is a favorite of mine, probably because my first dog (whom I adore) was white. One thing about the color white that you learn quickly (especially if it’s on a pet) is that it stains really easily! My white little dog would sometime come back quite green or black from walks, sometimes both. As Christians we are washed white as wool from the scarlet stains of our sin, but can we become stained again? Of course. Sin never ceases, it’s part of life. We try hard not to get grass on our white robes but we trip and fall and then, oops, grass stains. Jesus forgives us daily so daily we must repent and turn back to Him. My mom once said, “it seems there is never a day without laundry,” I wonder if Jesus feels the same? Yet, like our loving parent, Jesus washes us clean again and then guards us as we venture back outside, knowing full well we will come back dirty again, but we have to keep growing and we can’t do that unless we go into the world and trust Jesus to love us enough to guide us and clean us up when we fall.