So my wife, Katie, goes to the hospital for her 8th or 9th surgery in the last 17 years…I’ve lost count. But any way you slice it, that’s just too many. And although we have Cadillac health insurance (and are extremely grateful!), we’ll still have some out-of-pocket expenses to cover…and everyone wants their money yesterday. So we do what every responsible American does in times of crisis – we divert bill money into the culvert of necessity and pray it all works out. As I walked outside this morning to deliver my son’s forgotten backpack, I pondered my unemployment status for the past 2 years…and then realized that I was turning the key in the ignition, but nothing was happening. The car was dead.
Cue a pretty crappy start to the day.
So a friend, and YouTube, advised me to dump a bottle of Coca-Cola on my seriously corroded car battery in an attempt to clean it off (which did not work, by the way…it cleaned the corrosion, but the car still wouldn’t start – oh, and by the way – we drink that stuff!!)
Cue the emotional eating.
I went to a gas station to grab a can of Coke and came out with 2 gas station burritos, a bag of chips, a candy bar, and TWO cans of Coke.
And thus, I still have not mastered or disciplined my emotions and my responses to them. Oh to be Vulcan!
One small success…I didn’t drink the Coke. I only ate a few of the chips before I threw the bag away in disgust. The candy bar is nestled safely in the cabinet. (The burritos, sadly, did not make it.) But in some small way – that feels a little like success to me. And today, I needed a small success. So I’ll take that in the looming shadow of my failing and say, “Some day, I will subdue you, demons.”
Everyone's Called to Youth Ministry 