attack of the June bugs

It's easy to accept the good stuff.

I love to write blogs that say "We're so blessed" when we find a new job that is even better than we were looking for. It's not a challenge for us to say "God is too good to us" when two newlywed seminary students are better off financially than either of us could've imagined. I'm excited to say "God has rained his mercy on us" since we'll be celebrating our first anniversary next week (a milestone many couples don't ever make it to).

It's a little bit more difficult when months like June happen. June was not a month of sorrow and suffering, but it sure was a month of inconvenience and frustration.

It's harder to say "We're so blessed" after a constant stream of headaches, jaw aches, toothaches and stomachaches due to widsom tooth removal and relentless colds/allergies.

It's a challenge to say "God is too good to us" when our perfectly good Toyota Corolla (which gets EXCELLENT gas mileage, by the way) is totaled in a car and now we have to use money we weren't planning on spending to purchase a car we weren't planning on buying. On top of that are the doctor's visits to fix a neck that was perfectly aligned two weeks ago.

We're finding it a little bit more difficult to say "God is raining down his mercy on us" when we discover at 5:15 AM that the window of our other car has been smashed into pieces (nothing was stolen, someone broke it just to break it).

See, it's easy to accept the good stuff. We like the good stuff. I like having a good job. I like having money in the bank. I like being married for a year.

But I don't like pain, I don't like car accidents, I don't like random acts of stupidness. The question is, how do we handle it?

We have been amazed at how God has taken care of us since our wedding day. We have received blessing upon blessing and been all too eager to accept them from God (as we should). But, as Job rightly asks, "Shall we accept good from God, and not trouble?" I hope that we can receive this trouble as readily as we did the good, in order that God may find us faithful, not just fair weather friends.