It's been a while since I've written anything and as I
look at my last entry it was at about the same time that
things stopped going as smoothly as I would like for them to
go. For starters, I developed a head cold. Just
a minor nuisance, not enough to keep me down but enough to
make me want to sleep an extra hour a night. That
lasted about two weeks.
As I got over my head cold, I
developed a cough. Once again, this was a minor
nuisance but around the same time I developed stomach pains.
My personal diagnosis was and still is a muscle pull from
the coughing. I went to the doctor yesterday after two
weeks of having trouble. I was hoping for a muscle
relaxer or even a diagnosis of something to do with my
coughing and something to help me stop. Instead I'm
going to be checked for gallstones beside the fact that I
really don't think that that is the problem.
At the
same time I was finishing up an online class. This
wouldn't have been a big deal except that the school was
having a lot of technical difficulties. I'm the type
of person who understands mistakes happen and that people
are prone to error. However I also expect that if I'm
paying good money for something, I ought to get what I paid
for. When I pay $750 for an online class and there are
19 other students who paid that same money, I expect
problems to be solved swiftly with no concern for the cost
because this is what we have paid for. Instead of
solutions, I only received excuses and apologies.
Last week I had a meeting out of state and returned home
Saturday night. On the way home I hit a chunk of
rubber from a blown tire. It was small and innocuous.
But it was enough to cause me to blow my tire on the
highway. With my spare, I had to get off the highway
and travel backroads the final 80 miles home because I
couldn't go over 50 mph. Within a mile of getting off
the highway I got pulled over. The speed limit had
dropped from 45 to 25 but I didn't see any sign.
Despite having never been pulled over in my life, I got a
ticket instead of a warning - final cost $144.
I
don't write any of this to complain or to receive sympathy.
Instead it is a reminder that we all go through down seasons
in life. Despite my frustrations in the past few
weeks, things could be a lot worse. I was able to
finish my class despite the fact that things weren't working
properly. Although I haven't felt great for five weeks
now, at no point have I felt terrible. And even though
my flat tire ended up costing me a speeding ticket, I was
able to safely get my car pulled off of the road. The
shoulder was wide enough that I could actually pull over and
replace the tire. Before I even had time to pray about
it, someone else pulled off and helped me change my tire.
And even my tire ended up being under warranty so it only
cost me $15 for the wear that I already had on the tire.
It's easy to say that things could have been worse
but that's not even the case. God has been watching
out for me even in the midst of my frustrating time.
Being a Christian doesn't always mean smooth sailing.
What it does mean is that God will be with us during those
rough times and that He won't abandon us.
