Mondays

Our family recently attended the International Chrisitan Retail Show in Orlando as vendors. This post is about the first Monday of the tradeshow.

Is it possible to experience life without the balance of positive and negative?

I don't think so.

Mondays testify to this.

It's as if the struggle of little annoyances are what it takes to get to Tuesday.

A thousand dollar brake job.

A broken flusher on a toilet.

A wrong turn from the interstate.

I've grown used to it.

Originating from the balance of God creating the perfect garden where we dwell
in paradise with no hassle, no sweat, no pain...

To the contrast of free choice pulling us in the chaotic direction of tasting the apple,
where figuratively, all hell breaks loose.

In nature, the animal kingdom fights this natural order and haggles with the will to survive.

And we as the keepers of their dominion do the same.

As Jesus instructed, if we are to lead, we must follow.

If we are to become great, we must become the least.

On this particular Monday, I experienced both.

Humility and Exaltation.

I padded my feet with cushy intersoles, ready for cement.

I stood tall and met warm and interesting people, shaking hands, hugging, smiling wide.

I listened with interest to testimonies of how God delivered a single mom from impossible situations and rewarded another toiling homeschooling one with writing opportunities.

I met my favorite author, quite by accident.

We found out our second son as he's working, learning and playing this summer, has contracted Lyme Disease. Of all the tick bites in the world, only 2 percent result in catching this bug. He is on his third round of anti-biotics for first an ear infection, and now for a bite he received while sleeping cozy in his bed at night.

It's difficult not to worry.

So we vascillate back and forth between fretting and praying. Tearing and trusting.

We capped the evening off with a Christian concert with the Newsboys.

Again, another irony illustrating our every days.

We stood shoulder to shoulder with other vendors and book store owners, up close and personal, singing hallelujahs with the band. They rocked our socks! We returned the energy in praise to Almighty God. Hearing and seeing live, the performance of the songs, "Born Again" and "The Revelation Song" were just desserts for many days spent in a dark dank warehouse, shipping games.

As a salmon swims upstream, we go against the flow towards Tuesday.

We work. We strive. We live, move and have our being within grace.

The reason, I have come to believe, is to commune with eternity. For the eventuality of no wrangle between the have and have not...

Until we get there...

Let us pray.