Rattled

My week started out on a good note. As I reflect on just the last three days, I think that's the last time I may use a positive word to describe this timeframe. A good friend came over Monday night to pray about our upcoming mission trip to Mexico. We went to the back porch where it was quiet, as Abby was still bopping in and out of bed. We had a powerful prayer, and I think -- though I may have been too absorbed in prayer to notice -- that Abby even stopped peering out the windows liked a caged zoo animal. We cried and giggled, and then 10 or 15 minutes into it, there was the loudest rattling sound. At first, I kept my eyes closed and half expected to find a 5-year-old trying to break out a door onto the deck. I opened them, and it was clear something was on the roof. A rather large animal, perhaps? It was a very large rattling, rumbling in frantic, uneven tones. Then, it stopped. We didn't see a thing and wondered if maybe God was trying to get our attention. Maybe our prayer was too serious? We continued on, joking about it later.

We woke up the next morning, trying to quickly get ready and out the door. You see, Dan has been switched to nights, and he is rolling into bed around 6:30 a.m. Ryker -- now dressing himself like a big boy (I would say "finally," but I don't want to damage his ego!) got ready in a snap. Abby, on the other hand, put on a skirt that was horribly stained. I told her she had to change. And she happily did...big surprise there. But she tried to put on a ballet skirt. Any other day, I wouldn't care. Today, my girlfriend would be babysitting. She has three boys, two of them older than Abby. I insisted that she needed a skirt with shorts underneath. This set off Abby, and the fit throwing ensued. My suggestions only encouraged her ire. This was getting ugly fast, and I could see that we could potentially argue for 30 minutes. At this point, it's been 15 minutes since I asked her to get dressed. So, I grabbed the nearest clothes and dressed her. I told her to put on her shoes, and she screamed at the top of her lungs -- just outside Dan's door -- the whole time she did it.

We get in the car. She's still screaming....and I mean screaming. She's crying that the skirt is too big. I'm crying. I cannot believe she's having a fit this big, and I wonder if I could have prevented it. What is this really about, I wondered? I dropped off Abby, and my friend offered a much needed hug. And I left. Something that really hurt and hardly felt right. I mean, it's one thing to deal with this sort of thing. It's quite another to endure it a few days before you leave the country. I felt horrible. I came home and prayed and cried. Why was God rattling me when I really needed peace at this moment?

More tears were shed Wednesday. Our dear out-of-state friends were visiting and decided to come to a Dave Ramsey class with us. We dropped off the kids at the church and were heading to our minister's house when their 3-year-old caught up with their car at the edge of the highway. It broke my heart. I've often had that fear about my own children and to think that they actually had to endure it was heartwrenching. To leave them with that impression of our church just hurt. Once again, I felt rattled.

I felt rattled all weekend, as our crazy schedules had us going in a bunch of different directions. I felt rattled since Dan was switched to nights. Each day holds a new challenge that I feel ill equipped to handle. Just like the chaos on my roof on Monday night, I feel chaos in my life, in my heart. God is rattling me. I hope come next week in Mexico, He shows me why.