dear god, i'm finally getting it. love, shannon

there is a cup stuck in my garbage disposal.

yes, that's right. after a stinky dinner of canned ravioli, i piled up all of our evening's dishes in our sink. this pile included a little blue tupperware cup...you know the kind. about half way through my pile, i was in my cleaning grove. grab, rinse, put in dishwasher, grab, rinse, put in dishwasher. then, oddly, the sink began to fill up with dirty water. with a sigh, i stuck my hand in the sour smelling oily water only to feel that a cup had perfectly wedged itself in the drain of my sink. i wanted to scream. why does this stuff always happen to me?!

after struggling to get it out and failing miserably, i enlisted matt to come and help. needless to say, his giant ape hands only pushed the cup all the way down into the disposal. aaarrrgggghhhh.

in a move that is totally un-shannon-like, i walked away. tonight i am choosing to trust that it will work out and i am taking a deep breath. you see, these days, i am trying to look deeper. to find the message in each of my day's challenges instead of responding with anger, or fear, or action. this, my friends, is what i consider 'growth'.

growth, in my case, does not come easy. sometimes it takes a bit of...prodding. this week for example, i have found myself asking repeatedly 'why me?!!' aside from all of the everyday struggles, there have been a few real kick-in-the pants kind of bummers that each left me wondering why i was being royally messed with.

first, while taking pictures of casey, i took a corner too short, hit my hand on the wall and dropped my camera. broken.

next, my coffee pot, usually a friend i would sacrifice my dog for, failed me. it began by leaking coffee all over my kitchen when the stopper on the spout gave out and met its end when the heating component stopped working all together. i don't know anyone who has time for luke- warm leaking coffee...especially without having consumed any coffee!! broken.

in an effort to remedy my coffee crisis, i pulled out my trusty toddy cold press coffee contraption. i dumped in an entire pound of coffee (that i made a special trip to the dreaded walgreens to purchase), carefully poured in the measured amount of water and thought briefly about how wonderful this would be the next day. i snapped out of my haze only to see coffee dripping from the bottom of the contraption. can you imagine the myriad of profanity that ran through my mind? (a weakness, i know. at least it's not (usually) coming out of my mouth.) upon closer inspection, i discovered a crack. a crack that could not be stopped because believe me, i tried. broken.

throughout each of these miniature trials, i have been dealing with a child that does not sleep and loves to cry. after working perfectly for weeks, suddenly, her swing stopped swinging and with that, my mind stopped minding. again, broken.

one night last weekend, i compiled a list of all the things in my life that were broken. the coffee pot, the cold press maker, the camera and the swing. haphazardly, i posted on facebook that these items had met there end and thought nothing more of it. until today.

someone i love so dearly, someone who is a better version of myself, reminded me that good things can come when the chips are down. to my surprise, my dear brother and his lovely wife did some online shopping. they ordered me a new camera, a new coffee pot and a new cold press maker. his message on facebook just said that i could spare myself from having to shop for these items because soon, they would be arriving in the mail. upon reading this, i broke out into an ugly cry of disbelief and gratitude.

it's not the 'stuff' that i care about (although i do love the stuff). i am reminded through this act of selfless generosity of how kind people have been to me in my time of 'having less'. as i have mentioned throughout the last few posts, matt and i don't have a lot of spare funds to throw around these days. each dollar coming in has a new home before it even hits our bank account. but over these months, we have been shown real love by family and friends who i am sure know nothing of our finances. out of no where, we have been taken out to dinner, our kids have been given gifts, our fridge has been filled with food and now...my inbox with a reminder of god's faithfulness in times of challenge. god has shown me his hand and it is good. his love is bigger than money. his love is bigger than fear.

while there are times that i cry because i'm stressed out or because i want more, that doesn't mean i don't already have enough. today i was reminded again that i am abundantly blessed with enough of the most important things. and even more, i was shown a glimps of the kind of person that i want to be. a picture of the things that i look forward to doing for others when we find ourselves on the other side 'having less'.

thank you brian and ramey for the reminder. my cup runnith over...except the one stuck in my garbage disposal.