I'm a Phone Murderer

I’m so degraditated!! I have inadvertently killed my cell phone by giving it an accidental 7-hour OVERNIGHT SOAK . This would not be TOO humiliating IF it was the first time such a thing had happened. But I have a history with cell phones and liquid-related accidents. This is not the 2^nd time or 3^rd time I’ve drowned a cell phone to death. It’s the 4^th time.

The last thing I did on Friday night before falling asleep was turn OFF my cell phone alarm (as is my custom on Friday nights, as Friday is the ONLY night of the week where a wake-up call is not required the next morning). Instead of carefully setting the phone on the edge of my nightstand like usual, I dropped it into what I thought was the little box sitting on top of my nightstand. On Saturday morning when I woke up, I reached over to get my phone out of the box to see what time it was. To my horror, I saw my phone sitting in my water cup (which was only 1/3 full, but full enough!). I did a double-take to make sure I was really seeing what I was looking at. I could not BELIEVE what I had done. I tried to revive it but I’m afraid it’s a goner.

About 2 years ago, I was pulling clothes out of the washing machine one day and found my cell phone at the bottom of the wash basin, obviously had been left in pant pocket. It was dead as a doornail and could not be repaired. Later that year, I was driving around looking at Christmas lights with the kids and set my phone in the cupholder of my car, but did not know it was sitting in a puddle of hot cocoa which had leaked from a Styrofoam cup in same said cupholder just a little while before. Months later, my phone dropped out of my school bag (or out of my car) into the parking lot of my school, where it was found by a fellow teacher, who gave it to me the next morning after it had drizzled rain most of the night. That one actually worked for a few days, but was in critical condition and died a few days after.

So I have concluded that I must not be responsible enough to own a regular phone!?!? I either need to have NO phone or get a special waterproof phone. What do you think? Have I exceeded the number of reasonable phone replacements in a 2-year period? (Of course, I haven't bought nice new phones when these things happen; I buy a Cheapie one for $30 and put my SIM card in it. We don't have a home phone, but the money we think we're saving by not having a land line is actually going to the purchase of these "cheapie" replacement phones!! AAAHHHH!)

If my Dad were here, he’d say “No cell phone for a year”!! Right, Kenj? Mark hasn’t said much about the incident this weekend, except that he’s gonna buy me a water bottle WITH A LID to put next to the bed for my bouts of nighttime thirst.

Yet Will I Trust Him

Over the past few days, I have been thinking A LOT about the fact that I am not always going to understand why God allows some things to happen (or NOT happen). I've thought about that lots of times before, like when my Dad got so ill and it was so hard to see him deteriorate so fast when there's plenty of healthy, able-bodied jerks his age running around. It seemed so unfair! Or when I try my best at something, like losing weight, and still fail miserably. Why must I live with daily guilt when women half my size get to eat whatever they want pretty much whenever and not think anything about it? When things are not going the way I think they should be going, either in my life or in someone else's life, I sometimes start doubting and start asking God "WHY?" (or "WHY NOT?"). And I even sometimes go as far as to try "fixing" things or figuring out why they happen the way they do. But I am learning that what I really need to do is STOP trying to "make sense" of things--stop calculating---and just tell God that I trust Him no matter what. We do not have to understand God to trust Him all the way. I am just now really getting that.

I went reading in Job this week as I often do when I am perplexed about situations in my life. And verse 6:10 JUMPED OUT and GRABBED ME and spoke to me. Job says how He wishes God would just let him die. And then he says, "...then I would still have this consolation— my joy in unrelenting pain— that I had not denied the words of the Holy One." I think Job was starting to doubt himself---starting to feel afraid that the longer he lived in the complete misery that his life had become, the harder it would be to trust God. He wanted to keep trusting, but I am sure he came close a few times to turning his back on God. He obviously was tempted to do so. But HE DIDN'T! And that in itself was comforting to him. His "joy in unrelenting pain" was that He did not deny God's working in his life, even though He could not understand it. That's the joy I want!

Romans 11:33--"O the depth of the riches both of the WISDOM and KNOWLEDGE of God! How UNSEARCHABLE are his judgments, and his ways PAST FINDING OUT." I love that verse.

Deuteronomy 10:12--"Fear the LORD your God, walk in ALL HIS WAYS, and love Him, and serve the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul". His ways are not our ways, and sometimes He has a different plan that we think He should have. There's no clause attached to that verse that says, "serve Him with all your soul IF He works everything out for you the way you want".

So much has happened to Mark in the past few weeks with his health problems and being unable to work; he has been very sad. And it's all kind of uncertain right now what he'll be able to do to earn income and what type of medical insurance he'll be able to have, etc. etc... And last week a young woman died in a car accident, a woman I didn't know, but several people at my school did know her. She was a leader in her church, devoted to Christ, loving toward others, newly married. So much fervor and fire for God. Killed in a car accident just like that. And then yesterday afternoon, my 2nd mom (my mother-in-law) was diagnosed with some kind of tumor in her brain, which is causing her to have symptoms much like a person who has had a stroke. She will have brain surgery a week from now, maybe sooner, and we will know more of a prognosis then. So sudden and so serious. And my new little niece, Josie, in Texas born prematurely and what a scare her birth was---and she's home and she's OK but she came so unexpectedly and she could have died. Just thinking about all of this yesterday and last night, I had to deliberately stop what I was doing and just tell God that I don't DOUBT Him, I don't understand Him, but I'm NOT going to stop trusting Him. NO MATTER WHAT.

Finances may be a mess---YET WILL I TRUST HIM. Health may be failing---YET WILL I TRUST HIM. Work may be too hard to handle sometimes---YET WILL I TRUST HIM. I claim this phrase from Job for every single hard thing in life right now.

"Though He slay me, yet will I trust in Him." ~Job 13:15