Microwave Living

I got up this morning about 15 minutes after hubby did to pack him a lunch and get my day going. I stumbled down the stairs and into the kitchen, avoiding turning on the lights as long as possible. I opened the fridge, pulled out the sandwich meat, and distinctly remember noting that we were almost out of the turkey I use for hubby’s lunch. {Ok…I’m sure he’s not the only one, but he hates the edges on his meat. There are only a few kinds of sandwich meat that’s any good that doesn’t have it on there. And I hate having to pull it off.} I remember making a mental note to make his lunch tonight before we go to bed, that way I don’t have to stand in the kitchen tomorrow morning at 5:45 pulling edges off of turkey. Haha.

After he left, I walked zombie like over to the couch and sat down. I layed my head back on the couch and spent about 15 minutes in prayer. Then I turned on the TV. I recently discovered that Joyce Meyer is on ABC Family at 6:00 in the morning. I flipped over, hoping to catch most of her lesson. She started talking about “Transformation” and the road to get there. She used an analogy of a caterpillar turning into a butterfly that really caught my attention. I can’t remember the whole thing, but I pulled two key points from the analogy that really spoke to me.

1) When the caterpillar feels the “change” coming, he crawls up the back of a tree or limb [or somewhere else where he isn’t visible] to wait. Isn’t that what God calls us to do in our faith? In Matthew 6:6, Jesus tells us that we are to “go into our room, close the door and pray to our Father who is unseen. Then our Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward us.” God wants us alone with him, so that we can hear him and feel him moving in our lives. We can’t accomplish the changes that we need to when there are other things distracting us. Just like the caterpillar…if that caterpillar crawled up somewhere totally visible for everyone to see, he would never change. Tiny little fingers and predators looking to cause damage would ruin his transformation. For us, it’s the tiny little fingers of our children or our husbands, or the predators of distraction and business that would keep us from changing.

As I’ve mentioned before, my prayer life is something that needs serious work. I long to be a prayer warrior like so many of the wonderful women I know. This stuck out to me because so often I rush through prayer because of something else that needs doing. Trying to squeeze in a few minutes with God before Noah wakes up, or rushing through a prayer at night before I fall asleep.

2) The second thing was really head on for me and my “easy and quick” living preferences. Joyce was talking about how hard the coming out process is for the butterfly once the change is complete. I’ve never watched a caterpillar hatch from its cacoon, but I’ve heard that it’s kind of a heart wrenching process. The tiny little butterfly struggles and fights with the web its woven around itself to break through and spread it’s wings. I imagine it’s something like being tangled up in a blanket or being cramped up in the backseat of a tiny car…everything in your body is aching because you can’t move and you long to get out and move around. I know children especially are prone to want to “help” the butterfly emerge and free itself, when in reality that does more harm than good.

It’s the same with our Christian lives. As much as we want to “break through” and bust out of the hard times we are in, sometimes it’s just not the right time. Sometimes, we are going through a trial or a season of pain and anguish we just need to be there. God has us there for a reason, and when we try to move through it before it’s in God’s timing, we do more harm than good. I’ve also discovered this is true with forcing God’s will upon yourself. Everything has a timing. This is obviously an important message to us, because God even mentions timing in his book {Ecclisiastes 3:1}

For example, before I met my husband, I tried to force relationships on myself. I would meet a great guy [actually, I met a lot of not so great guys, if you want me to be honest] and think immediately that “this is the one. This is who I am supposed to marry. Okay God, work your wonders and lets get a move on.” Those relationships crashed and burned. Because it wasn’t time. It wasn’t right in God’s will. It wasn’t the guy that I was meant to be with, and I was no where near ready to be in that kind of relationship. I thank God every day that he is the one who is in control because what I have now, the man that I married that GOD chose for me, is infinitely better for me than anyone else ever would have been.

After Joyce’s lesson went off, I started thinking about these things and how the compare to the rushed lifestyle we try to live. We go, go, go all the time, rarely slowing down to take notice of what’s around us and acknowledging the important things. And in our Faith, we have this same kind of thinking about the process of change in our lives. We expect to just accept Christ, live on that mountain top for a while, and when it gets time to make the big changes and clean out the garbage in our lives, we just assume God is going to pop us into his Almighty Microwave and Zap us into Model Christianity. Nah. Doesn’t happen that way. I wish it did. Boy wouldn’t that make things easier? But it doesn’t. We can’t just “zap” our way through life and through faith. We have to await the change and endure the process. Like that butterfly trying to break out of her cacoon. We have to endure the discomfort, the pain, the frustration and the disappointment before we can emerge new and beautifiul.

This was a lesson I needed to hear this morning. I need to learn how to slow down and endure the things that aren’t so easy. Cook a meal instead just unfreezing it {I really don’t cook frozen food that often. I swear.} I need to pull out the handy old broom and sweep around all the corners and underneath the table where my amazing Swivel Sweeper won’t reach. I really should take the time to bake cookies from scratch, just for the sake of following my Grandmother’s recipe. I need to work on the relationships in my life that are somewhat unraveled instead of just assuming they will fix themselves. And I need to get up in the mornings and pull those stupid edges off of the Turkey-because that’s how my husband likes it, and I’m his wife and my job is to do things to make him happy.

It’s time to stop microwave living…expecting the zap without the effort.

In actuality, I don’t want to be zapped anyway. I look back on the hardships in my life, the things that I then wished I could just fast-forward myself through, and I’m glad that they happened. They build character. The build stregth. The build Faith. They force me to fall back on Jesus, and that’s what it’s all about.

And even when I think that things aren’t going to get better…

When I think that I’m never going to break out…

When I worry that things will never be different and never change…