If you have to wonder if your relationship or friendship is serious, it probably isn't.
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If you have to wonder if your relationship or friendship is serious, it probably isn't.
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 A good friend of mine has a friend who just had a breast removed. And this girl, we’ll call her Janice, has asked my friend to come over to help clean her wounds.
My friend, we’ll call her Kathy, went over to do this on Saturday. She’s done this a couple of times now, so she knows the routine. It doesn’t get easier, she said, but she knows what to do. This time, while cleaning the wound of her friend, Kathy had a serious “ah ha” moment and she called to tell me about it. What she said brought me to tears. While cleaning her wound she said that she realized that we really have very little to complain about, we already have everything we need. While cleaning her wound she thought about how tired God must get from hearing us complain about minor things that really don’t matter. While cleaning her wound she realized how fortunate we are to have the jobs we often complain about because Janice can’t go to her job right now. While cleaning her wound she thought of how blessed she was and I was that we don’t have holes where body parts should be. While cleaning her wound she marveled at Janice’s ability to smile and rejoice in the very fact that she was alive. While these thoughts came to Kathy while cleaning a physical wound, I later began to think about the mental and emotion wounds we all have. And how, while cleaning them, we often find a sense of purpose and inner peace that we’d never find otherwise. In other words, sometimes it is in the cleaning up of our messes, in the rearranging of our mental bandages, and in the discarding of some of our unhealthy thoughts and unnecessary worries that God is able to get our attention and cause us to do what’s needed to heal. Whether physical, mental, or emotional, a lot can happen while cleaning our wounds.  To you I'm sure this looks like a random bucket and a bottle of generic bleach. But to me, this looks like sweet, sweet revenge.
Minor revenge, tis true, but revenge nonetheless. Let me explain. My ex-husband has been washing his clothes in a house that we’re trying to sell. But, what you need to understand that while this house is on the market, he has not paid one water bill, one electric bill, he hasn’t paid anything. So the fact that he is going there to wash his dirty underwear is a really big slap in my face. So yesterday, while at the house, I happened upon his laundry supplies and among them was this generic bleach. So I took it. Yep, put it in that bucket and walked right out of the house with it. I know this is minor to you, but it’s major to me and it makes me feel as though I have committed the one of the biggest heists of the century! I can only imagine him walking down the walkway to the house, balancing a big trash bag full of dirty underwear on his hip as he puts his key in the lock and opens the door. He’ll drop the bag in front of the washing machine and take a big sigh. Then he'll methodically pull out his underwear and carefully place them in the machine. He’ll start the machine and instantaneously turn to open the cabinet under the sink, which is where he has kept his soap powder and his… “Where the hell in my bleach?” Honestly, you’ll probably hear him from wherever you live. He’s going to flip! You see, while there isn’t much my mind chooses to remember about the man, I do remember how much he believes in the power and sanctity of bleach. Kinda like a cat believes in fish, a dog believes in bones, a shopper believes in malls, this man believes in bleach. So he will not wash his underwear without this bleach. See my JOY now? And even if he’d make that sacrifice to wash the underwear without the bleach, he won’t be able to because I also took the soap powder he had stashed there. Taking that didn’t bring me nearly as much joy, so that’s why I didn’t take a picture of it. It’s the bleach that’s gonna make him fall to his knees. I am so loving this! The visual is enough to make me double over in laughter! Don’t judge me til you search your own past… search your own heart…search your own mind…(smile!) Haven’t you done some silly little thing that meant nothing to anyone besides you? Haven't you ever done something that was a little mean, but made you smile and brought you joy? Here’s your chance to come clean. Tell me about it…  Is it just me, or have you ever felt as if God was laughing at you?
Not in a really mean way, but in a way that just makes you feel really stupid? I felt that way on yesterday. I had something major to deal with. Heck, we're friends, I'll tell you... I had to go back to court. Still dealing with the aftermath of my stupid, ugly divorce. Anyway, I thought I knew what was going to happen. I knew what I was going to say, I'd rehearsed the thing a few times, I was ready. But nothing happened the way I thought it would. Absolutely nothing. So on my way home, I thought about how I'd prayed that morning and how I'd asked God to be with me and to work things out. He must have really laughed at me. Because He knew then that nothing I was praying for was going to come to pass because nothing I thought would happen came to pass. See what I'm saying? I was praying for an outcome that would never be realized because the day just wasn't set up that way. At the end of that prayer, I do remember asking that His will be done. That was my save. Because even though things didn't go as I thought they would, I can rest in knowing that His will was done. And I also rest in knowing that on yesterday, I gave God a really good laugh. In the midst of everything else He has to deal with, I'm sure He appreciated that! Have you ever made God laugh? Have you ever plotted something out, only to realize that God had another plan? |
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