A Day in the Life of Job

Ever have an experience where you feel like things just can’t get any worse and then something else happens to prove you wrong? Me too. In fact that kind of seems to be my life for the past few months. First, dealing with my miscarriage, then my daughter lost the blanket I have had since I was three and she has grown very attached to, throw in a bunch of crappy days full of things like kids dumping toilet water all over your floor, then another big whopper when 5 of my rooms were flooded by a broken pipe, the demolition that has begun in my house, being told that we had to go to a hotel as we won’t have a kitchen or bathrooms for the next several days (this turned into a 2 month long hotel stay), a mail full of thousands of dollars worth of medical bills from the surgery I had to have after I miscarried, strep throat, and poison ivy over 90% of my body all while still in the hotel.

As my house was flooding before my eyes and I couldn’t get a hold of anyone who might have a clue as to where I could find a shut off valve, grief and panic overtook my typical calm in the storm attitude. I literally cried out “Seriously God? What are you trying to teach me? We have had one thing after another happen lately and I feel like I have handled them pretty well. I haven’t cursed your name and turned away. I’ve honored you through every storm. What am I not getting?” 

I am not a perfect being, I make mistakes and fall short of what I would like to be almost daily. While there are moments of frustration with my children and irritated conversations that have occurred between myself and my husband in the past months, I can truly say that I believe whole heartedly I have honored God in the many difficult situations of the past few months. However, I have begun to struggle with a concept that was never a struggle for me before. I am not a fearful person. Based on the word of God I am not fearful and naturally it has just never really occurred to me to fear the every day. I have watched my husband go off to war for 15 months, I send him daily to a job where death can be found at the next routine stop. For many, these situations would elicit immobilizing fear. For me, for many years, I was at peace. It wasn’t that I didn’t worry about my husbands safety at times, it was that I knew that whether or not he continues to come home to me will never change the plan that God has for me. Lately though, despite my knowledge that God does not give me a spirit of fear I can’t quit thinking about the what ifs. What if my husband dies at work tonight? What if Avynne didn’t wake up in the middle of the night because she quit breathing and I forgot to check on her before I went to bed? 

I have been literally feeling these questions being pushed into mind. One minute I am thinking pleasant wonderful thoughts and the next minute dreadful ones. This is not me, its not how I was designed, and it goes against all the God given facts I know to be true. These thoughts are the works of Satan who wishes to control me by my fear of letting things of this world go. Our families are wonderful blessings from God, and they each have souls with eternities attached, but our dependence on these relationships, our inability to let God do what needs to be done with what is His, that is earthly.

I think of Job. He had wonderful things. God had blessed him in all aspects of his life and Job was grateful for his gifts, however, Job was aware of where his heavenly treasure did not lie. Job 1:21 says, ‘“Naked I came from my mother’s womb, and naked I will depart. The Lord gave and Lord has taken away; may the name of the Lord be praised.’” Job 2:9-10 says, “His wife said to him, ‘Are you still maintaining your integrity? Curse God and die!’ He replied, ‘You are talking like a foolish woman. Shall we accept good from God, and not trouble?’”

There are many things that can be learned from Job, and he was not all peace, love, and happiness throughout his turmoil. In fact, he cursed the day he was born and wished that it had never happened (I thought very similar thoughts during my fight with poison ivy). Through it all though, he never once cursed God. He didn’t stop believing that God was worthy of praise simply because his own life wasn’t going the way he had planned or wanted for it to go. At the end of Job’s story we see restoration, healing, and blessings that went above and beyond the blessings that Job had once possessed. 

Our ways are not His ways, but through every trial and tribulation we can know that we are never alone. We can know that God is enough. We may get handed a plate that is far too full for us to carry, we often are faced with situations that are too much for us to handle, but for every situation like this that we face we can be sure that the arms of a loving Savior are ready and waiting for us to run into them. We are given situations that we can’t handle so that we can learn to run to Him. We are faced with the loss of earthly belongings and relationships so that we might be reminded of how little this life has to offer when compared to a heavenly eternity. This world is not my home and the things of this world can never be my security. My day in the life of Job has brought me back to a place where I am reminded that no matter what is stripped from me, my hope and my joy can be found in the Lord and the Lord alone.