Even a sunshiny day has its cloudy spots. Life is sure like that, sometimes it seems that we have the same old trials spotting up our happy days…and it’s up to us to choose how to react. By God’s grace we don’t have to slug around in the shadows!

Today started out slow for us, with me feeling typically behind after “losing a school day” yesterday. Tuesday was a crazy busy day away from home…picnicking at the zoo, running errands in the “big” city, delivering a meal to a good friend who just had a baby boy (!), and barely making two meetings at church. The girls and I rushed home at 9:30 pm, head-achey and starving, threw a pizza in the oven and commenced to carting in all our “stuff”, coolers of perishables I’d bought, bags of other grocery items…by that point I didn’t want to even eat supper I was feeling so nauseous. But I slept great!

And I slept in…putting me further behind. Woke up to some discouraging news of the financial variety and you know what? God has shown me over and over again that nothing is TOO big for Him. But I’m human, and venting is part of the process. Fortunately for my kids, my house took the brunt. I cleaned all morning like a mad woman breaking only to supervise school and start on lunch. All the messy spots that remained from my bout with poison sumac are washed away…and something about all that homemaking rooted down deep within me and God brought peace to my heart.

It’s like, the sky can be falling in, but I am a mother and a wife and a woman, and these things are my heart–the things that matter–they surround me. My family and my home. I may not be able to change any outside circumstances, but I can whip my household into submission and be better for it!

I even got industrious about supper–thawed some cubed steaks, beat the tarnation out of them with my meat mallet, breaded them and fixed them up for smothered steaks tonight! Which reminds me, I have a pot full of potatoes boiling that needs checking…

Once my youngest was down for her afternoon nap, the older girls and I got out our devotional book and our Bibles and had a great quiet time…which progressed to reading a chapter in our Health book, and then assembling our spelling notebooks and filling in one of the spelling rule pages…we even had an hours worth of fun with our Botany, playing Taxonomy with shoes! Didn’t get all the subjects covered, but we had a wonderful time together, no sour faces about school today!

Around five o’clock, we headed outside to clean out the chicken’s brooding boxes and refill them with fresh wood shavings…collected ten cucumbers from the garden from which the girls chose a couple, hosed them off and munched them gone. Mmm!

For a day that started out sluggish-turned-panicky, I feel real peace and happiness right now.

I just shared one of my favorite verses with a good friend yesterday, and God knew I’d need it today. Maybe it would bless you as well.

“Be anxious for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known to God. And the peace of God which surpasses all understanding will guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus.” Philippians 4:6-7 (italics mine)

So next time you’re hit with something unexpected, try to turn it over immediately to Him…with thanksgiving! And don’t be surprised at the peace that eventually follows.

It’ll be okay.