Best Efforts

    This morning I got out a recipe for soup to make for dinner tonight, made a grocery list and laid plans to cook dinner before the afternoon driving started!  But my efforts at organization were once again FOILED when the recipe disappeared!  A thirty minute search failed to located it!  A quick google search failed to find it!  Where is the black hole in my house that so many things seem to disappear into:  a lone flip-flop, a book of stamps, the dog's choke collar, important papers, a textbook. . . ?!!!
     The lost recipe today seems like such a metaphor for my life:  good intentions --  focused effort -- thwarted outcome.  I am tired of trying and feeling crossed at every turn.  I want control and it continues to elude me.  It happened in school today when the boys whined, complained, evaded, distracted, disrupted and teased.  What I want for them is good.  Why is it so hard to achieve?  Why does gratitude and self-discipline seem to disappear down that black hole with my recipe?
      I was so tired and defeated by 3:00, I actually did something that is normally unthinkeable in the middle of the day.  I pulled out a Bible and let it fall open to the first chapter of James:
       Count it all joy, my brothers, when you meet trials of various kinds, for you know that the testing 
       of your faith produces steadfastness.  And let steadfastness have its full effect, that you may be 
       perfect and complete, lacking in nothing.  (verses 2-4)
     What I hate more than losing things is feeling like my best efforts don't matter.  And here is James saying, "take another look at these hard things. . . they matter. . . they serve a purpose. . . . they are re-making you and bringing wholeness and hope into your life.  Look at trials in the right light and you can actually be thankful for them, even joyful." 
      Bring it, Lord.  Change my perspective.  Help me embrace the black hole as an instrument in Your hand.  Let me believe that in "taking away" you are working to complete me.  Give me joy in the midst of hard.
      (The funny thing about the lost recipe is that it forced me to make the soup from memory.  I had to "wing it" and the result was surprisingly delicious.  Mmmmm. . . . I think God was highlighting the message for me.)