(First off, thank you to all of you for your sweet words of encouragement and prayers yesterday!)
I am pleased to say that yesterday did get better. I’m not pleased to say what it took. Immediately upon fixing my iPad I was in a better mood. Avelyn took a nap, she woke up and all was right in the world. My mother-in-law came down in the afternoon and Avelyn and I were able to be outside, and Matt managed to come home early.
Did you see that? Did you notice that? “MY iPad was working again and I was in a better mood.” Ouch. Yea. The entire morning’s drama was me. The whole problem was I was making everything about ME. My selfishness and fear of my iPad being broken resulted in Avelyn getting yelled at, at her lashing out, at my spewing hot lava everywhere. Tell me that isn’t convicting?!
“But for those who are self-seeking and who reject the truth and follow evil, there will be wrath and anger.”
Romans 2.8
There was certainly “wrath and anger” in this house, and it was all my own.
Yesterday I very “humbly” commented on a blog, the writer had lost something, and in the losing was thinking of all the other things she had been putting a side to work on what had been lost. I commented, saying:
“perhaps the losing is so you can realize that the truly important things have been neglected, that God is sending a message and you’ll find it again”.
I give fantastic advice! I should really take my own. I think the “breaking” of my iPad was more to point out that I very often let Me-isms dictate how I feel and how I react (not respond) to a situation. That in the ME moments, there is never any of Him, and nothing of any good can come from it.
Last night I read an awesome e-book, Hope for the Weary Mom: Where God Meets You in Your Mess
Their words brought so much of yesterday’s frustration to my mind; particularly my praying for whatever it was that I was praying for…I don’t even know what it was:
“Why do you love me?” he says. “Why are you following me? Is it because of what I can do for you, how I can meet your needs, or provide what you want? Or do you really love me for Who I AM?” –
Hope for the Weary Mom, page 267/461.
All that praying I was doing. I was asking God to help ME. My praying was about ME, what HE could DO for ME. It wasn’t about glorifying Him, or exalting Him, or asking Him to work in my heart. I was asking Him to make everything hunky-dory again, because I was totally screwing it up. *yea, ouch, again* What I needed was a “heart adjustment” as a friend called it.
My heart was filled with selfish. Nasty, vile selfish. Even my prayers were selfish.
Today has gone a thousand times better. I made sure to take the 2 minutes that were needed to get in His word, following the suggestion in Hope for the Weary Mom by reading the first chapter of Psalms and Proverbs.
And just to show how God was already taking care of the situation, my mother in law bought a zip-lock type bag specifically meant for iPads at the dollar store yesterday, she didn’t know anything about the avocado/headphone thing.
Do you find that the moments in which you struggle the most are the ones in which you’re serving yourself?
