WRITINGSWhat a cute problem
January 30, 2014 The other day, I noticed that there was a tube of Preparation H on our bathroom floor. I didn't put it there. My wife didn't put it there. Neither one of us knew how it got there. Neither one of us even knew when it showed up. For all we knew, it had ALWAYS been there.
Along with the mysterious tube of soothing relief, my lovely wife and I recently acquired a new roommate. He was very small, had four legs, and lived inside our walls. His name was Howie, he was a mouse, and Howie was definitely not welcome.
In the process of trying to catch Howie (we're pretty sure his family lived in our walls too), we had some pretty emotional highs and lows. Well, mainly lows. Everything that moved in our periphery suddenly, in our minds, became a mouse. He even showed up in our bedroom. Just to say, "hello," I'm sure, but I never knew QUITE how high my wife could jump until he visited its up there..
The night he showed up in our bedroom (after I pulled my foot out of my mouth for telling my wife that mice can't go up stairs), my lovely wife and I were sitting on our bed, carefully watching for any signs of our fuzzy flatmate, when we finally looked at each other in revelation.
"You know, this is actually a pretty great problem. You know there are people who would LOVE to have a single mouse inside their warm, sturdy house?"
After that, Howie was just not a big deal. We caught Howie. Howie died a noble death after teaching us an important lesson about humility and how lucky and privileged God has made us. And just like that, that tube of Preparation H hit us with another lesson. It had been there in the background whether we were aware of it or not, just like God. We didn't know how it got there, we didn't quite understand why it was there, but we were pretty sure it was there to help us.
I know. I get it. Weak analogy... I'm tired and the NyQuil is slowly having it's way with me. But the point is solid. Every week at The Galley, we're reminded that God is HERE. NOW. We're reminded to be humble and to thank God for EVERYTHING good in our life, and we pray to learn from the bad. We pray with each other to learn the lessons that we're put here to learn, and I love that about my church. Thank you for keeping us humble, and thank you for keeping us a family in Christ.
