Troubleshooting

I am not going to lie. This has been a sub par week for my family. First, Erin's paycheck came a day late in the mail, making our rent one day late. I tried explaining this to the front office, but they were hearing nothing of it. They shut off our cable and charged us a ten percent late fee. All this for being one day late...and we had a valid reason. Erin couldn't work because we have cable Internet...which was shut off with the cable...even though we pay the cable company directly for the Internet. Thursday was an absolutely terrible day at work, and the old me would have had a serious meltdown. I would have gotten fired, if not jailed, and my testimony would have been shot...among other things. Fortunately, the new me just had a minor meltdown, I almost quit, and I am pretty sure that the prayers I solicited from my FaceFriends had a lot to do with my keeping sane. I had a job offer in Nashville that was right in line with what I want to be doing with my life, only to find out that it paid 10k less than I make now. Today, we had an eviction notice on our door because we hadn't paid the $87 in late/cable connect fees. We paid our entire rent...but they were going to evict us for the late fee...which we paid today.

Oh yeah, and Thursday, Dylan ate his own poop. When I was at my lowest at work, I got a call from my wife. She was in hysterics as she told me the tragic story of a boy, a tub, and a turd. She had given Dylan and Ronin a bath. When they were finished she began letting out the water and she got Ronin out to dry him off. When she got back in the bathroom to get Dylan, he was throwing poop everywhere and he had it smeared on his face and in his mouth. When everything else has gone wrong, my first born son eats his feces. My wife said he reminded her of a monkey, tossing it around with such delight.

Is there any spiritual application here at all? I don't know. Is there something to making a meal out of the poop life throws at you? Should I be contemplating how God can take even the dirtiest and stinkiest sinner and turn them into something good? Should I be angry at the devil for coming into my life and messing it up every time God starts doing something positive? Yes...maybe...I don't know. I think that the spiritual lesson for me this week was a simple but needed one.

It is easy for me to go around talking about how I feel God working in my life. It is easy for me to talk about how a wonderful change is taking place, and I feel like a different person. It is another thing entirely to live that out. I am reminded of an old Calvin and Hobbes comic that I read. Calvin asks his dad how they figure out the weight limits on bridges. His dad says that they just drive heavier and heavier trucks over the bridge, and when it breaks, they weigh the last one and put that as the weight limit. I know that isn't really how bridges are tested, but things are tested. If something is wrong, it is fixed and tested again. It is called troubleshooting. You have probably experienced it before. Perhaps you were on the phone with tech support about some product. They say, "try blah blah blah." And you do. Then they say, "did that fix it?" I think that maybe it always seems like things get hard after God starts working because there is some troubleshooting going on. Not on God's part, because He knows the problems and the solutions. I think this is done for two reasons. One, I think it is done for our benefit. It gives us the chance to realize just how much God is working on our behalf...how much He is investing into us. Second, I think it is done to bring glory to God. The old Ron Young would have handled this last week far differently than the current model...and God is the only explanation for why that is. I can't explain it, because as far as I know I am still the same sarcastic person that I have always been. But this week has made real to me what I have been feeling for quite some time...God is putting much effort into troubleshooting Ron Young...and He's making things work.

That's good news.