I’m not sure if the disease we have is catching or not, so you may want to simply delete this before ever reading it…….
For those of you who were brave enough to continue, let me tell you a story. There once was a family that was composed of a daddy, mommy, and five wittle kids. It was the day before their annual school sale and the mommy thought to get a huge start on the day by waking up at 5:15 to begin her annual baking before all 5 kids could be in there helping her. 170 butterhorns, 80 cinnamon rolls, and 10 pecan pies were calling her name, as well as packaging some of her 25 dozen cookies from the freezer and glazing 2 mocha cheesecakes. So out of bed she bounded….okay, so maybe it was more like a sluggish crawl…at 5:15, got dressed and started in the kitchen. And the kids woke up. 5:45!!!! THAT was plain ridiculous! But such was the story of her life, so as soon as they were all fed and dressed in snowpants, out the door they went to play in the 8 inches of snow by 7:30am.
The dear husband, who had been up since the wee hours as well, was patiently waiting for his breakfast this entire time. And barely squeaked out the door with a lunch….poor man, he takes it all in stride.
About 3 hours later, the harried mom noticed how quiet the house was with no phones ringing. Sure enough, she picked one up and there was no dialtone. So she texted her sweet husband to let him know they didn’t work and to get ahold of her by texting.
Well, the day went pretty good with the butterhorns and cinnamon rolls out of the oven and cooling by noon. Then it was time to start the pies. As the scatterbrained mom was looking at her eggs, she realized that she did not have enough to complete all ten pies. And this family does not live around the corner from the grocery store, either. So another text was sent to the man of the house to come home early with 3 dozen eggs if at all possible. Now here’s where things started getting really interesting……the mom decided she had had enough of the kitchen and left 5 pecan pies baking in the oven and went outside to shovel snow. Nothing more invigorating than shoveling snow! Especially when it’s just fluff.
After 15 minutes, she comes back in to find a peculiar smell wafting through the house. After 15 more minutes the smell was getting worse. So a quick peek in the oven confirmed that, yes, a pie was leaking onto the bottom of the oven. Let me rephrase that, it wasn’t just leaking….it was more like a trickle. She had slashed the pie pan to allow the crust to bake evenly….but there must have been a hole in the crust somewhere and while all the other four compliant pies were baking nicely, this one was losing its insides to the bottom of the oven. This was where the mommy wanted to cry. Instead, she jerked it out and slapped it on the counter where it continues to lay to this day.
Several minutes later, the husband comes home and confirms that this is the worst day of his life. After slipping and sliding around at work trying not to fall and break a bone again, he had picked up the family rig which had been in and out of the repair shop for over a week. After picking it up, he had found out that it still was not completely fixed. As he began the drive home, the phone company calls his cell to see if he had checked the home test to see if the problem with the phones was here in the house. If so, and they came to their home, the poor daddy would be receiving a bill for it. Stepping on the gas to get home as quick as possible so he could contact the phone company before they started on their way, he meets the utility truck stuck in the ditch, nearly on its side. Ropes, cables, and a tow truck all blocked the road so he offered his tow strap and calmly waited for 30 minutes until he could get past. Okay, so maybe calmly wasn’t the right word there……we’ll let you fill it in. Upon getting home, he tackles the phone problem only to find that his blonde wife had not checked the phone on the fax machine and it had somehow gotten knocked off the hook. At least they caught the problem in time so that they didn’t have to pay the phone company to come fix their line…..um, which had just simply been off the hook all day.
Baked goods were to be at the school by 5:00-6:00pm and the scurrying mommy pulled the last one from the oven at 3:30. Now here in the northwest, the sun begins to slide behind the mountain at 3:30 and is completely lost to China by 4:30pm. At approximately 4:15, the electricity went off. By now both parents were to the boiling point, what more could go wrong? That was a bad thing to think. As the pies, cinnamon rolls, and cheesecakes were getting covered by candlelight, the 4 year-old dumped a bottle of Gatorade on the upstairs windowsill. Mommy gave a short, pointed lecture to the little man while trying to wipe up the blue streaks that ran down the wall.
All this time the daddy and his wittle kids were trying to haul in wood from the woodpile to the basement. Instead of working in the complete dark, they grabbed an oil lamp. The daddy was outside throwing the wood down to the garage while the two oldest boys were hauling it inside. After a bit, the boys hollered out that they couldn’t see in there. In all his grown-up wisdom, the daddy assumed there were two little boys trying to get out of a job. So he hollered back at them to keep stacking since their youthful eyes could see better in the semi-darkness than his older ones. When they continued to holler that they couldn’t see, he finally gave up to go see what all the fuss was about. Sure enough, the wick in the oil lamp was so short it was no longer down in the oil and the light had gone out. It was completely dark. After finding a lantern, the daddy and his boys stood back to survey what a woodpile stacked in complete darkness looks like. And it was not a pretty sight….wood pieces were going every direction.
Everyone except the baby was banned to their seats in the Toyota in hopes that at least 5 wiggling bodies wouldn’t knock over a lantern or a candle and start the house on fire…..or some other horrible crisis. Up and down the stairs the mommy went to carry all the baked goods to the daddy where he promptly began loading them all in the rig. After a bit, he went to start the Toyota only to find the battery dead. Here is where both the mommy and the daddy wanted to cry and stomp their foot But that’s hard to do when there are little eyes peering out the window watching their reaction….eyes that belong to little kids who have been taught that it is wrong to stomp your feet and throw a fit. So instead, they prayed. Daddy prayed with the kids and then went to try a brand new set of jumper cables. Still dead. So while daddy went to get an old set of cables, Mommy prayed with the kids. Right then the Lord must have looked down from heaven and decided this family had had enough for just a few minutes before the car started, the electricity came back on!!
Thankfully, that was yesterday….and this is a brand new day today!!! Psalm 145:14-19 says, “The Lord upholdeth all that fall, and raiseth up all those that be bowed down. The eyes of all wait upon Thee; and Thou givest them their meat in due season. Thou openest Thine hand, and satisfiest the desire of every living thing. The Lord is righteous in all His ways, and holy in all His works. The Lord is nigh unto all them that call upon Him, to all that call upon Him in truth.” And this is where we are today…..we know God is never early, He is never late….but always right on time. And we trust Him!!
Until the next fiasco,
The Idaho Grabers
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