This is the Way, Walk in it...

One of my very favorite ways to relax and pamper myself is to get a pedicure. I've been obsessed with painting my nails since I was around 12 or 13 years old. In fact, I used to paint them every day to match each day's out. I guess I've always found different ways to use color to express my creativity (now I just dye my hair and wear really bright colored clothes!;-) With four kids, I don't really have the time mess with my nails near as much as I used to or as I'd like to. You may well remember posts from the early days of this blog where I have photos of me painting my nails in preparation of big events, such as getting ready for our meeting Gabriel's birthmother, preparing for our sonograms and arrivals of babies, etc. Any time a big event happens, I like to have my nails done! It makes me feel more confident going into a stressful or exciting situation. Likewise, NOT having them done makes me feel like a HOT MESS. It's fine if they're just unpainted, but when the paint is flaking off, or the jamberrys are peeling off, or just a few are remaining, you know that I've had other pressing matters to attend to. And honestly, lets be real here: my nails do NOT need to be a priority most of the time!

At any rate, I do occasionally allow myself a moment to relax and get my toes pampered with a pedicure. I've been putting it off for a couple of months now though. I've tried painting them myself, but they still look SO sad, and being a flip flop girl, the whole world can clearly see that my toes have been sadly unattended lately. In the grand scheme of things, it shouldn't matter so much, except I keep thinking of this pastor we once had who said he could judge people by the type of shoes they wore. He never said what he thought about people who wore flip flops, but that is enough to make me self conscious about my exposed, chipped-polished toes. I wonder what people think when they see my "tattle teal" polish flaking off in various places of my dried, cracked feet? (I realize most people don't think a thing of it, but just go with it for a second, OK?) I've literally found myself almost running out the door several times the past month to get a pedicure, but the Lord has literally whispered in my ear,

"No, P-B. Not yet."  
Really, God?  Why?  
"Just not yet."  
Ok, God...

So this week was kind of a crazy one.

Actually, I'm not sure why I bother to preface it as such. EVERY week in our household is a crazy one! I don't say that negatively, though. We have four amazing kiddos and they keep our lives full of all sorts of interesting antics, stories, and experiences. Lucy got glasses this week, Gabriel discovered he could breathe through a straw and sound like Darth Vader, Annie decided she wanted to be a cloud because "clouds don't poop," and Evangeline scaled her crib FIVE TIMES in the span of one nap time, finally ending said nap time asleep on the floor of the bedroom for a mere 20 minutes. (I accomplished nothing other than keeping an eye on the camera the entire "nap" time.)
 
Thursdays are typically my main cleaning day for the week, but with my escape artist in full swing, (the previous story is just a sampling of what my day looked like with Evangeline!) absolutely nothing was getting accomplished. I always pray with the kids when I drop them off at school, and in those prayers I ask the Lord to help me to use my time wisely for the day. That afternoon, my floors desperately needed to be mopped, but as I was going through the house Norwex-ing windows and mirrors and pulling out all sorts of "goodies" from within the depths of the couch cushions (holy COW, what was that GREEN glue-like substance on the inside wooden part of my couch?????!), I passed by my entryway chalkboard, which hadn't had a new verse placed on it since I first purchased it. Again, I felt God whisper to me:

"And your ears shall hear a word behind you saying, 'This is the way, walk in it'." Isaiah 30:18

It's from a passage that has been popping up in multiple places before me for the past few weeks, and the Lord has even given me a melody to put the words to. I often find myself humming it all throughout the day. As I looked down at my dirty floors and then thought about the words of the verse, I felt the Lord say to me,

Paula-Beth, why do you keep looking down at all of the dust and the dirt? Why are you so concerned with where you've been? Don't you want to look UP and see where I want to TAKE you? Fix your eyes UPWARD today on ME!"

So I put down my cleaning items and grabbed my chalkboard markers. I wrote the passage on the chalkboard, and I left the floors un-mopped and kindly asked my homegroup friends to "not look down" when they came over that evening. And suddenly, it struck me why the Lord kept asking me to wait on getting that pedicure.  He wanted to drive home that point that I was focused on the past and how it often chips away at us and leaves us feeling less than in the present. He wanted me to fix my gaze Heavenward so I could see the way that He is showing me to go. You see, God doesn't typically meet us in the neat and tidy. God often meets us in the midst of the messy and muddy, the broken and battered, the sticky tile and chipped polish...because His ways are Higher than ours, but He is not beneath meeting us exactly where we are at!