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Posts Tagged ‘patience’

Pet Peeves and Other Irritations

Posted in grace, intentional living, Let's Get Real, tagged , , , , on April 26, 2012 | 4 Comments »

My daughter let out a heavy sigh and scowled. “Do you have to type so loudly?”

Sitting beside her in my king-sized bed, her with ice propped around her face, me with pillows propped behind my back, I glanced at my hands poised on my keyboard and stifled a grin. “Oh, was I loud?”

“Yeah. Your nails make an annoying clicking noise. And can you quit wiggling so much?! You’re shaking the whole bed!”

Now that’s passionate typing, or a very sensitive teen. By complaint number five, I assumed the latter.

Throughout the day, I wiggled my foot, breathed to loud, shifted too often. After a rough oral surgery, followed by a few days of bed rest, my daughter was going stir crazy. Not only that, but she was overdosing on parental time.

On night three, having all the mommy-time she could bear, she grabbed her bags of ice and trudged upstairs for some much-needed space. Her reprieve was short-lived. At two am, awakened by pain, she sought me out, only to fall down the stairs with a loud crash and a high-pitched cry.

I jolted awake and ran to her, comforted her, and guided her back into my bed where I could monitor her more closely.

Poor child.

The following weekend, we went to Omaha for house hunting, which placed our now claustrophobic (her words, not mine) daughter in a 300 square foot hotel room with both parents. By this point, even a look was enough to make her teeth grind, not a good thing, considering the state of her mouth.

As my husband and I chuckled about her behavior, God used the moment to prick my heart.

I’d been the same way with Steve. Like my daughter, I’d let little things, minor irritations, urk me, only my behavior wasn’t comical. My role is to build up my home, not to tear it down, to support and encourage my husband, not to nit-pick him verbally or mentally.

This week I’m memorizing Colossians 3:12-13: Since God chose you to be the holy people he loves, you must clothe yourselves with tenderhearted mercy, kindness, humility, gentleness, and patience.  Make allowance for each other’s faults, and forgive anyone who offends you. Remember, the Lord forgave you, so you must forgive others.

It’s helped. When I’m tempted to get annoyed, God reminds me of this verse, and effectively defuses my irritation. When centered in God’s Word, I realize how petty most of my annoyances are and what a treasure my husband truly is. In other words, the Scripture passage “transforms my thinking” (Romans 12:2) and “judges the thoughts and attitudes of my heart” (Hebrews 4:12).

Although we’re nearing the home-stretch with our home purchased and only one more hotel stay left (the hardest part for each of us loners), I know stress will come and pet peeves will happen, but when they do, I pray God will remind me of my comical-yet-not-so-funny, eye-opening time with my daughter. And may He grant me the patience to make allowances for dirty socks found in sheets and crumbs left on counters, or whatever minor “faults” might arise.

Let’s talk about this!

Join us at Living by Grace as we talk about all those little things that drive us crazy in a given day, and how to handle them with patience and grace.

Stop for a moment to contemplate some of your pet peeves in light of the verse above. How can you “make allowances for each other’s faults” today? And how might that change the atmosphere in your home?

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God’s Timing

Posted in Faith, God's Authors, prayer, tagged , , , on December 12, 2011 | Leave a Comment »

Patience is not my strong point. I like to do, to know I’m moving forward, making progress, which makes waiting on God especially difficult. I often tell Him I’d do better if He’d give me a hint of His future plans. Or better yet, a point-by-point memo. In leu of that, a neon sign would be great. And yet, despite my snivelling, God continues to lead me step by step, teaching me not only how to do His will, but more importantly, to trust in Him. Today’s post, by Staci Stallings, reminds us silence isn’t necessarily a no.

God’s Timing By:  Staci Stallings

I recently shared this on a writer’s loop I’m on, but after re-reading decided to share it here as well…

I think that this is absolutely the best thing I have learned in my writing journey:  God is faithful all the time.  Trust Him, and He will lead you in every moment EXACTLY where you are supposed to be in that moment.  You may not know it or see it or understand it, but when you look back, you will see the fine and perfect tapestry He’s been weaving the whole time.

For me, this lesson comes in several ways (some more fun than others).

#1 The YES times!  This would be the moments when it all makes sense, when I see God at work most clearly, when the perfection of His Will and what He’s doing is not just a glimmer but a full-on, turn the spotlights on moment.  The completion of a book I didn’t know how to finish.  The right person showing up at just the right time.  That flash of understanding when you just KNOW how a story all ties together.  I’ve had all of these and so many more.

#2  The NO moments.  I heard a story one day about two little boys who came into their father’s house with a box.  As they headed to the basement, their father stopped them to see what was in the box.  It was their new project:  two snakes!  Guess what the father said?  NO!  Well, just like those boys sometimes my Dad tells me no, and most of the time I’m just as disappointed as they were.  But the truth is when God tells me no, I see it now as His way of keeping me from doing something that would ultimately hurt me–like putting snakes in my basement.  “No” might be a contact I thought I needed falling through.  It might be a path I thought was going to be great not working out.  It might be MY agenda not working out like I’d planned.  Do “no” moments make me frustrated?  Yes.  They do.  But when I can breathe and remember that God’s got my BEST in mind–not just a momentary good but an eternity good, I can let go of my way and grab onto His.  And He has shown me over and over again how awesome things work out when I do that.

#3  The NOT YET moments.  Oh, have there been a lot of these!  I tend to want to force things to go my way.  I get in a hurry for them to be done and get frustrated with myself when I can’t do everything.  But God my AWESOME FATHER uses “not yet” a lot–both to bring about His perfect timing and to teach me to not rely on my plans, my agenda, myself but to always rely on Him.  I get a lot of “not yet” moments when I’m writing.  I get going on something and then something else comes up (I have a lot of something elses around here!).  I get stopped on the story.  And I get frustrated with it.  One story I literally did this for SEVEN YEARS!  But when the book was finally finished, I understood why God said, “Not yet” repeatedly… because the book could not have been the book it is without the lessons I’d learned over those seven years.  I was a different person than I had been when I started writing it.  So now, not yet moments don’t throw me like they used to.  It’s okay.  God’s got this one too!

#4  The GO THROUGH IT WITH ME moments.  These, I have to say, are the hardest.  Some call them the valleys of life and of writing.  Oh, these are HARD!  And when they come up, my heart breaks, my world shatters, and I wonder “How can God make something good out of THIS?”  But I will tell you, the two most difficult “go through it with Me” moments of my writing career brought two of my best friends into my life.  One of them, not knowing me at all, edited two chapters I had sent out through my newsletter.  She bled on them and then sent them back to me!  I didn’t know what to do with that.  Should I be angry?  Should I write her back and give her a piece of my mind?  Should I be hurt?  Should I quit?  Finally, I decided to rest in God and just see…  The next month I sent out the next two chapters of my cyber-serial.  In about 30 minutes I got this message back.  “OH!  I’m SOOOOOOOO sorry!  I thought those were from my critique group!  I’m new to all of this and I edited the wrong thing…”  hahahah!  I still laugh about that.  Deb, not quite as much, though she can laugh now but it took her a long time to get to that point.  The thing is, Satan threw that at both of us to take us both out.  He wanted to undermine my following God and He wanted to take her out altogether.  Because I let GOD handle it and not myself, we became best friends, and God has worked miracles through that relationship.  I helped her with editing.  She’s now a multi-published author.  God is awesome!

A stay-at-home mom with a husband, three kids and a writing addiction on the side, Staci Stallings has numerous titles for readers to choose from. (Pick up the Price of Silence now for only $0.99! http://www.amazon.com/The-Price-of-Silence-ebook/dp/B004E9U7P6.) Not content to stay in one genre, Staci’s stories run the gamut from young adult to adult, from motivational and inspirational to full-out Christian and back again.  Every title is a new adventure!  That’s what keeps Staci writing and you reading.  She lives in Amarillo, Texas with her family and on the internet at http://www.stacistallings.com. Find out more about her books at http://stacistallings.wordpress.com and http://spiritlightbooks.wordpress.com.

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Top Three of 2010

Posted in God's Authors, In Time for the Holidays, United in Christ, tagged , , , , , , , on December 29, 2010 | Leave a Comment »

Hopefully all my subscribers have enjoyed having a week of Slattery-free blog post updates. grin. I was going to wait to post the top three of 2010 until tomorrow, but I realized I need to kick off my plans for January…

So what were your favorite devos of my top twenty? In my opinion, all the devos were awesome and drew our hearts closer to God in continual surrender. However, there were three that appeared to strike a heart-chord with you all.

By far, Edie Melson’s God’s Timing is Always Perfect, was your top choice. Apparently we all struggle with patience and faith, trusting that God is still working even when things don’t go according to our plan or timetable. You might want to read her post again, then spend some time reading through Genesis 37-45. God revealed His plan to Joseph when he was seventeen, but for decades, circumstances appeared to negate the vision he had received. He was betrayed by his brothers, sold into slavery, taken into a strange land, thrown into prison. Could all that really be part of God’s plan? Had he heard correctly? Had God changed His mind? Not at all. God was working the entire time, molding Joseph into the man He created him to be.

Your second favorite happened to be one of my favorites as well, primarily because of the little God-moment application God gave me the night before. Who would have thought God would use taxes of all things to share His love? Thanks Gail for reminding us all of our need to be magnetic. May God’s light shine so brightly within us that no matter where we go, no matter what we do, the people we come into contact with catch a hug from God. Read her post again, Oh, To Be Magnetic, and ask God to fill you so completely with His Holy Spirit, His love pours out unhindered.

Your third favorite was Sheila Holinghead’s A Glimpse of Beauty. Let each day, each moment, each moonlit stroll and early morning sunrise be an opportunity to discover afresh the beauty of our Creator.

Join me tomorrow as I prepare for the New Year and the series God’s laid on my heart.

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A Lion Never Turns Back

Posted in God's Authors, Let's Get Real, tagged , , on October 26, 2010 | Leave a Comment »

Lately I’ve spent way too much time staring at a blank computer screen. Normally I can pop off a scene or devotion without batting an eye. And because writing has always come so easily, and in many ways accidentally, (I didn’t start out wanting to write. My initial dream was to be a children’s Sunday school director.) I guess I’ve developed this false idea that if God’s in it, I’ll breeze through it. (I really need to listen to my pastor more. He keeps reminding me that obedience isn’t always easy.)

I think part of this comes from my huge admiration of God. I realize that nothing in me is due to anything I’ve done. God could very easily give that devotion or story He’s asking me to write to someone else. If He wanted to, He could raise up a stone, give it flesh, breath life into it, and have the stone-turned-man pen work equivalent to a Shakespearean play.

So why am I struggling? Where’s that strength of God that is made perfect in my weakness? Where’s that peace that surpasses all understanding?

Sunday I was really frustrated, and beginning to wonder if the struggles I was facing indicated a closed door. Or, more accurately, a towering brick wall. Discouraged, I set the project I was working on aside and pulled up my email account. The first message I read was from Inspirational Quotes–a feed I subscribed to some time back.

Proverbs 30:30 “A lion, mighty among beasts, who retreats before nothing;”

I wasn’t sure I liked that verse. I liked the premise–that children of God need to follow through with the tasks they are given (my interpretation when I read it.) But honestly, I was looking for something more comforting, like “Abide in Me and I’ll abide in you.” I didn’t want an uphill climb that would take determination and grit. I wanted to find that nice green pastur–to know that if I prayed a bit longer or spent a few more minutes connecting with God, the words would suddenly start to flow. So I headed to Proverbs 31 Ministries–one of my favorite devotion sites.

This is what I got, “David also said to Solomon his son, ”Be strong and courageous, and do the work. Do not be afraid or discouraged, for the LORD God, my God, is with you. He will not fail you or forsake you until all the work for the service of the temple of the LORD is finished.”

This helped a bit. It wasn’t the “Rest and let me write the words for you,” I was looking for, but it did remind me of God’s call for dedicated faithfulness.

I’m an endurance runner, largely because I couldn’t go fast if my life depended on it. In high school, I ran track and cross-country. Most cross-country races were just over three miles, which isn’t terribly long, but long enough to bring out a runner’s weakness. If you’d skirted through turn-out, avoiding the hill work-outs, walking on the long runs, or skipping out on the drills, come race day, it’d show. Gratification rarely came instantly. Often it wasn’t until the end of the season, sometimes even the end of your high school career, that you’d begin to see the fruits of your labor.

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