This morning started off rough. It seemed what could go wrong, went wrong, physically and emotionally. But the spark that kindled the blaze was anger. Anger against man. My enemy was myself.

(7:30 AM) I wanted to help my husband in taking a large load of cardboard off, and despite my knowledge of what day it was, after I had loaded my SUV to the max with cardboard, I realized the dump was closed today. I would not liked to wait until tomorrow, because I needed the car empty for this evening for other passengers to fit inside it. Church and the store. So as I proceeded to Google other places to try and dump the cardboard, one place came up, I drove about ten minutes down the road to discover it was for commercial dumping for a different county. Scratch that place off, and the woman I talked to was of no help, as she proceeded to tell me I was in a different county, so she couldn’t recommend anywhere in my county. Okay. So I drive back home.

There is a community page where basically if you want to know anything within a five mile radius at any given time, you go to this page. So, I put a post up asking if there was another place to take cardboard on Wednesday when the dump is closed. I should have known better. The first four comments were, to put nicely, sarcastic unhelpful comments.

“The gate is closed.”

“Burn it.”

“Turn around and go home.”

“Wait till tomorrow.”

At first, I started to reply with sarcastic kind replies.

“Thank you! The rain dimmed my eyes!”

“As it’s raining, can’t burn it today!”

“Thank you! I had just enough gas to make the circle!”

“Thanks! I hadn’t thought of that one!”

This got to me so horrible, you would have thought the world had just ended with the thoughts going through my head. Anger was just burning inside me. A simple question and people could not be the slightest bit kind or helpful. I couldn’t understand it. If someone had asked me that question, I would have tried to look up something or if I didn’t know, I wouldn’t have answered anything. But no. Some people just have to go out of their way to be a hinderance.

So, as my rage continues to go, I then proceeded to text my husband just venting to him, and then I decided I didn’t want to go to church tonight. I was going to go back to bed, not do any work (as I work from home) and just sulk. But before that, as I was getting a cup full of ice to put a drink in (zero sugar tea), somehow I manage to sling the cup and spill ice all over my kitchen. In a rage, I tested our granite counter tops with my fist, and needless to say, the counter top strength is still good. With some unfortunate words later and a quick bruise forming on my knuckles I proceeded to clean the ice up in the kitchen.

At this point, I was trying to settle down. I deleted my post I had done because I wasn’t going to continue to try and add to my aggression with other people’s comments. Something that was only hurting myself. I tried to have a better mindset and took a shower to wash this day off (about 9AM now). After my shower, to my surprise, my husband came home to reload his truck for his work. (Not sure if he really needed a lot of product or he just wanted to check on me, but I’m so glad he did) A hug from him really made everything OK. I told my husband that if he got done with work in time, maybe we would go to church tonight.

I was actually going to write a blog today about him, and speak about how God is so good when he gave me my husband.

This morning I was thinking about when we met, and more so about the ones before him. Long story short, when you are ready to stop trying to find what you want, and let God send you what He wants for you, it is worth the wait. But that is a blog for another time.

I say all this to get to, after having a total reset, I sat down to get started on my work and before I started I wanted to read my bible first. Before I read, I pray, and suddenly tears overwhelmed me as I cried and asked God to forgive my rage and anger this morning. I prayed as I read for him to guide me, but most of all forgiveness.

As I was reading in numbers, a verse spoke to me.

Numbers 10: 9

‘And if ye go to war in your land against the enemy that oppresseth you, then ye hall blow an alarm with the trumpets; and ye shall be remembered before thee LORD your God, and ye shall be saved from your enemies.

Most times, we are our worst enemy. We fight with ourselves so hard we fall into exhaustion, mentally and physically. But when we do, when we are fighting our selves, Satan is in our corner, not God. Instead of feeding us water, as a manager would feed a boxer in the corner at break, he is feeding us anger. He is feeding us frustration, pain, confusion, and horrible thoughts. Then when we get up to fight again, he his cheering us on, instigating us to spiral further down. This is a fixed fight. Satan knows exactly what moves to get us to pull to keep us from winning.

But the real Coach always steps up.

It’s like we are the underdog, when we get mixed up, and we leave our good Coach, thinking we can find better, and we get a manager who puts us under a fire. We think we are going to get somewhere under Satan. Just let that thought sink in. Yes, we think we can bypass they easy or patient way, and we want to skip towards the success of our goal. And that could be anything, something as simple as finding a way to get to a dump for cardboard today, or something as big as short cutting your way for a good paying job. Whatever the task is, along the way, Satan will try to put his input in and try to lead us to false success.

In this verse, I was at war in myself, my enemy, myself and Satan, oppressing my joy and care. I finally sounded the alarm. I folded my hands tightly and begun to pray as loud as a trumpet inside. I felt the remembrance from God, and felt his forgiveness and presence sweep over me. Saving me from myself and Satan, as he ALWAYS does. Everything washed off me and I felt such a cleansing of my heart and mind.

For that I am always thankful, and my lesson for today was I should have started with God, instead of starting with myself. This world (Satan) will always try to get us to fall away from God and what He has planned for us. When we are tried as a Christian, let our first thoughts go to him, and cut off whatever hinderance Satan tries to throw at you. With God as your Coach, you won’t ever lose a fight.