When life doesn’t go as planned, I usually react in one of two ways. Either with equanimity and grace because I’m with people I want to impress. Or with grumbling and complaints because I’m with my family, and they love me no matter what. Neither response follows Paul’s call in Philippians 2:14-15 to do all things without complaining or grumbling so that I can be the light of Christ in a dark and twisted world.

For the past few weeks, my days were full to overflowingly busy, even before life didn’t go as I had planned. The beans were coming on in my daughter’s garden, which means we were canning beans a couple times a week. We finished the first batch right before I went to Chicago for a promotional book tour for Sharing Love Abundantly after it released. When I got home a few days later, there were more beans. I was fine with that, because I had planned time into my schedule for canning season.

My daughter and I were confident we could maintain the household and our job duties even though we were short a few adults. My husband was in Alaska, where he grew up, for a week. My son-in-law started a second job, so he was gone more than usual. Even so, we were handling things well until when-life-doesn’t-go-as-planned thing happened. I hurt my back.

The kind of hurt that takes days and weeks to heal.
The kind of hurt that means a person can stand or lie down, but not sit.
The kind of hurt that means a person needs 5 minutes to move from stand to lie down and visa versa.
The kind of hurt that means an ice pack for 10 minutes every hour.

To read the rest of this post, visit Key Ministry’s blog for parents.

Do you like what you see at DifferentDream.com? You can receive more great content by subscribing to the monthly Different Dream newsletter and signing up for the daily RSS feed delivered to your email inbox. You can sign up for the first in the pop up box and the second at the bottom of this page.