DEES funny~~~~~~~There's a Train Coming!

One day as my husband and I were on our way home I was feeling a little tired from our journey. Sitting there quietly in my seat giving up my position as the “back seat driver” I drifted in and out of sleep. Once when I was half awake I noticed my husband acting like a train was coming that he failed to see before starting across the multiple tracks crisscrossing the road. At the sign of his nervousness I began to be a little fearful myself out of fear of being hurt. Next thing I knew I heard the sound of the tracks below us rattle. Sure enough we weren’t the only ones on the tracks and we were about to be hit. However, the impact didn’t happen. Instead what happened was a car full of impatient teenagers passing us on the tracks using the shoulder of the road. I was relieved it wasn’t a train but wow did that scare me!

 

 LESSON: Often in life’s journey we feel like the light at the end of the tunnel just has to be a train. Fearful of what we anticipate happening we feel like at any time we expect to be hit and sent flying into orbit. We become scared as our imagination soars. However, what we think is a train coming could be just someone else crossing the tracks we are on in the journey of life. Something that causes a chain reaction that rattles the tracks below us momentarily. We need to remember that we are not the only ones on the road and we need to rely on God and His driving to see us through our journeys. Later after our railroad incident I found out my husband wasn’t acting “nervous” as he knew there wasn’t a train coming. No, what he was doing was paying attention to the herd of deer in the nearby field. I needed to trust his driving skills and go back to sleep and get some rest.

 

Same thing in our spiritual life, we need sit back and get some rest as we put our trust in God’s driving skills. No matter the length of the journey, the rattling of the tracks, the delays we encounter we can have confidence in our chauffeur, Jesus Christ. Our part is to make sure we allow Him to be the one in charge of driving us to where we need to be. He sees the trains, He’s not afraid of the tracks, and He knows where He’s going. You can’t get any better than that.

 

Suddenly it’s no longer “There’s a train coming!” but its “Jesus is driving, I am safe.”

 

© 2013 Karen J. Gillett @ Pencil Marks and Recipes Publishing         Funny DEES

Think I'm Having Stress~~~~~Breaking out in Praise

Instead of breaking out in a sweat over situations we need to break out in praise to the Lord. “Praise? You expect me to praise God at a time like this, I don’t feel like it!” We are not to do it simply because we “feel” like it but because it’s the right thing to do.

 

Praise moves us from the clouds to sunshine from doubt to faith. Once when I was feeling down an elder at our church saw me and told me, “Chin up Karen and praise the Lord.” Praise the Lord? What in the world was he talking about he must not understand my current situation and what I’m dealing with. I knew better, I knew he was well aware of what I was dealing with in life. And most importantly I knew in my heart he was right about praising God.

 

Years ago I had already learned the lesson that it’s not for the situation itself we are praising the Lord but praising God for who He is and what He can help us with and for the little things in life. In every situation we find ourselves in if we take the time to look we can find something there we can praise the Lord for. If all we can do is praise the Lord for toilet paper, colorful paint, door handles, crawling ants or anything it gets our mind going in the right direction.

 

When sucked into depression it’s very difficult to find things to praise God for and that’s when we need to start looking at all we see and think about and praise God. It’s a process that un-sticks our praise searcher button that is temporarily blocked from working properly. It’s a way of getting it going again and to beat the stress that has moved in on us.

 

To help out any whose praise searcher button is currently stuck, I will start by praising God naming the things I current see around me, things directly in front of my face. As I go around the room I will leave out on purpose the things that remind me of the bad in life like my cancer, issues with other people, headaches, and worries about my parents wellbeing.

 

Here we go: Praise the Lord for electricity, for lamps it lights up, the computer it keeps running, the TV it makes come alive. Praise you Lord for our black lab sleeping at my feet, the sound of the rooster crowing outside, and the cow bawling for her breakfast to be served. Praise you Lord for warm socks on my feet, pictures of love ones to remind me of the good times in life. Praise you for calendars and the pictures they display. Praise you Lord for the carpet that is soft on my feet and the hardwood floor that still have the skid marks on it from my grandson making a game out of sliding on it. Praise you Lord for the artwork you created just outside my window for me to see as the wind blows the branches on the trees. Praise you for comfortable furniture to sit upon and curtains draping from the windows. Praise you for the sound of a clock chiming, the coffee pot brewing, and the heater running. Praise you Lord that in spite of what I have to deal with in life I have blessings to count and the number one blessing on the list is You, Lord God. Praise you Lord for today and the use of it. Praise you Lord I’m alive to live it, it didn’t have to be me. Praise you that I can live my life to Your glory no matter what. Praise you for loving me.

 

There you go, I went first now it’s your turn to get your praise searcher button unstuck. Bypass the bad and start to praise the Lord anyway no matter what. As you can see there are plenty of things we can praise the Lord for whether we “feel” like it or not. Making the choice to wait until we feel like it is bad for us and good for our enemy so start today for tomorrow will be too late.

 

© 2013 Karen J. Gillett @ Pencil Marks and Recipes Publishing for COCWF