Ginger Goss is an amazing woman whose life shines as a testimony of her relationship with Jesus. She has many gifts and serves the Lord with trust and humility. One of her gifts is that she can write. She is a new friend and I am honored to get to share her words with you. I know you will be blessed by her today! – Cindy Grasso
Writer’s block hit me yesterday morning. I had read in my personal time “Always be thankful. Never stop praying” and I felt like I needed to write about it for this blog. However, nothing really clicked in a way I felt lead to write about. I prayed for wisdom…waited for insight…and still nada. So I wrote nothing, showered, and headed into work.
After I got home that evening, my husband and I were watching a movie when we heard, “Hey Mom, I need your little fingers. Can you help me?” My son had been putting in new headlights on his car. There was a small plastic piece had popped out of this tiny area and refused to snap back into place. He’d been trying for a while and was irritated that it wouldn’t go back in. He needed a second set of hands and eyes to problem-solve. Usually, it was a “Hey Dad, can you help?” but he knew Dad’s hands were too big to do what he was trying to do, so my son had to settle for me.
I’d love to say that when I came out, I had it back in place in under 5 minutes flat… but, uh, no. That’s is so not what happened. We worked on that for about an hour together trying to figure out what to do to get it back into place. He was under the car. I was under the car. We tried one working from the top angle, the other working from below. But no matter what we tried, that frustrating little part would not cooperate.
Then that verse from the morning started running through my head, “always be thankful. Never stop praying”. Who says God doesn’t have a sense of humor?! Hmmm…” always be thankful”… but we’re frustrated and getting our butts kicked by a plastic one-inch square but I’m getting time with my son that rarely happens… be thankful... enjoy the moment. OK. God, thank you for this time with him. It’s precious and I’ve been telling you how much I’ve missed it.
“Never stop praying.” OK. Daddy, we need help. Please give us the wisdom to get this piece back in. Help me to use this opportunity to teach him how to deal with frustration, to model patience, and to ask You for help in all we do. So I told him, let’s keep trying. I’m asking God to give us the wisdom to figure this out.
And wouldn’t you know it, within a few minutes, we got that piece back into place. Yep. It clicked back in and all was well… UNTIL… he went to adjust the headlight beams and the piece popped out AGAIN. Yep. We were back to square one. BUT, this time we knew how to get it back in … AND how to PREVENT it from happening again. After getting it into place the second time, before he went to adjust the lights again, he added additional measures to keep the piece from coming out again. And it worked. No more piece out of place.
We talked about it afterward and it was a great teachable moment. Although he got mad when it popped out a second time, he realized now we knew how to fix it. The previous time spent PREPARED him for THIS moment and gave us time together and memories to cherish.
I know that life gets frustrating for you too. We struggle with problems we don’t know how to fix. We’re caught in situations we don’t see a way out of. We find ourselves getting angry, frustrated, overwhelmed, defeated, stressed out, depressed, and anxious. We cry out to God out of those emotions…and still find ourselves in the middle of the problem. And as I’ve thought about that time fixing my son’s car with him, I can’t help but wonder in my own life, if perhaps I need to calm down, and let my Heavenly Daddy help me work through my frustrating plastic pieces.
My freaking out doesn’t help anything. All it does is frustrate me more. But… what if I admitted I couldn’t fix it? What if I stopped what I was doing (that wasn’t fixing the problem anyway), and went to my Daddy and asked Him to come work through it with me? I am always willing to help my son IF he wants my help. God’s the same way, He’s always willing to help but He’s not going to force me to take it.
Perhaps God waiting for me to ask Him to help to approach the problem together, enjoy the time together, and learn how to overcome the obstacle. And perhaps, just maybe…despite my problems, I will begin to see them as ways to spend more time with Him. Perhaps my Father in heaven is missing time with His little girl like I’ve been missing it with my own son.
Hmmm… “Hey, Daddy, can You help?”
“Always be thankful. Never stop praying.”
1 Thes. 5:16-17
What are you struggling with today?
Your Father in heaven is ready and waiting to help.
Ask Him.
by Ginger Goss