Do People Still Read Blogs?

It’s been kind of a rough week for me. Someone with better mental fortitude would likely have handled my week easily, but I have struggled and felt low and have definitely not demonstrated grace under pressure. 

I would write some musings about the hilarity of my two year old demolishing at 15 lb watermelon all over my kitchen floor, or how I am so silly for completely losing my composure at my 5 year old’s t-ball game, but I’m not really in a place to laugh about those oh-so-amusing things yet. 

Why then, you might wonder, is this story so important that you would dust off a blog you haven’t touched in almost seven years? 

I’ll tell you why, reader. The answer is two-fold. The first fold is that I want a written record to serve as a stone of remembrance in my life about God’s faithfulness. The second, and admittedly less important, more prideful fold, is that I don’t want to annoy people on Facebook with a long, overly personal post. 

Among the things worrying me this week was the ever-present niggle in the back of my mind that I had misplaced our checkbook sometime in the last two months. Armed with the knowledge I needed to pay our lawn care service today, I set out to find it. 

I am not what you would call a “good housekeeper.” Our home vacillates between “barely inhabitable” and “we’re having guests! Shove everything in a bag! Put the bag in the closet! Close the door!” Then I forget about those bags and what they house for the next six months until I need to search them for something important like my checkbook or the kids’ shot records. I also sometimes become overwhelmed by all the bags of stuff that I toss them out willy-nilly without verifying that they do NOT contain our mortgage paperwork and get both my and Jarred’s identities stolen. BUT THAT IS NEITHER HERE NOR THERE. And what business is it of yours, anyway?!? 

This story is not about my inability to properly dispose of paperwork, though. Or maybe it is? Anyway, in my search for the checkbook this morning, I made my way around the house and looked through all the usual suspects: the office where glittering gift bags, once filled with precious birthday gifts, now hold discarded Bath and Body Works coupons; the laundry room where the “bags of stuff” have become a part of the landscape of old car seats, forgotten party decorations, and vacuum cleaner attachments I will never use. 

No, I have never seen an episode of Hoarders. Why do you ask? 

It was here in the laundry room that I prayed, feeling frantic about all the things I’ve screwed up this week, feeling an absolute sense of failure and uneasiness about all the things I lack. Lord, please help me find my checkbook. 

If I’m honest, I didn’t expect divine intervention for my little problem. Instead, I turned around, grabbed a bag I had already looked through, grabbed a bag that was inside of that bag (yes, I know it’s a problem) and the first thing I laid my hand on was my checkbook. The next thing I laid my hand on was a gift card I thought I had accidentally thrown away weeks ago and was very upset about, and the next thing I took out was Kate’s church paper from several weeks ago that said “I can trust God.” 

You may scoff and say it was coincidental, but for me it was a watershed moment. I’ve been struggling to trust the Lord with the large and small things in my life, with the burning questions about all of the very hard things people experience in this life. It’s been wearing on me and making me feel heavy. This was a confirmation for me, though, that God is in the big and the small and that He can be trusted with all of it.

And my lawn guys are here, so I will now go pay them with God’s faithfulness.