]

15 October 2013

How He uses others to teach me.


The Lord has a way of always using other people to teach me things that I need in a certain moment.  He is perfect in bringing me down to a level that I thought I was above and each time He does it, I marvel at how I didn't see it before.  Well, I know the answer to that.  It is my pride.


The past five months have been super hard (and rewarding) in a myriad of ways. At the beginning of the Summer, Taylor began looking for a new job.  He was not satisfied with where he was and as a result he was coming home with his mind bogged down with worry and anger.  It was hard for all of us.


The job search was extensive and took him away from home more than I wanted. On top of the search, his current job, at the time, was hogging the remainder of his hours, leaving me at home most days (all day) by myself with Gideon. I even sometimes said that I felt like a single parent. I was exhausted and as a result, I turned to the easiest target, which was Taylor and took my anger out on him.  Every little thing he did was wrong in my eyes. He didn't put his coffee mug in the dishwasher.  Check. He wasn't home to take Gideon off my hands for a few minutes. Check.  EVERY. LITTLE. THING.  made me mad.


I naively thought I would stop this after we moved. Everything would be good, right?  Nope.  He left the toilet seat up....again (which he never has done before in our marriage!). He's home too much and I just need alone time. (I know it even sounds crazy). I think I wanted to find ways to be mad at him. I wanted there to be fault in the things he was doing because it made me feel better about the ways I was failing.


Well, fast forward a week. At our new church, we do home groups instead of Sunday school classes. A small group of people that meet each week to share a meal, prayer and a chance to lift each other up.  Our group is made up of five young families just like us.  (Gideon gets to play with lots of other kiddies!).  We went for the first time last week and it is there that the Lord met me and brought to my attention that my attitude was holding me back.


Our little town is a huge military town.   One young mom in our group began to share and ask for prayer.  In that moment, she broke down crying as she talked about her husband, who is deployed, and about the hard time they were all having at this point.  Three months in and six to go.  My heart broke for her.  In this moment, she is a single mother.  Who am I to compare my situation to hers?  I complain about the little things while I know she would give anything to have her husband there to leave the toilet seat up (But, Taylor, if you are reading this, it still needs to be down.  I almost fell in!).  This woman has a gorgeous house that I would die to live in, but I know she would trade it in a heartbeat for my apartment if it meant having her husband there to watch their three-year-old grow each day.


Who am I to complain?

So, in this new town.  In that setting.  In that moment.  The Lord used a woman, whom I barely know, to teach me that where I am and what I have is so much more than I see and so much more than I allow it to be.



*This picture was taken before we got married.  Such babies!*

1 comment:

  1. Love this post- it is so true for me too right now! My hubby is in grad school full time twice a week until 10pm, working full time and most of the time he works until 9pm so I feel like I never see him and when I do, I always have a long list of chores or I get mad that he "didn't do this" or "left this laying out". Thanks for the reality check, it's so easy to throw pity parties, but it's so much better to remember that He is more than enough to take you out of the valley. :)

    ReplyDelete

Related Posts Plugin for WordPress, Blogger...