The Complaining Spiral

A short thought this morning as I watch lots of flies, mosquitoes, and other bugs come in through my open doorway this morning.  (we moved into our humble little abode two days ago and have to replace both of the doors coming from the outside in-they were almost impossible to shut and very thin).  More on the move in later and more on why I haven’t posted about that yet later as well. 

Anyways, I digress…as I watched this happening while homeschooling the two kiddos, I found myself getting upset with the workers, being annoyed that the old door was being taken off and it was taking so long for the new door to be put on, and all of these bugs were being allowed to come right in.  But as the kids got busy with something, I decided I should do my Jesus Calling devotional real quick.  As usual, it spoke right to the core.  Today was about not letting the spiral of complaining happen.  Funny how this was just about to occur for me as this door thing was the icing on the cake as they say.

So, I prayed.  God revealed to me rather quickly what I was supposed to learn through this situation.

If they didn’t take the old door off, how could they put a new, better door on??? I could leave the old door on and not have the temporary annoyance of bugs coming in, but would then have to deal with the long term annoyance of draftiness, kids not being able to open the door, unable to lock it, ugliness, and so forth…Or I could endure the short term pain for the long term gain of a prettier, more solid, better equipped door.

So you may be thinking by now, um, duh, I could have told you this.  Yes, I know I am thick headed at times.  You also may wonder where is she going with this??? Well, God helped me to apply this life situation to my spiritual situation.

How often do we want to skip on by the hard stuff? Or complain about it the whole way through?  For example, when you want to lose weight or get in shape, you aren’t real excited about working out and you will probably whine about having to eat healthy, but you are pumped up to be healthy and fit in the end.  Or if you are saving money for something, and you are pinching pennies in the meanwhile, it is not a whole lot of fun, but worth it in the end when you reach your savings goal.  For me, right now, I am struggling to endure some of this short term stuff God has me going through.  I feel like we have been here 2 weeks now and we haven’t done much in the way of ministry or our adoption.  And why haven’t you, you might ask?  Because of these temporary annoyances that keep occurring.  Do we have our vehicle yet? Nope!  We have been given the run around I don’t know how many times-they say tomorrow we can finally have it, we shall see.  Do we have consistent running water at our new house?  Nope! Not even close.  Do we have hot water at our house? Nope! Mickey did a cold bucket shower the other night-I am thankful Aby let me shower at her house tonight. J  Does the power go out every other hour? Yep!  Does it go out right in the middle of cooking dinner or trying to get our kids to bed? Yep!  Is the container with all our beds/cookware/dinnerware/kitchen table/homeschool stuff/etc. here yet? Nope! It has been stuck in Mozambique for about 2 months now.  It made it across the ocean but can’t make it across a few countries.  Are you getting the idea?  Lots and lots of short term aggravations that are dragging me down and making it difficult to see any long term gain. 

Now, here is where you might expect me to say-I see the light now.  I know I am going to get through these things and it is going to be an amazing year of ministry here in Africa…I want it to be and I know God wants it to be-but I JUST CAN’T SEE IT YET.

So, back to the doors.  And this is why I struggle to see yet the long term good of this year…the guys finished the first door and not kidding, there is a gap the size of Texas at the bottom!  A great new solid door with a safe, nice looking lock and they didn’t cut it right so now-those bugs I was talking about earlier, well, just include small animals that now can just come on in our home.  We discuss this with them so they can do the next door better-and what do you know, they do a great job with no gap at the bottom, but wheweeee, a nice gap at the top.  Ugghhhhhh….Now, we must add some weather stripping to seal the doors up so add another thing to our list of to dos.  And it isn’t like you can just run down the street to Home Depot and grab this either! 

To wrap it up, let’s go way back to the whole spiral of complaining and what God is teaching me through all of this.  Does it ever help our situation to complain?  (I have said this to my kids a number of times-I need to say it to myself) And the answer is most definitely no.  I can take all this stuff is happening and call my parents, friends, or talk to anyone who will listen and complain about it, but this WILL NOT HELP! I really wasn’t trying to complain above either, just trying to illustrate how the spiral could occur and almost did.  (It did in my mind, and if it is in my mind, it was sure to come out of my mouth soon enough!)

So even though, I can’t see exactly how this year is going to pan out yet and I so badly want to, God help me, I don’t want to get into complaining mode.  It would be so easy to do here, because honestly, it is just a hard place to live compared to what we are used to.  Please pray for me in this as it takes every ounce of me to not get on this spiral and let me know if you want me to pray for you-if you are also on the same path towards WhiningTown.  J

Philippians 2:14

Do all things without grumbling or questioning, that you may be blameless and innocent, children of God without blemish in the midst of a crooked and twisted generation, among whom you shine as lights in the world, holding fast to the word of life, so that in the day of Christ I may be proud that I did not run in vain or labor in vain.