When I wrote this journal entry, I’d let a girl and her baby live in because they had nowhere else to go. She’s barely paid me and I needed help with the painting and tile replacement. I was a single mom on a teacher’s paycheck. How was I going to do this? God said, “Didn’t you talk to me about that? It’ll be all right.”
I had some settlement money come in just in time. Meanwhile my prayer partner had lost her job, so I paid her to come help me. We worked until it got too hot in the southern Louisiana summer days. I was worried that we couldn’t work long enough. God said, “It’ll be all right! You’ve already asked me about that!”
Here’s my entry from that July day back in 2004:
I had a lotta day. This is a phrase that our nephew, Brian used when he was two years old to express that he had quite a busy day. It has become a family catch phrase.
My daughter Adrianne had to be downtown by 8 a.m. which meant I had to be up before 6 a.m. to get her up in enough time. That’s the way it works when you’re trying to wake up a teenager to be somewhere on time in the mornings.
I came home to get some stuff done around the house then nephew Juan and I went to pick up Adrianne. They wanted to go to a store on that side of town and across the street was a shopping strip with a flea market I’d seen for sometime but never been inside. We drove over to see the opening and closing times.
Then we saw a St. Vincent de Paul thrift store at the end of the strip. “Mmmm! Used books!” My daughter drooled Homer Simpson style. Juan discovered The Wizard of Id and began to read it aloud as he followed us throughout the store. “Hey, listen to this one!”
When we got home we made some place mats for Discipleship Weekend.
The hot water heater was to be installed at 4 p.m. so I went over to our house that I’m getting ready for renting out … Or maybe I’ll move back into it myself after all this work!
“I know this house doesn’t need a fifty-gallon water heater! Is this gonna fit in there?” said Plummer Boy, who started talking as he stepped out of the truck …
“Hey,” I said. “You don’t look old enough to have a teenage daughter. Fifty gallons is one shower.”
I did some more sweeping and painting while he put in the new water heater. I called Gwen and said I’d pick her up as I’d promised so she could help, but the electricity was still not on. No air-conditioning.
When I went home to eat, Mama asked me, in so many words, if I was out of my mind. “You have been over there for a few hours in that heat. You are tired. Gwen doesn’t need that heat either.”
I’m just in a hurry and the heat limits us to how long we can work each day. Then I thought, What, do I have a deadline or something? I’ve already prayed, there’s no rush and God is in control.
I called Gwen back and instead we took and excursion to Hobby Lobby to check some ideas for Discipleship crafts and just look around. I found some teeninsy bottles of Tabasco and thought I’d glue them to some cards that read, “Jesus Is the Spice of Life.”
Hmmm. Thinking moment.
“Hey, Gwen, we need a dessert or something.”
We went to Starbucks and had a great time. A guy was enjoying himself at one of the outdoor tables. We could see out the window that he was reading to himself—aloud. He had hand and head gestures and would stop to laugh out loud at whatever he’d read to himself. We were quite entertained at his entertaining himself.
We laughed and gabbed and gabbed and laughed. Sometimes you have to take a mini-vacation.
I had a lotta day. « Last Edit: Jul 26, 2004, 9:2
I’m so blessed to have that memory, not just because it’s another good memory of my friend and prayer partner, Gwen, who went home to God last December. But because that day was for me another confirmation of one of my favorite Bible passages: Matthew 6:25-30. I call this my “Alfred E. Newman, What, Me Worry?” scripture. To paraphrase, it just reminds us that after we give a burden to God then we shouldn’t be worried about it.
If today is a heavy-laden day for you, I pray you can let it go, take a mini-vacation and have “a lotta day.” Your house may not be as clean as you want it. The yard may not be as manicured as you like it. That dust will be there tomorrow and so will the weeds. There’s someone who has no belongings to dust and no yard to mow.
