A button and a shoe

If you know me really well, you know that I am extraordinarily introspective and it is easy for me to let it slip into melancholy. I also tend to be very hard on myself--a habit from childhood. I am a naturally introverted person, but it is not really good for me to spend lots and lots of time alone, as I have recently. My particular besetting sins. Lots of things can set me off, and before I know it I can find myself in a dark hole. Sleep doesn't come, I look at my Bible rather than read it, I stop seeing the wonder of life in Christ.Everyone has one, I suppose, some tendency in the course of facing life's challenges that plagues you with its persistence.

Sometimes God uses my sense of the ridiculous to come to my rescue. The other day I was on the bus, going into town to do a radio program. Add to the absurdity of my imperfect Spanish going out over the airwaves, the subject I was going to speak on was "worry" and at that moment I was experiencing an abundance of it. Not good. So, there I was on the bus, coming into town. I reached down for some reason I can't remember and into my hand popped a button from the worse possible spot on my blouse. I looked at the button in my hand, thought about how now I really had something to worry about and how good it was that it was going to be radio. I started to laugh. Thank you for that loose button, Lord.

Recently, a variety of things have been combining to set me down a slippery path toward a dark hole. I was working on a project I need to have ready in the next couple of days, thinking about my life, how I respond to things, why it always seems to me that I respond to things wrong, how I got this way, all really introspective questions. Mostly, I was thinking about trusting God, and why I was having trouble doing that. Into my head came a sports shoe commercial "Just do it." I kind of giggled. Rescued by a shoe. It came into my head again "Just do it." Trust God--just do it. All of the valid reasons that I gave other people on the radio weren't doing me any good. I needed to take all of those good things, gather them up into my heart, and "just do it." Decide to trust. So, I did.