Tuesday, December 20, 2016

potential









Every morning I wake up feeling like the day is so full of potential.  Maybe we will bake!  Maybe I'll finish wrapping!  Or maybe I'll waste an entire day working on a Christmas mailing that refuses to go smoothly at any step of the way!    (Wait, no, anything but that!)

I was laughing about the mishaps I was facing through most of the day until later tonight when I felt discouraged over the numerous problems I had encountered.  Sometimes when I recognize something as "cheap shot" spiritual warfare I can kind of laugh it off when it's clearly meant to distract, delay or irritate.  But even the laughter wears thin when it happens over and over again, even on something as seemingly inconsequential as a Christmas letter.  The thing is, it's the one physical mailing we do to all our supporters and family and friends each year and every year it is slammed with strange occurrences!  This year more than half our cards ended up in Idaho tucked into someone else's order!  Our new little printer apparently doesn't allow card stock to feed through it!  The print shop was closed the first time I went to town to try to print the letter!  And so on...  However, I'd really rather deal with annoyance than more serious attacks.  I don't write on this blog a whole lot about the spiritual warfare we face because I think it makes me sound a little like a loony if we're not sitting and chatting face to face.  But it's a real part of life in ministry on the front lines of the Kingdom.    

So I was determined to make a batch of cookies with the girls tonight.  

Determination is, apparently, not always the key to a happy time together.   

But we did crowd around the little counter in our kitchen and took turns jabbing each other's ribs with our elbows and mixing melted chocolate and butterscotch into chow mein noodles and then dropping them on wax paper.  In the end we all were smiling and covered in chocolate up to those same elbows and smeared across lips and chins and I have a pile of Tingalings on the kitchen counter.  Although Momma had to apologize for being short with munchkins and explain that although I was missing my bigger kitchen to work together in, it was wrong to be irritable and will you forgive me?- that is a pretty realistic presentation of how life has gone this week so far in our house.

The weather quickly warmed up last night and by this evening most of the snow is gone gone gone.  I already miss looking out the window at the gorgeous glittering white covering all the brown.  We are suppose to get more later this week, but at least it should be clear for our travel on Sunday afternoon, according to the weathermen. I am getting to the last of the wrapping, the last of the gift-buying and really do hope tomorrow I get to make cookies in the coziness of the little house with my favorite little girls.  Even if it means a few bruised ribs.

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