Being Grateful for the Bugs

[bws_captcha]It’s been a rough month with a series of weird situations that climaxed with our water heater bursting and ruining floors and walls in my office, my website failing for mysterious reasons, and now I am waiting to see if we will need an emergency move out of the house due to a crazy amount of bugs. We were surrounded by a two-story high cloud in the front of and behind our home for about two weeks while I’ve been trying to get answers and see what damage has been done, if it was termites, and if we need to do something drastic to protect our home. It’s been a wild ride and frankly pretty easy to get down about computer bugs and literal bugs surrounding us, until a phrase danced through my mind as I drove carpool yesterday afternoon.

Give thanks in all things.

Thanks? For having big financial hits, several in a row? For bugs on line and then surrounding us?

Corrie ten Boom. She gave thanks for the bugs.

A warm sensation came over me as I recalled the details of the story. I even remembered teaching the book to high school classes years ago. Corrie ten Boom hid Jews during the Holocaust in her home in Holland. Her family was in the watchmaking business, which feels very close to where I was in the jewelry business for years. Her family’s heroic efforts saved more than 800 people and all of her family but her died in the Nazi camps. There’s a critical moment in her memoir, The Hiding Place, where she determines to pray and be thankful for lice crawling all over them in the bunks and sleeping quarters. She never knew that the bugs which were very disgusting were actually keeping the guards out at night and gave her the opportunity to share her faith and encourage the other prisoners, huge groups of them, with her tiny Bible she’d smuggled into the camp, reading late into the night.

She gave thanks for the bugs in the worst of circumstances and it changed lives, even in their final days.

Wow.

This really changed my perspective. We still don’t know the outcome, but I’m determining to give thanks today, right after Easter, for a path I don’t yet understand. Why do we have to keep moving? I wonder. This time it seems so futile to store everything, and clear out every cabinet and closet, just like a normal move so gas can pour through our home.

But if you live life with a closed hand, holding onto any possession or thing more tightly than what really matters, it will possess you instead.

I recently was able to meet with people who had heard me speak about this very topic in Seattle and was so overwhelmed when whole tables of people told me my talk made a difference in their lives. It was like God was saying, see, I can use ANYTHING to help others if you only give it to me. Give me this too.

So later today, I’ll find out whether we’re moving without moving, and how crazy the crazy will be in our lives. But, ultimately, I’ll be trusting the hand of the One who knows all the answers even when life is topsy-turvy and makes no sense. That love and faith is what gets you through the darkest corners of life and allows you a fresh breath in the midst of turmoil.

My website will be fixed soon, and I’m so grateful for the team working hard to get it all working. The bugs will be gone. We’ll go through whatever process is necessary with the house and won’t let go of the hand that holds us all. Thanks for your patience and support in the midst of it all! Have you ever had to trust when things were going sideways? What’s your story? Share in the comments below.