Of NASCAR

Okay, this is going to seem quite crazy, and possibly downright ridiculous to some of you. That's okay with me! You all should know by now that Doug and I are quite insane sometimes, and sometimes when things are stressful, the best way to be reminded to keep on trusting is by doing something absurd and off the wall.

Background...Well, you know most of the background. We're in a very uncertain place. That's just the truth of it. Some days we go through life with full confidence, knowing God's got it under control and we don't have to worry a bit. Other days it's more of a struggle. The past few days have been more of a struggle. It's not that we trust God any less - it's just that it's a discouraging time. It seems as though the story of Joseph has been in front of us a lot lately - in school, our Bible reading has been his story; in Sunday school we are going through his life; even Steven's current prferred Veggie DVD is Little Joe, a Westernized version of Joseph's story. When he was in the bottom of a cistern, working his tail off in Potipher's house, or unjustly imprisoned, it was probably very hard for him to see how in the world God was going to fulfill his dreams. Right now, it's hard for us to see just how in the world God is going to fulfill the dreams He's laid on our hearts!

So, like I said, the past few days have been the struggle. We were talking about it last night, and Doug made a comment about being determined to put it out of his mind for the rest of the night. He said he was going to turn on the NASCAR race because it's hard to think about such things with a race on. (We started enjoying NASCAR during our time in Joiner when our little tv antenna wouldn't pick up much else - good sleeping sport, too! You drift off to the cars going round and round, and when you wake up, they're doing the same thing, just in a slightly different order!) He then showed he was wrong - it's NOT hard to think about such things with the race on. He started applying the possibilities out in front of us to the cars going around the track, each car labeled with an option as they raced around three wide, vying for positon! As we laughed about it, we came up with an idea. We decided to assign an option for our future - some real, some quite ludicrous - to each driver in the race. Then, we'd see who won and what our future would be! HA! We knew it wasn't going to be anything prophetic - not like casting lots in Scripture. Just some nice comic relief.

Doug randomly assigned ideas to each driver, and then we sat down to watch some of the race, already half over. Bank Robbery was eliminated pretty quickly, but so was Monticello! When we gave up and went to bed (it was a Phoenix race, so it was too late to stay up for!), several options keeping Doug at UPS part-time were prominent, but we noticed Jimmie Johnson was steadily making his way back to the top after a pit stop pushed him back to twelfth. We've never rooted against Jimmie Johnson, but his car was labeled "part-time UPS and the rest of our income on faith!" NO!!! Jimmie couldn't win!

As we sat laughing about rooting against Jimmie Johnson, we wondered if the Lord was chuckling with us - and rooting for Jimmie just for laughs! :-) Jimmie Johnson did win the race, and we were - in a humorous way - allowed to once again roll the stress and discouragement on to our wonderful Lord. After all, that's where we are right now - part-time UPS and the rest on faith! Must mean we're in the center of His will. And that's exactly where we want to stay, no matter where it takes us!