This was a Monday straight out of The Carpenters song: Rainy Days and Mondays. Ok, not entirely because if you google the lyrics, there's a lot of walking around with nuthin to do and feeling like a clown. On the contrary, I had more than my fair share to do, and I don't know how clowns feel because they scare me, so I prefer not to think about them at all. Here's how my rainy Monday went down: We discovered a roof leak in the closet, above my side and all my stuff. Then, as I'm stepping out of the shower, my husband ushers the 130 pound dog who had an accident in her crate into the shower with me. Have you bathed a Great Dane in the shower? Oh, you don't own a gigantic house horse? Picture the hairiest adult you know wreaking of urine on all fours in your shower. It's your job to soap him up and make sure the underside is thoroughly rinsed even though you do not have a hand held sprayer to do that job. Super fun, right?!
Next, I cleaned out the potty crate, which took an entire roll of paper towels and involved me getting stuck (not because of my size, but I have a bad knee still healing from surgery). Feel free to replace my vivid shower imagery with a grown woman wriggling out of a dog crate with drippy wads of paper towels. You know what, we should move on. Don't picture any of that. The girl child had a screaming meltdown at breakfast because her big brother hid her shoes. One was in the freezer and the other in the mop bucket. She was still bawling in the car about her cold foot and her smelly mop water foot. So I drove three fighting children to school, took myself to the doctor where I got x-rayed and sentenced to six more weeks in my fabulous knee brace that seems to provoke strangers to make the oddest comments to me about my condition. That's a whole blog of its own for another day. As I left the doctor's office, the school called me to pick up a sick kid. I had just enough time to discover water seeping out of a wall at home before the boy and I proceeded to wait in another doctor's office for 2 hours. In the meantime, my husband was texting me pictures of the dry wall he had to cut to expose a leaking pipe. My stress level maxed out when my kid started leaping off the exam table using our umbrella as his parachute. I had checked the hallway multiple times to be see if they remembered we were still there, and upon finding no one at all to help me, I finally walked out, told the receptionist it was unfair to make a sick kid wait that long, and asked for my copay to be refunded. I did not storm out. I calmly informed her that we wouldn't be waiting any longer.
Next, I cleaned out the potty crate, which took an entire roll of paper towels and involved me getting stuck (not because of my size, but I have a bad knee still healing from surgery). Feel free to replace my vivid shower imagery with a grown woman wriggling out of a dog crate with drippy wads of paper towels. You know what, we should move on. Don't picture any of that. The girl child had a screaming meltdown at breakfast because her big brother hid her shoes. One was in the freezer and the other in the mop bucket. She was still bawling in the car about her cold foot and her smelly mop water foot. So I drove three fighting children to school, took myself to the doctor where I got x-rayed and sentenced to six more weeks in my fabulous knee brace that seems to provoke strangers to make the oddest comments to me about my condition. That's a whole blog of its own for another day. As I left the doctor's office, the school called me to pick up a sick kid. I had just enough time to discover water seeping out of a wall at home before the boy and I proceeded to wait in another doctor's office for 2 hours. In the meantime, my husband was texting me pictures of the dry wall he had to cut to expose a leaking pipe. My stress level maxed out when my kid started leaping off the exam table using our umbrella as his parachute. I had checked the hallway multiple times to be see if they remembered we were still there, and upon finding no one at all to help me, I finally walked out, told the receptionist it was unfair to make a sick kid wait that long, and asked for my copay to be refunded. I did not storm out. I calmly informed her that we wouldn't be waiting any longer.
Thankfully, the plumber came quickly to fix the pipe and turn the water back on, but my bad day didn't let up even a hair until my husband came home with dinner in hand. At one point in the midst of disaster, I read my Bible app verse of the day: "But the Holy Spirit produces fruit in our lives: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. There is no law against these things!" (Galatians 5:22-23, NLT)
Oh great. I had failed to show fruits of the spirit as I dealt with a crummy day. Then I realized, in some ways, I had shown extreme patience. Walking away from the doctor's office when I was about to lose that patience, was a show of self control. I spared an unsuspecting health care worker an unpleasant unleashing of frustration by leaving before it erupted. Two out of nine fruits! Perhaps a godlier woman wouldn't erupt in the first place, but I'm betting that woman didn't start her day with a Great Dane in her shower and her head in a crate full of pee. Sometimes we all need to walk away before we have to apologize for losing our cool. Today I will try again to show love, joy, gentleness, patience, faithfulness, peace, kindness, goodness, and self-control. But I have to preface physical therapy, which I dread, with a trip to the hardware store so we can patch a giant hole in the wall, so there's a good chance I will be met with opportunities to drop the ball again. In that case, I can hold onto 2 Corinthians 12:8 where God says, "My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness." I certainly give The Father plenty of room for perfection because I have SOOO much weakness, but we survived a rainy Monday together, and He will make up for my shortcomings many more times before the sun pokes its face out again.
Oh great. I had failed to show fruits of the spirit as I dealt with a crummy day. Then I realized, in some ways, I had shown extreme patience. Walking away from the doctor's office when I was about to lose that patience, was a show of self control. I spared an unsuspecting health care worker an unpleasant unleashing of frustration by leaving before it erupted. Two out of nine fruits! Perhaps a godlier woman wouldn't erupt in the first place, but I'm betting that woman didn't start her day with a Great Dane in her shower and her head in a crate full of pee. Sometimes we all need to walk away before we have to apologize for losing our cool. Today I will try again to show love, joy, gentleness, patience, faithfulness, peace, kindness, goodness, and self-control. But I have to preface physical therapy, which I dread, with a trip to the hardware store so we can patch a giant hole in the wall, so there's a good chance I will be met with opportunities to drop the ball again. In that case, I can hold onto 2 Corinthians 12:8 where God says, "My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness." I certainly give The Father plenty of room for perfection because I have SOOO much weakness, but we survived a rainy Monday together, and He will make up for my shortcomings many more times before the sun pokes its face out again.
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