...of a wonderfully difficult day

Today was one of those days.  It was actually more like two of those days rolled into one.  The morning was a "Really?!  I mean, really?!" kind of morning.  And the afternoon was a "Wow, the Lord is so good and faithful" kind of afternoon.

Even though the city we live in says that they aren't doing scheduled power outages this summer, we have just happened to have a power outage the last three Mondays at almost exactly 10am.  The first few I was extra annoyed, because they were in the middle of Selah's morning nap and the sound machine that we have to have running while she is sleeping and the fan that keeps her room relatively cool both shut off and she woke right up, of course.  This week, we have transitioned to one nap a day, so she wasn't sleeping during this morning's power outage and I wasn't as frustrated.  But when the power hadn't come back on after 30 minutes like it usually does, I was getting a little exasperated.  And hot.  So I took my sweaty kids over to the vacant part of the house that our friends used to live in where the power was still on (apparently our house is on two different power grids), and we camped out in an empty room with a decently working AC and some toys.  

When it hadn't come back on after over an hour, I went over to quickly snag some sandwich material out of our rapidly warming refrigerator and we had a floor picnic.  It finally turned back on after about an hour and forty-five minutes and we headed "back home". Oh, also, the water pressure was really low this morning and I was having flashbacks to the few times our water has been turned off by the city because of our landlord. No power AND rapidly decreasing water?!  Four-months-ago-Anaka would have been on the floor bawling at this point. But, by the grace of God, I was able to take it all in stride.  

When the AC came back on, it immediately started dripping (a problem we just had someone come out to fix).  I discovered a puddle of water underneath Abram's bed.  Coupled (or quadrupled?) with the fact that our concrete living room ceiling has a network of rapidly increasing deep cracks spreading through it and we are mildly worried that it might not make it another two weeks without chunks of it falling into the room, we decided to move to our new home in our new city a little earlier than planned.  Thankfully, we know the people who are living in the house until the end of July, but they are in America until the beginning of August. We were going to move when they got back and were able to move out, but our landlord is giving us the keys on Wednesday and our friends have already packed most of their stuff and they are ok with us moving in while they are gone and just waiting to really settle in until they are able to get back and move.  So that's what we decided to do.

So all of a sudden, this morning, we were moving in less than a week...

This is where the "Really?!  I mean, really?!" part of the day ended.  

After lunch, Selah was getting pretty fussy.  Yesterday, she wasn't fussy at all before her new nap time of 12:30, and then her nap was only about an hour and half. That was a long day.  But today, she was acting pretty tired. So I put her down at 12:30 and prayed she would take a good long nap so that I could get some packing done.  Abram played by himself in the living room while I packed, visiting me every once in awhile when I would unearth something from the back of a cabinet that he hadn't seen in awhile and just had to play with.  Then he went down at 2:00, was asleep without issue by 2:30, and I kept packing.  

By 4:30, I had most of the living room stuff that we don't use everyday packed and stacked.  And both kids were still sleeping. You read right.  Today, the day I suddenly had to start packing to move out of our house, Selah happened to sleep for four and a half hours.  No, I'm sure it wasn't chance.  I am sure that it was the faithfulness of God.  Then, the kids ended up waking up at the same time. This is not normally great, but today it was perfect. We shared a pineapple juice Popsicle and waited for Daddy to come home. 

Then we ate healthy, leftover butternut squash, quinoa, chicken, black bean soup (here's the recipe for it - it's one of our favorites.  I just sub the olives for black beans, because my kids and I like those waaaaay better) and had some family Bible time in Psalm 16.  Then the kids had a quick spray down in the shower, and Abram was really obedient and mature about getting out when we told him we were done (we usually have an epic melt down at the end of bath/shower time.)  Then he fell off the bed while no was was looking and two of his front teeth were bleeding pretty bad up at the gum line.  He was pretty distraught, but then he got to take some medicine and he settled down a little and went right to bed without issue, as did his sister.  

And that was the end of the "Wow, the Lord is so good and faithful" afternoon.  

But, no.  It wasn't.  Because the Lord is always good and faithful, even in the "Really?! I mean really!?" moments.  In fact, those moments make His faithfulness even more apparent and glorious, don't they?  If we didn't have those tough moments, we might never realize how faithful God really is.  But God's had to do a lot in my heart to get me to where those tough moments don't just completely decimate my joy and hope.  I found it too perfect that our Fighter Verse song for the week is Psalm 42:11:

"Why are you cast down, O my soul, and why are you in turmoil within me.  

Hope in God; for I shall again praise Him, my salvation and my God."

And my reading yesterday in Spurgeon's Morning and Evening was about Psalm 42:9: "Why go I mourning?"

Spurgeon said something that really hit me in response to this musing I often find myself in: "Mountains, when in darkness hidden, are as real as in day, and God's love is as true to thee now as it was in the brightest moments." It's basically the way the Psalmist answers the question in verse 11.  The response is: I shouldn't go about mourning! I can hope in God, my salvation, who is always worthy of my praise, no matter how dark the time is.  

So, maybe it wasn't two of those days rolled into one.  It was just one of those days.  One of those days where Jesus proves that my hope is found, not in power or water or AC or good naps or Popsicles.  It is in nothing less than His blood and righteousness.  And that's a good day.