Live Life

Some days are wonderful, dreamy, enchanting. Other days make you feel like an untied balloon. You get blown up, then depleted, then blown up, then depleted. It's the days that keep you on your toes that remind you of what life truly is.
For me, each day is a reminder of who I am in Christ, and what He has created me to be. If I believe that He has created me to someday fulfill the role of wife and mother, than cleaning up toddlers potty training messes, dealing with clogged sinks, sopping up the floods from leaky laundry pipes, filling book orders and all the other eventful situations that can pop up in a day are a blessing. They are a training ground for the role God has me to fulfill.
Right now, my role is to serve in my family. If while I serve my family I am preparing for my future role, then it's all BLESSING.  - I just have to keep reminding myself of that fact every few minutes.

God created me to serve, to help others, to follow Him and to spread the Gospel.
As I was cleaning up steamy litter stew (the cat litter box got filled with water from the leaking pipe) I was reminded of a movie we once watched about a missionary lady in Africa. I wish I could remember her name, but it has escaped my mind. In the village that she and her husband were working there was a dump. Not a nice green bin, but a mountain of filth and garbage. It was in that dump that the poorest, sickest people lived. No missionary had ever gone there because of how terrible the flies were. But, this lady knew that these people needed to hear the gospel just as much as everyone else. So, she went there. She wore no mask, rather she held the little filthy, naked children in her arms. She did not wear a look of disgust, but of love and care.

I got to thinking, if I can't clean out a litter box, or some messy underpants, what's going to happen when God calls me into the filthiest of places to spread His name.

My problem is often not that I don't know how I should be reacting to frustrating situations, but that I choose not to be thankful. When I'm thankful then suddenly all these problems don't seem so bad. As I scrubbed litter boxes out, I suddenly had a reason to be happy.
I was thankful.
I was thankful for the homemade drain-o recipe that my Mom and sister were using in our clogged drains.
I was thankful for a scrub brush so I didn't have to use my bare hands.
I was thankful that my little brother at least had a desire to clean up his own mess.
I was thankful for power sprayers.
I was thankful for the beautiful day.

Then I laughed.
Because really, when it's all said and done, my crazy morning could put Shakespeare's "Comedy of Errors" to shame.

Life is not a china vase. It's meant to be lived. When we live in a state of thankfulness we come to find out that all along we weren't really living it to the fullest.

Now the messes are cleaned, the book orders are packaged, the emails sent out. Now I can breathe. But I feel wonderful. I'm not crabby and angry like I normally would feel after a morning like this. I feel happy. God opened my eyes and showed me all the gifts in my morning. Yeah, I had to wash away a lot of filth and grim to see them - literally. But now that I see them, I wonder how it is that I usually miss them.

I am blessed!

I AM BLESSED BEYOND MEASURE!!!
And so are you.