August 25, 2016

Get out of Jail free Card

Yesterday was not my best day. I let my kids watch "bonus" screen time while I cried over my kitchen sink. After two weeks of me calling and badgering them after I realized that a SIGNIFICANT portion of our photos and videos were inexplicably missing from our cloud drive, an Amazon representative spent and hour on the phone with me "letting me down easy" that I would never, ever see all the pictures and videos from October 2015-May 2016 again. Sure, it would have taken me hitting the delete button like 10 different times to delete a solid 700 pictures, but apparently it had to be me ( or someone else who has access to our pictures), and not Amazon, because they just don't do that.

Bottomline: Hilary should take note, if she wants to store top-secret secure documents and then delete them so that NO ONE CAN GET THEM BACK then she should be using the Amazon Cloud. *eye roll*

This left me crying into my pillow and eating the biggest bowl of Two Cookies Bluebell ( new favorite! Why hasn't someone combined cookies n' cream and cookie dough ice-cream before?!!) because this is not my favorite week anyway...this is the week when we look back and shake are heads that its really been 4 years since we were fighting for Tabitha and Priscilla's lives....August 25 2012 is the day we lost Priscilla. Today is hard for me even now.  Sure, four years distance has made it easier, but its still a little weighty. And I think it would be easy to just wallow a bit. I think that's fair, right?!

But I read something this morning,in Acts 16:25, that really reminded me what an opportunity these moments bring, it says:

" At midnight Paul and Silas were praying and singing praises to God, and the prisoners were listening to them." 

Paul and Silas had been thrown in prison, without trial, after preaching the gospel, they really didn't know what was going to happen to them and yet there they were praising God, and the other prisoners were listening.  

I so often take advantage of my "midnight" moments and get a good wallow in ( see: facebook status from last night), but I'm missing opportunities there, sure its not wrong for me to cry about things that are hard, but what an incredible testimony of Paul and Silas! What an audience they had there in the prison as all the other prisoners listened. Because, they were not alone in the prison!!!! I think, so often, when I'm having my cry-over-the-kitchen-sink moments,  I feel so very very alone, but in reality I can't tell you how many people have told me similar stories of losing all their pictures, all their journal entries from a certain important period, their Journaling Bible with their letters to their unborn and new babies....story after story! The truth is, NONE of us are alone in our struggles, we are SURROUNDED by people struggling. 
And then there are the harder things, like losing a child, that seem almost insurmountable, but we can be assured that we aren't alone in those heart aches either! Maybe the heart ache looks different, or has a different story, but the bottom-line is that NONE of us are alone at midnight. NONE of us are alone in prison. 
The difference is that I have the Hope of Jesus in my midnight moments. I have the Hope of Jesus in my prison moments. I should not keep that to myself! 

I am sorry for being a bit on the "woe is me" side yesterday, but today I want to share my story, my struggle ( because it is still a struggle! Its not all roses!), but most importantly I want to share my HOPE and my God. Because there are other prisoners in here with me. 

1 comment:

Unknown said...

Let's praise God in the prison right!? God keeps telling me to put worship on the tv during school hours and I'm like a toddler no! It wind work! It's not the same! Blah blah blah. Gods sitting back thinking, "whenever you're ready to obey dear!"