My Social Media-less Life

More often than not, I wake up with a certain expectation for each day.

This morning (or maybe yesterday now that it’s after midnight) I woke up with the expectation of cleaning two houses, checking on a couple of dogs, going to church and then going to be with the dogs for the night.

Instead I did one house, was on multiple calls with the dogs’ mom because one of the dogs is sick, skipped the second house, checked on the dogs, went to church, went back to be with the dogs and somehow forgot I had been asked to look in on another dog after church.

So I spent about an hour with that dog and then came back to be with the original dogs whom I had to convince I was really staying here for the night and now they’re finally calmed down enough to sleep.

At some point after the first (and only) house I did today, my mind went into “overload mode” and I only knew that because my right eye started twitching.

Right eye twitches are always stress-related for me.

It took me most of the afternoon to realize that my eye was twitching at all and even longer to figure out exactly why. So I got to church with a less-than-stellar attitude.

Usually if I can identify a problem, I can address it enough that it won’t affect every event I do. If not… then we just have “Overload Erica” out there in the wild compiling stress because she hasn’t dealt with the previous issues.

So when one of the pastors called me out specifically tonight during our prayer service— even though I didn’t go up for the prayer for “youth and young adults”… and failed to take my nephew who is close enough to the ages they were calling up— well, I was a bit shook.

“I think the Lord’s been talking about you tonight,” he said to my absolute astonishment, because I had neither felt nor heard any such thing, and I had been there and mostly engaged the whole time. He also called out my bestest friend and my roommate (who had both gone up and had been standing next to each other).

Most of his encouragement was that we are great women of God and we’re always so faithful. But his final words struck me the hardest: “Jesus sees you and He loves you and there are great things being unleashed [in you] in the time to come.”

Having had one of the least awesome days this week— on top of a week that could very well be written off as a bad job— I had no idea how much I needed to hear that Jesus sees me.

I literally grew up in church. Jesus seeing me is not a new concept.

However, after watching three seasons of The Chosen, phrases like that sound a lot less cliche. Heck, I quoted most of the words of Jesus to myself while watching the final two episodes of this season in theaters yesterday and they still hit me differently than they have in a long time.

Sometimes, the right words spoken at the right time go from being Logos (knowledge) to being Rhema (life).

Needless to say, my stressed-out right-eye twitch is gone and even though I forgot a dog (she’s fine now, by the way), I know that everything is going to be okay. It was just a day, and His mercies are new every morning.

So when life gives you lemons, turn to your Heavenly Father and say, “Here. I can’t make anything with just lemons. But I know you have all the ingredients to make something great. So I’m giving it to You.”

And even if you don’t give the “lemons” directly to Him… He might just take them and make something great out of it anyway. 😉