Lunch Box Notes and Late Night Woes

The Joy of the Lord is my Strength Nehemiah 8:10

Have you ever had one of those days? You know the kind. The kind of day when nothing seems to go as planned. I had one of those days recently. Well, it was actually the evening and into the late night that it all started to fall apart for me. At the beginning of the day I felt optimistic, ready to start the day, full of good intentions. So much so that I felt a nudge, a conviction if you will to write a little note with a Bible verse in my daughter's lunchbox with a few encouraging words. I used to do this when my girls were little but had not done it in a long time. Why it came to mind again this particular morning was a mystery to me at the time. The verse "The Joy of the Lord is your strength" came to mind. So I penned the verse with an "I love you, have a great day, love mom" and all of that mushy mom stuff. I stuck it in her lunch box with her peanut butter sandwich and other lunch goodies and off to school she went.

The day progressed as normal for me. Work, volleyball practice, family fun on a Friday night and the note was long forgotten throughout the day.

But then came the night when things took a turn for the worst. Nothing terribly bad happened, but nothing good seemed to happen either. We had plans for a fun family evening when nothing was going our way. From a cranky pre-teen, unforeseen and unexpected detours to our truck not starting that evening to get us back home and at this point it's 10:00 at night. This was our fun filled evening.

As we sat in the car waiting for the vehicle situation to be resolved on this moonless night we started discussing all of the crazy evening shenanigans and started to find ourselves complaining. I took this opportunity to tell my daughters to focus on all the good and the fun that we had together instead of all that went wrong. And that's when the aha moment happened. The same cranky pre-teen from a few hours earlier pipes in and says, "Mom, that reminds me of the note you put in my lunchbox this morning. The joy of the Lord is your strength." Mind blown. The note had come full circle and God knew we would need to hear those words by the end of that night. He is a good and faithful God. Not much could've wiped the smile off of my face at that point. My flesh and my heart may have failed me after this bad day. My flesh wanted to give into complaining and my heart wanted to give up.

But God was my strength and portion that I needed. God shows us that His ways are not our ways and His thoughts are not our thoughts and it is God that directs our paths and guides us through this life. We may have been walking in the shadow of discouragement that night but God was leading us besides the still waters. He does for us more than we can even imagine.

We all got a lot more than physical nourishment from that lunchbox that day, we got the added bonus of having our spirits fed from God's word, as well.

Do you ever let God speak to you? You need only to be still and listen and let Him speak to you on those dark nights and let the joy of the Lord be your strength.