The Car Seat Chronicles

_{I feel like God uses every little circumstance to make me grow spiritually. For example, I try to take Maddy’s car seat out of the car and it takes me forever because the clicky thingy is not cooperative. So I’m sitting there just fuming at this car seat, desperately clicking away at the chinggydingy that attaches it to the base. In my mind, it feels like its taking an hour to get this thing detached, but in all reality it probably is only a few seconds. Yet it makes me soooooo angry! I feel my face heating up as if I were a old Southern woman in New Orleans going through a menopausal episode in the middle of a heat wave. I swear that car seat is as big as me and it sounds silly, but sometimes….. just sometimes, I feel like it has a special plan to ruin my life. Well, NOT today car seat, NOT today!}

_{I’ve been thinking of what makes or breaks my days more often than not. Yes, it definitely sucks to have some big catastrophic bad circumstance happen, but those usually only tend to happen from time to time, (thank God in heaven!) BUT little nuisances as stated above happen to me every day, all day long and for some reason, these have a big say in how I feel. The days that I think I’ve got it all down, I’ve been there done that, I’m the king of the castle give me a treat, I’ve got everything under control, tend to be days filled with nuisance -warfare! WHY? My theory, after praying a lot about it, is that God uses these little frames of time to get me to turn to him and give up that silly sense of control. I feel like when the day is going great the less likely it is that I turn to pray. Sad but true. Most people pray to God when things are going wrong and when we’re having the best of days we forget who’s in control, when what we should be doing is thanking God for our blessings.}

_{As I had this epiphany, I’ve been testing a few things out; when I’m faced with the ugly N’s throughout the day, I begin to pray and stay calm, and what do you know, the battle happens to have MY winning stamp on it! I kick that energy draining, frustrating, THING’s A-double snake!! Yeah, take that car seat, you didn’t rile me up! When I stay calm in the midst of these calamities, and I realize that there is really no reason for me to get so worked up, I feel a sense of peace and joy. I’ve been able to minimize the amount of time I spend being stressed out about the “small” stuff and it feels great! Little Nuisances, even though they’re teeny tinny, they add up and tend to drain you of your joy. Don’t let them. Practice every day staying calm and praying through them. Make it a point to not let something so trivial tell you how to feel! Today, who will win that battle, You or them? I hope you have a wonderful day! Stay blessed, Stay saucy!}