Stealing our Joy

Yepp, that's the devil's newest task...trying to steal our Joy. See, we've been a little too God-oriented these days and Satan is trying to make us eat our words. I'll tell you what's going on and then why that won't happen.

I've mentioned before I have a real lack of patience. I have gotten a hair better with the kids, but I'm still pretty temperamental about other issues. I've been running to Waxahachie every day for GraceAnne's swimming lessons and it's wearing me thin. Especially since Violet thinks mommy must get up at 6am. Yes, I signed myself up for this, but you bet I learned my lesson and it won't be happening again. 6pm is just too late to be getting out of the house and running to the next town, getting home at 7:30, having a snack, doing bedtime routine and putting Vi to bed and reading the bible and then finally passing out around 11pm. Yeah--you're tired just reading it, aren't you?! ;) This routine makes for 1 tired mommy and mommy is so not cool when she's tired. :(

Last night at swim lessons I got a call from Allan. He was in Garrett, (about 3 miles north of Ennis), and his bike had stopped. Yepp...overheated and stopped. He said he was praying to make it to a gas station and he made it. Then he was so intent on finding the gas station that he couldn't get back to the road he was on, so drove 16-18 miles in the boonies, (not hard to do here!), and ended up in Garrett, where the bike decided it was hot and tired. (also not hard to do here!) It stopped and Allan walked it home. When he took it all apart, (or attempted to, because some kind of demon was making that task next to impossible), he found lots of pieces not hooked up the way they are supposed to be and things done very half-@ssed. The bike was not fixed by the time it got too dark and late to work on it anymore, so he took my car to school this morning. Which is a gas guzzler. Although I filled it up 2 days ago, it will probably have one last trip back and forth to Waxahachie in it before it hits E.

Since he has my car, we can't go to GraceAnne's play date. We NEVER do ANYTHING, (except go to Waxahachie *UGH*), and when we finally get a phone call and make some plans, this crap happens.

*BUT* I don't care what Satan tries to pull...God is going to win in this house. These are just little things right now, seriously, we're Blessed that these are our only problems. I know he will try harder...kick down well-laid plans, try to bash in the door...but we have a rock solid foundation now and he can forget about it. He can p*ss me off and he can make us cuss and he can give us a headache to beat all headaches, but the bottom line is God loves us so much he gave us these:
...so Satan won't be winning around here. We could see God working yesterday, as Allan was working on the bike. The girls and I pulled into the driveway and saw him with the bike in pieces and GraceAnne squealed her usual, "DADDY'S HOME!!!!" I cautioned her and said, "yes, and he's probably pretty mad about the scooter, so let's be super sweet to him and not jump all over him, okay?" She walked bravely to him and said, "so...the scooter is broken, huh? And you're going to fix it! You're probably pretty mad?" I think he was so stunned he didn't know what to say for a minute, but the rest of the evening was pretty smooth. Yeah, Allan was cussing in the driveway and we were in the house by ourselves, but God gave us all a measure of patience last night that we haven't seen in a while because we KNEW He would. When we finally made it to bed around 11pm I said, "you know Satan is going to try to get us to go to sleep without reading, don't you?" He said, "that ain't gonna happen." So dog-tired, we read, gave God His glory for the day and went to sleep. After all--we still have a roof over our heads, food in our bellies, each other and these smiles:



...and who could ask for more?