Alright, alright, alright - quit your beggin’. Here’s the ice story. (I’m just kidding, no one’s really begging, I just like to pretend that I have this huge following that just hangs on my every word…). I promise this one will actually have some spiritual content.
My boys and I drove into a storm last Sunday on the way home from She Speaks in North Carolina. It wasn’t even raining at first - the sky was just dark and there was some lightening. It was really no big deal. I was keeping an eye on the outside thermometer, and when it leveled off after dropping a couple of degrees, I thought we had driven through the worst of it. Boy was I wrong.
Little Man was asleep at this point, and Big Brother had been watching a movie, but one particularly bright flash of lightening caught his attention and he began to get worried. Being the big mouthed mama that I am, I quickly said, “It’s OK - I don’t even think it’s going to rain...”
Then the bottom dropped out of the sky. Score points for mom on the reliability scale.
I slowed down as the rain sped up, and then something changed. The rain got fatter, and fatter, and I found myself thinking, What the….hail? (Sorry, I just couldn’t resist that one).
Praise God we were right at the exit for a rest stop. I pulled off and glanced back at the thermometer - the temperature had now dropped a good 15 degrees. To add to it, the wind was really whipping and the sky didn’t look so good. Now I was getting scared.
Big Brother and I could barely even hear each other over the sound of the hail as I tried to comfort him. I crouched away from the windows, and tried to explain a ton of ice falling from the sky in the most fascinating way I could think of. After a minute or two, I decided to send a text to my husband for support.
I erased the exact text I sent him, but I’m pretty sure it went like this: “We’re stuck in Catawba in a bad storm - lots of hail. Really scared.”
This is the exact text he sent back:
“Hope all passes.”
Hope all passes? Was he serious? Here I was with our terrified five year old (and our oblivious, sweetly sleeping two year old), watching any second for Toto or that freaky lady on the bike to come sailing by, and he hoped it would pass? I guess I was going for Oh my gosh, are you ok? Or even, Do you think it’s a tornado? But no! I just got “hmmmm…hope it all passes” (for you Tommy Boy fans out there, that sounded a lot like “hmmm….he seems like a nice guy” in my head).
A couple of days later he asked me if I couldn’t have just driven really slowly through the storm to make time (such a man thing to think about - death vs. making good time). I asked if he was kidding, but he obviously wasn’t. Then I mentioned in my best “duh” voice that the hail could have cracked the windshield if I kept driving.
Do you know what he said?
“There was hail?”
Um, yeah, Dude - totally told you that. I seem to remember saying there was “lots” of hail. How did he miss that? Did he just not read the text or what?
And then it hit me. How many times has God told me something just as clearly and yet I miss the biggest part of what He’s trying to say?
His Word clearly tells me that He loves me, yet I’m shocked when I hear Him whisper it to my heart. The Bible plainly states that I’m forgiven and whole, but it’s news to my self-abused emotions every time He has to scrape me up off the ground after I fall.
I wanted so much to berate my husband for having “selective reading” to go along with his “selective hearing” and “selective memory” (come on ladies - someone testify with me here). Instead I found myself applying the Proverbs 31 Ministry Team’s motto of “grace, grace, grace” to him and myself.
I’m learning to see all the ways God tells me I’m loved and forgiven in His Word, but I wonder what other big things I’ve missed. I’ll be working on that now, praying that He will open my eyes to all He has to say to me each time I pick up His Word. And I think while I’m at it, I’ll go ahead and ask Him to help my husband read every letter of those texts we pay so much for every month.
I mean, seriously, “There was hail?”
My boys and I drove into a storm last Sunday on the way home from She Speaks in North Carolina. It wasn’t even raining at first - the sky was just dark and there was some lightening. It was really no big deal. I was keeping an eye on the outside thermometer, and when it leveled off after dropping a couple of degrees, I thought we had driven through the worst of it. Boy was I wrong.
Little Man was asleep at this point, and Big Brother had been watching a movie, but one particularly bright flash of lightening caught his attention and he began to get worried. Being the big mouthed mama that I am, I quickly said, “It’s OK - I don’t even think it’s going to rain...”
Then the bottom dropped out of the sky. Score points for mom on the reliability scale.
I slowed down as the rain sped up, and then something changed. The rain got fatter, and fatter, and I found myself thinking, What the….hail? (Sorry, I just couldn’t resist that one).
Praise God we were right at the exit for a rest stop. I pulled off and glanced back at the thermometer - the temperature had now dropped a good 15 degrees. To add to it, the wind was really whipping and the sky didn’t look so good. Now I was getting scared.
Big Brother and I could barely even hear each other over the sound of the hail as I tried to comfort him. I crouched away from the windows, and tried to explain a ton of ice falling from the sky in the most fascinating way I could think of. After a minute or two, I decided to send a text to my husband for support.
I erased the exact text I sent him, but I’m pretty sure it went like this: “We’re stuck in Catawba in a bad storm - lots of hail. Really scared.”
This is the exact text he sent back:
“Hope all passes.”
Hope all passes? Was he serious? Here I was with our terrified five year old (and our oblivious, sweetly sleeping two year old), watching any second for Toto or that freaky lady on the bike to come sailing by, and he hoped it would pass? I guess I was going for Oh my gosh, are you ok? Or even, Do you think it’s a tornado? But no! I just got “hmmmm…hope it all passes” (for you Tommy Boy fans out there, that sounded a lot like “hmmm….he seems like a nice guy” in my head).
A couple of days later he asked me if I couldn’t have just driven really slowly through the storm to make time (such a man thing to think about - death vs. making good time). I asked if he was kidding, but he obviously wasn’t. Then I mentioned in my best “duh” voice that the hail could have cracked the windshield if I kept driving.
Do you know what he said?
“There was hail?”
Um, yeah, Dude - totally told you that. I seem to remember saying there was “lots” of hail. How did he miss that? Did he just not read the text or what?
And then it hit me. How many times has God told me something just as clearly and yet I miss the biggest part of what He’s trying to say?
His Word clearly tells me that He loves me, yet I’m shocked when I hear Him whisper it to my heart. The Bible plainly states that I’m forgiven and whole, but it’s news to my self-abused emotions every time He has to scrape me up off the ground after I fall.
I wanted so much to berate my husband for having “selective reading” to go along with his “selective hearing” and “selective memory” (come on ladies - someone testify with me here). Instead I found myself applying the Proverbs 31 Ministry Team’s motto of “grace, grace, grace” to him and myself.
I’m learning to see all the ways God tells me I’m loved and forgiven in His Word, but I wonder what other big things I’ve missed. I’ll be working on that now, praying that He will open my eyes to all He has to say to me each time I pick up His Word. And I think while I’m at it, I’ll go ahead and ask Him to help my husband read every letter of those texts we pay so much for every month.
I mean, seriously, “There was hail?”
******
Sorry about the long posts lately - I guess I've just had a lot to say! Hey, if you want to see yet another totally horrible picture of me, jump over to my friend Emily's blog at Chatting At The Sky.
1 comment:
I love your posts!! Mine have been long too - but what's a girl to do when she has SO much to say?!
I would have been so scared in that storm. I'm glad you made it safely out!
Thanks for making me laugh and think about what matters yet once again!
I love you girl!!
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