First of all, our fast is 21 days from 6pm March 15 to 6 pm April 5. The reason I bring this is up to help me with what day number this is. Come 6 pm tonight, we’ll be starting the 5th day but right now it’s still number 4.
With that said, today is the toughest so far regarding food and so forth. I am being tempted a lot due to having stuff in the house for my kids who aren’t following the dietary fasting part. I haven’t succumbed to temptation though, praise the Lord.
I had a good quiet time this morning but it was quickly followed with busy distractions that seem to bring down your mood. Laura had misplaced her phone so we looked for it for about 30 minutes. I finally got to the point where I prayed about it and I think she did too. Then an idea came to her. Since the phone still seemed to have power (when calling it didn’t go straight to voicemail) and we couldn’t hear it when we called, we should check Google Latitude that she normally keeps running. If you don’t know, this is an application that lets you see where someone is by using the phone’s GPS. The app on my phone had informed us that Laura’s location had been updated in the last 30 minutes (another indicator it still had juice).
It showed it was here at our house. So, she wanted to see if it was in our cars (even after we’d looked there). She took off down the street in her car while I watched the app on my phone to see if her location changed. It didn’t. So before she got back, I was about to take off in my truck. Laura pulled in before I left and wanted to ride with me. When climbing in the passenger side, she saw her phone under that seat. Another praise but still stressful. Ha. Those phones aren’t cheap.
And the last thing that wasn’t a whole lot of fun for me personally was having to run down to the Arkansas Unemployment office to submit an initial claim. Unfortunately, the joy I had previously in the morning in discovering that you can submit everything online, was short lived when after completing the work it told me that I had a special circumstance (severance pay) and would have to call. Well when I called after being on hold a while, I was told I had to come to the office. Fun.
I enter the office address in my phone’s navigation and head down there after eating something not knowing how long it would take. I’d already been told not to go on Mondays or Tuesdays due to being crowded. I didn’t want to wait until Wednesday because of some plans we’re trying to do. Anyway, I get to the point where my GPS tells me to turn left at the office and it’s a street. I do down the street and the GPS tells me I’ve past it and to go down, turn right, etc., etc. Well after 15 minutes of this, I find it along the main drag I was on. I pull in to the parking lot and it is completely full with multiple cars waiting for others to leave. Plus it’s a tight parking lot and I have a huge dual cab truck. Not good. Finally after another 20 minutes or so, I’m perfectly positioned for a spot someone is leaving from but they take their merry time, of course. People are honking at me, giving me dirty looks, and whatever. But I finally get into the spot.
Now I’m in a room full of chairs and people waiting. I check in and get my name on a list of about 30 names. So it takes a while. The good news is that I was there only an hour and a half. The bad news is I got to be right next to a situation where a woman was ripping a guy up and down about being a crook and he’s yelling at her about being a stupid idiot, and he wasn’t going to give her his money. And she said she hates his whole family, blah, blah. Also, there was a young woman near me who was continually being hit on but these two young men and it was very uncomfortable for her it seemed, and others that had to listen due to proximity.
During that time, I did feel prompted to need to pray about everyone in that room and so I did. I guess that during this time of fasting and spending more time with God, that “prompting” is becoming more pronounced than before. I better pay attention when that happens, for sure. 🙂
I finally made it home and had the opportunity to have a nice nap. Now I’m waiting for our 75 pound Golden Doodle, Louie, to be done at the groomers. He’s being shaved. It has been a while. He’ll look funny (more like a poodle) but will enjoy not having matted hair, and it will help with the warmer weather now.
All in all, it wasn’t pleasant earlier but I’m very grateful that we have food, nice phones, I’m getting a severance, etc. It could be so much worse. So please don’t take this as complaining. I’m just sharing my thoughts openly as I went throughout a different kind of day. More to come I’m sure!
Trey
Trey's Word 