Day One

The month of May fills most parts of North America with increasing beauty. By the end of this month, spring has definitely arrived, even in frigid northeastern Pennsylvania. Schools are close to being let out for the summer, college graduates join the workforce temporarily, flowers bloom, birds sing, the sun shines, the beaches' boardwalks fill with people. And normally, I love May. This year, however, I'm really shooting for June.

See, I like to fast forward. When I was in high school, a few friends of mine and I got into the habit of frequently wishing for a "fast-forward button" for our lives. I wanted to fast forward to, well, now... (irony?), when I would be married and working, and running my own(ish) home. Mostly we just wanted out of high school. I mean, they say it's the best time of your life, but really, they are lying!

(Strangely, this impatience thing never affected me around Christmas time. Probably because I was too busy preparing my own gifts for everyone (right down to the morning of Christmas!) and didn't have time to be impatient. )

Recently I've been noticing this desire for a fast-forward button creep up again in a few ways. First of all, my husband has a major project at work which requires him to work overnights and away from home until about June. So, of course, I am longing for a time when I don't just see evidences of someone living in the house with me, but the person who wears the socks and drinks the carnation instant breakfasts.

I'm trying to be productive in my solitude, so I started reading a book that the ladies at my home church gave me. It's called, Created to be his help meet, by Debi Pearl. I'm only on like chapter 3, because I just got it this past weekend, and it involves some heavy Bible reading that I *shamefully* haven't been able to tackle expediently. However, the first two chapters have been excellent and have spoken to me recently because they are about being joyful. And let's face it, it's pretty hard to be joyful when your number one man is absent a lot. But I've been trying to smile, and not let his bad-news phone calls get me down - make me pity myself. Because really, I have a husband, and he has a job, and those are things to be thankful for.

But anyways, after scanning through this book and even reading the first two chapters I felt my trigger hand reaching for that imaginary "fast-forward" button, thinking "How am I ever going to tackle all these tips and perfect them at once!!" and "But learning these things will take so much time and I won't get them all right at first, so let's see, in about 10 years maybe I could be pretty decent at half of these things.... let's go there. 2020 please?" I seem to have this feeling that I need to master everything there is to know right now! And the only way to do this would be to... yes, that's right. Fast-forward.

But unfortunately for my trigger hand, that's not how it works. I have to muddle through many, many failures until I can even think that I'm coming close to being more godly. I have to go through many fights with my husband before I learn to control my tongue; I have to have a few more pity parties before I will learn to be thankful in all circumstances. I know this. And it's discouraging. But I also know that I will have a Savior who has promised to be there along the way, picking me up, dusting me off, pointing out where I went wrong, using other people and other books to encourage me, and just generally guiding me as I stumble, fall, limp, and trip my way through my marriage, through my Christian walk, through life. And he will guide me into being who he wants me to be, not who the author of this book wants me to be, and not who I think I want to be. He certainly knows best!

I want to do it the right way. The perfect way. That's why I read books about it. But I just need to do it one day at a time, like everyone says. Worry about today. This moment. These next 5 minutes. And maybe someday I will master the skill of taking one step at a time. Maybe :)