Sweet Water

Initial responses are telling, aren’t they? It’s one thing for me to think about a situation and choose to do or not do something, but it’s a whole different ballgame when I react. It’s much more raw and honest . . . and usually ugly, I’m afraid. When I stub my toe, when the baby falls off the stool, when I hear negative gossip about a friend, when the checker-lady at Walmart makes a mistake, when someone else succeeds, when I’m tired. These are the moments that reveal what’s really going on inside my heart. I think it was Amy Carmichael (a single missionary to India) or Corrie Ten Boom (a Nazi concentration camp victim) who said (something like),

My reactions speak volumes, and I so want them to be centered in Jesus’s love and truth–even when my three-year-old accidentally spills his milk (again) or the baby is crying in the middle of the night or I hear the stock market has plummeted for yet another time.