Be still my heart

I am talking to myself, here. You can listen if you want. I had terrible, strange dreams last night. My first night home from what was, hopefully, my last night in the hospital.  The overriding theme of my dream was that I took my son to Wendy’s for dinner and after I got my food I couldn’t find my wallet to pay for it. They ended up just giving it to me for free ( and NOT because I was bald. Just because they didn’t know what else to do with me). From there it kept getting more and more chaotic. My indoor cat ran outside (except she was the size of a  large dog…ya know,  dreams distort reality…), one of the kids set off the car alarm and couldn’t turn it off, neighborhood hooligans kept jumping in my van and getting it all dirty, my trunk wouldn’t latch and things were flying out as I drove, and there were no tiny cups to test the tea samples at some coffee shop I was in! Constant little disappointments and frustrations clawed at me for what felt like hours. I woke up anxious. Fast forward to the rest of my day and the theme continued. Nothing earth shattering ( like, say, Leukemia), just things like the lady at a department store refusing to sell me a $15.00 shirt for the $11.00 yellow tagged price because a worker “must have mis-marked it.”  We sicked my mom on them after the fact and she managed to talk the very unfriendly, unhelpful clerk into marking it down. When I got home I had to call about an outstanding hospital bill and argue with a woman over, get this, $27.00. That’s actually comical considering how many thousands of dollars we owe for medical bills. To top it all off, somehow my college-age son got enrolled a in Super-Duper-Advanced- level history class at the junior-college instead of Western Civ. 101 (pretty sure THAT wasn’t something he did on purpose). ANYWAY-this wasn’t how I expected to start the first day of the rest of my new life. My new “normal.” Where did all my great perspective go?

So now, I am sitting down and doing some reading…and some deep breathing. Disappointed and perplexed about how I can trust God with Leukemia, but apparently not for the basic, daily trials of life. They aren’t even trials-just annoyances, really. I remembered and looked up an entry from my friend Oswald Chambers from May 23rd. He says, “It is not only wrong to worry, it is infidelity, because worrying means that we do not think that God can look over the practical details of our lives, AND IT IS NEVER ANYTHING ELSE THAT WORRIES US. Have you ever noticed what Jesus said would choke the word he put in? The devil? NO, THE CARES OF THIS WORLD. ” A wise teacher named Beth Moore says it like this, “We will never reach our MILESTONES if we can’t get through our MOMENTS.” The worry-free, peace-filled life comes from living surrendered to God and trusting him with our MOMENTS. ALL OF THEM. Especially the ones we think we should be able to handle on our own. The fact is, I KNOW without a doubt that leukemia is too much for me to handle. God will have to show up or I could literally die. That’s an easy one to give up. It’s the little cares that I try to control and manage on my own that gnaw at me until I am an anxious lunatic over someone refusing to give me a $4.00 discount at a department store! God invites me to be still, and know that HE is God.

“Be still my beating, anxious, controlling, untrusting, doubting heart.”