Yesterday wasn’t one of my finest days. It was a day filled with filling out paper work and bombarded by negative thoughts. My day didn’t start off too bad, I went to morning prayer which was quite encouraging as people prayed for me and our family. It is always encouraging when people pray for you because you sense and experience the genuine love, care and concern people have for you. More than that, people are praying to God on your behalf can be quite humbling. I had some errands I needed to run after that which are not always fun, especially when they involve your mode of transportation. Every thing seemed fine most of the day until I decided to look at our bank account. How many enjoy doing that? Let me preface what I am about to say by saying this: please don’t feel sorry for us. When I had logged onto our online banking one of our accounts was in the negative. That’s never fun. Now there was a reason for this negative number that was unexpected. Have you ever look at your bank account and seen a negative number? Frustrating, right? Well, this frustration then snowballed into another frustration as I have been waiting for some forms to be filled out but when I received them there were not filled out properly. Frustrating! After spending some time on the phone (I don’t do this well) I received some clarity and now have to go back and have the paper work updated. Now I don’t want to bore you too much but my day didn’t end there. After spending more time on the phone with our bank on another issue I was told I had more paper work to fill out. Are you kidding me? Let’s just say I was about done with phone calls, errands and paperwork. I was done. I didn’t want to hold a pen any longer. I didn’t want to look at another piece of paper. I wish I could say everything was fine after putting everything down but it wasn’t. I was left alone with my own thoughts. Do you ever struggle with your thought life? Do you think about things too much that are outside your control? I do at times. I know I shouldn’t, but I do. My mind began to race in a thousand different directions and I didn’t know how to shut them off. My mind filled with fear, insecurities, and what ifs? They were so loud, I just wanted them to stop. I went downstairs into my office and sat on my couch and prayed. For me, I pray by initiating a conversation. I remember praying something like this yesterday:
Jesus, I am overwhelmed and frustrated right now and I don’t want to feel this way. I’m asking that You grant me peace right now. I’m scared and I don’t know what is going to happen but I know You do. I trust that You are good and that You are in control. I hand over all my concerns, fears and insecurities.
I sat in my basement for nearly 20 minutes just sitting there. I didn’t hear an audible voice, the room didn’t begin to shake or anything like that, but my mind wasn’t racing any longer. I seemed lighter. God had answered my prayer. He gave me peace in the midst of my temporary storm. I think that is critical for all of us to understand, all of us face storms in one form or another but we need to understand they will pass.
Thanks for reading…
Sean
