"Take it from me, kid. This one's gonna hurt."

So, sometimes life can be really cool and suck all at once. I'm not sure how that works, but I believe it has something to do with people being pretty self-involved. Today, I was self-invovled. My niece spent the night last night and we had a great time. We played, laughed, colored, watched "The Incredibles." But when she woke up at 5:30am, all I could think was, "Please, God...just a few more hours of sleep." Alas, that did not happen, nor did the nap I planned on taking in the afternoon. Stupid pile of laundry. But I got angry with myself because I have this opportunity to reflect a woman of God to someone who is at such an influential stage in her life, and all I could think about was myself. "I'm not good enough. You don't have anything to teach. Sleep. Sleep. Sleep." I know this was an attack and I fought through it today, but the attacks take their toll and sometimes I just give up.

I continued to think about myself throughout the evening because sometimes life is a lot harder than you believe it will be. I guess you can't prepare yourself enough for those moments of the long and arduous journey. But my friend reminded me of a very cool passage in Samuel. One where a woman is crying out to God because she's hurting so badly. She wants a son and believes herself to be worthy of motherhood, but it hasn't happened yet. So she continues to just pour out her heart and at the end of it all, she praises God. She gets up, eats something, and basically says that she knows God has heard her cry and has felt her heartache. She doesn't continue in the downtrodden state. She has faith that the Lord cares for her and wants the best for her. I need to remember this passage.