Just Another Day
Hey everyone, Michael here. This past Tuesday, I took the boys up to my mom and dad's to visit. We try to head up there every other Tuesday to see my family. It started out as a really good day. I got up early and was able to go for my morning run. Emily and I read our Bibles and started our morning with Jesus. The boys slept in, so we were able to relax a bit and get everything ready to go without any issues. We had a great day visiting with my family. Everything was going well. That is, until we got back home...
Consistency was Paying Off
Everything in our lives had been going well for the past few weeks. I’ve been able to stay consistent with my runs three times a week, so I can try and reach my yearly goal of running 600 miles. Emily has been very busy at the office, helping as many members of her community as possible. We’ve been staying consistent with reading our Bibles. We hadn't had any bumps in the road, and everything was going pretty smoothly.
Our Look Into the Future
The last couple of weeks have been what we envisioned for our life when we talk about daily routines. There’ve been no huge issues in any area of our lives. There’s been no blowouts or tantrums. There have been no issues at either office. There’s been no issues at church. There’ve been no issues with family or anything like that. Everything seemed to be going great. It seemed as if the devil had forgotten about us and moved on to somebody else.
It was a Little Too Quiet...
Rewinding back to Tuesday evening. We had gotten home, and it seemed like everything had hit the fan that afternoon. Emily had a major work project that came due, taking much more time than she had expected, which was very frustrating. She had had a stressful day in general and had fallen off the bandwagon, so to speak, with her nutrition. We had just found out about an issue with our subscription notifications for the blog. So if you don’t get our weekly emails about our new blog posts, check your spam mail.
To top it all off, I had to start making dinner while Emily was working on her project. I had given MJ a dry-erase marker while we looked at something on the refrigerator. Emily had finished nursing Mack and had come in to check on me to make sure that I was doing a splendid job of starting the tacos, and we were just having a great old conversation. We thought, "You know it's been quiet in the living room for a while. Maybe we should go check on him". I walk in there and I find wait for it...Yep, that’s right, green dry erase marker all over everything. All over the windowsill, all over the shelf, all over a book, all over his younger brother’s Exersaucer, and even all over himself. That was the last straw for Emily. She was stressed to the max and couldn't handle another thing today!
Just Breathe
So I kept myself calm and collected, and went and told her to relax. In case you missed it, she was not appreciative of me telling her that. But I just took both of her hands and mine, and I said we need to just breathe. We need to breathe through it. I told her that this is the devil trying to come between us and trying to come between our relationship with Jesus. We thought he had left us alone and moved on to somebody else. Come to find out that he hadn’t. He still remembered us. He still tried to attack us, he still tried to come in between our relationship with Jesus, and he tried to steal, kill, and destroy everything that we had worked for.
So, as the spiritual leader of my home, I told her that everything was going to be okay, that we were going to be able to clean up the dry-erase marker. We were going to be able to move on with our lives and not allow the devil to come in and take over the day that we’ve had. We weren't going to let him take over our lives from Jesus. As I was cleaning the dry-erase marker, Emily finished cooking dinner and pulled everything together. As soon as I was done cleaning, we were able to eat our delicious meal prepared by my beautiful wife.
Coming out the Other Side With Jesus
To finish out our evening, we decided to take the boys on a walk from our house up to Dollar General to grab a few drink mix-ins. (We're trying to be better with our water intake.) We loaded up the boys in their favorite strollers and took off. MJ loves his little umbrella stroller, and Mack is still content in his car seat stroller. It was a glorious walk as both kids cooperated and were very good during the trek. MJ had a lot of fun. He loves to go on walks, but what he enjoys the most is being pushed around in the stroller. He doesn’t actually walk at all.
Macklin was perfect, just chewing on his toy the whole time. Emily and I burned off some of our dinner calories while listening to K-Love. We allowed Jesus to come over us and flood us with His love and the blessings that He has for us, no matter how much the devil tried to attack us and ruin our day. So no matter what your day brings, no matter how much the devil tries to come at you, and he will never stop trying to convince you to get you to do his bidding, never stop persevering. Always keep pushing through. Jesus is there for you, Jesus will protect you, Jesus will guide you. Just like He says He will.
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