Monthly Archives: May 2012

Reclaiming my Joy, even with Ants

I don’t have much to complain about living here in SoCal. The weather’s great. The people are so nice. No earthquakes… yet. Not too hard to find joy.

And then there are the ants.

We have an issue with ants. And these aren’t just pesky ants, these are pesky, bite-y, ants. They get into everything… sweet stuff, savory stuff, even chemical stuff (i.e. stuff in the laundry area.) If it’s edible, they are into it. So we’ve become even more fastidiously clean… swiffering the floors after every meal, keeping dry goods in air tight containers, sweet treats reside under glass, and Mrs. Meyers is used liberally.

I would love to say that it helps. It doesn’t.

This past weekend, I pulled out my iron for the first time in a few weeks. Filled up the reservoir and turned the iron on. I pick it up, ready to begin ironing and what’s this I see? Ants. In the reservoir of my iron. Doing the backstroke.

Seriously. There were ants IN MY IRON.

I’d be lying if I said I didn’t take a certain level of glee with steaming the ants that happened to traipse along my ironing board. But after a while, it just got irritating. Irritating because the ones that I would miss would inevitably end up crawling on me as I was ironing. As time went on, I found myself getting angrier and angrier. At the ants marching along the walls of our laundry area. At our landlord for being so laissez-faire about the whole thing (his solution? Put out more ant traps.) At my husband for not seeing what the big deal was.

I was able to put stuff it away… until today.

This afternoon, I opened the microwave to heat up an afternoon snack and found…

A Colony of Ants in the Microwave.

Turns out someone didn’t clean up a splatter from the night before and the ants found the remnants. So, instead of enjoying my tasty snack, I was on ant clean up. By the time I finished, I was so not ready for a snack as the image of ants carousing around in the microwave was seared onto my retinas. If you hadn’t guessed… that’s a great way to kill an appetite. I was not happy about it, of course, but looking back… there is joy to be found.

Joy in that my kitchen is usually clinically clean.

Joy in that I have the time and desire to actually iron… and I remember now that I actually like to iron.

Joy in that I will have a better chance of not gaining too much weight while preggo by skipping random snacks.

I still hate the ants.

_______________________________________________________________

Post to Twitter

Faithful: Just like Mary

Faith and Mary are two things that really go hand-in-hand and are pretty easy to grasp. I mean, it has to be pretty easy to say YES to everything God says, especially when He is your Son.

But the depth of Mary’s faith is so much more than her saying YES in the first place to the message of the Angel. In fact, if you think about it, Mary had faith in her Son before He had faith in himself. Of course, I am talking about the Wedding at Cana.

You know the story, Jesus and his mother are attending a wedding and the wedding is out of wine. Big social faux pas. So, people are all stressed out because there is no wine and the wedding is far from over. Mary whispers to her son that they are out of wine and He tells her essentially, “Why are you telling me?” Then, being the mother she is, she turns to a waiter and says, “Do whatever HE tells you.” And we know the rest…

Is it fair to say that Mary had faith in her Son before He did? Maybe. After all, Jesus is fully God and fully Man, but was He fully aware of his divine nature before His loving mother give Him a little push?

As parents, we all have faith that our children can achieve what they set out to do. It’s challenging to hear your child say, “I can’t…” or “This is too hard…” or “I’ll never get it…” and the best thing that we can do as parents is to have faith in them and tell them that we have faith in them.  It’s so hard not intervene and just DO it for them, but what would they learn? They would learn that no matter what they do, it’s not good enough. That’s not a lesson that I want my kids to learn.

Think about it, when was the last time someone told you they had faith in you that you could accomplish something? Maybe it was running your first half-marathon. Or having an unmedicated birth. Or having a home birth. Or passing your medical boards. Or just getting up in the morning. We all face challenges in our lives and those challenges don’t seem so hard when we know there are people rooting for us… having faith in us. Mary had faith in her son and she has faith in each and every one of us.

Like Mary, we are all (male and female) called to be FREE, TOTAL, FRUITFUL and FAITHFUL. It’s not easy because it really calls for us to essentially die to self and live without knowing what the outcome is going to be. Try as we might, we can try to control our destiny, but it’s already written out for us… all we have to do is have faith and follow.

Journal Questions:

    • What does having a Faith life mean to you? Is faith something that you only possess part of the time?
    • What does it mean to be faithful?
    • We are called to be faithful to our parents, to our spouses, but do we put much thought into staying faithful to Christ? Is there anything in your life that may cause you to stray from Christ?

______________________________________________________________

I hope you enjoyed this May series on Mary. As always, I look forward to and enjoy reading your thoughts and comments!

 

Read Free: Just Like Mary here

Read Total: Just Like Mary here

Read Fruitful: Just like Mary here

Post to Twitter

Happy Memorial Day

Today, amidst the grilling, chilling and relaxing, please take a moment to remember why we take time today.

I want to thank the members of my family, past and present, who have served or are currently serving in defense of our country. I am writing from my own personal memory, so any errors of omission are entirely mine.

It’s a cheesy line from Billy Ray Cyrus, but it still holds true:

All gave some, some gave all.

Happy Memorial Day and Thank You to:

Grandpa B (WWII)

Grandpa D (US Army/ WWII)

Grandma M (USMC)

Papa (USAF)

Jo-Ann (USAF)

Scott (USN)

Robin (USAF)

B.J (ROTC/NG)

My mom (USNG)

_______________________________________________________________
Today’s the last day to enter in the Rubbermaid Hidden Recycler Giveaway!! Make sure to get your entries in!

 

Related Posts Plugin for WordPress, Blogger...

Post to Twitter