Dealing with Discouragement

You know how sometimes lots of little things start to go wrong and pretty soon you find yourself zapped of all your joy? Well, that's how I've been feeling lately. Major stuff, trivial stuff and it just seems to keep happening. I know that JOY should come from deep down inside of me and should not be dependant on my circumstances but sometimes....

• Olivia went to be with Jesus and that was major. Crushing...
• An unnamed child left the freezer door open and it was about 24 hours before I realized it (it's in the garage) and I had to throw out hundreds of dollars worth of food.
  
• Ever since we staged our house to sell we've had a storage unit filled with lots of our stuff. I went to check on some things the other day and found MOLD. Mold all over my good love seat that I spent way too much money on that I love. It's ruined. And who knows what else..
  
• McKenna was just diagnosed with Molluscum Contagiosum. It's a virus that's part of the chicken pox/small pox family. It's not major and usually goes away on it's own, but it can be major and hers is starting to spread and that's scaring me. She's got a spot on her face now and it just makes me sad!
  
• Emma, Abby and Nate moved away :(
  
• I was just diagnosed with Plantar Faciitis and it's bad. Really I've had it since December but I'm just now dealing with it. Sometimes I feel like I can hardly walk on my right foot. I limp around the house all the time. My podiatrist wants to give me cortisone shots into the bottom of my foot (That was supposed to happen today until I called and postponed the appointment until next Friday...I'm just a tad bit terrified :) And then there's the $425 orthodics that I now need. I've had foot issues since I was in the second grade. I basically don't have arches at all in my feet and my flip flops with their lack of arch support are finally catching up with me. I know I have to deal with this now or I'm going to end up having screws up in my arch, like my mom, to keep my arch from falling.
• And lastly, and I haven't even mentioned this to Ryan yet, there was the cement pole that my car encountered tonight while I was at the carwash vacuuming out my car. It was one of those short poles to keep you from running into the vacuum machine. I didn't see it and let's just say the front fender of my car will never be the same.
  
• Add "fireworks season" aka "single mom" on top of all that and I've been lacking a little joy.

Thankfully I recognized that I was feeling pretty down and a tiny bit on the edge (you know...short with my kids...grouchy...etc). So tonight it was time to take matters in to my own hands - oh wait - that doesn't work. I've tried it before. It was time to spend a little time with my Heavenly Father. So I packed the kids in the car. Sippy cups in hand, fruit snacks in my purse, we were ready for a good time. Christian asked where we were going and I told him that I was feeling disappointed about some things so we were going to spend some time with Jesus because he always makes me feel better. He looked at me with these huge eyes with just a tiny bit of panic in them. So I assured him that we were not going to heaven just the closest thing we could find to it. And we hit the road and headed just a few minutes outside of town to watch God paint a master piece.

This is just the tail end of one of the most incredible sunsets I've ever seen. We talked about how God painted it just for us. We talked about how God formed the mountains the sun set behind.

We talked about how God gave us cows so we could have milk.

And we rolled the windows all the way down so we could smell the sweet corn and the cow manure too. We waved our hands out the windows and laughed and laughed at the wind blowing in our faces.
We watched farmers bring their crops in from the fields and talked about how God always provides plenty for us. And we turned the music up and sang worship songs as loud as we could to our creator. And I made a decision to get my eyes off myself and focus them instead on the author and perfecter of my faith. Who for the JOY set before him, endured the cross for me (Hebrews 12:2). Now that puts JOY in perspective. Jesus found JOY in enduring the cross for me. So I'm feeling much better and we might just take a little road trip to spend some time with Jesus again sometime very soon. It's good to be purposeful about spending time with the Lord and I don't think it always has to come in some traditional way. He can meet us where we are...doing laundry, mowing grass or driving down the road. It was so good to spend some time with Him tonight. Just what I needed!

P.S. Before I get lots of comments admonishing me not to take pictures while driving down the road you should know that I stopped or almost stopped for all those pictures! The only traffic we encountered were a few lightning bugs buzzing around us :)