I fixed it...

It is a cheese slicer.

A fairly nice one too...

Anyway, we've been using it a lot and then it broke! Got broken, we broke it, someone broke my cheese slicer!!!

I kept moving it around the kitchen counter to different places thinking that I'd need to have someone else look at it or fix it or just buy a new one (usually my favorite choice), until something in me said, "slow down and take a look." So, I slowed and prayed and took it apart, looked at and realized that I could fix this. The wire was simply loose and needed to be re-tightened, no tools and done! No need for a new cheese slicer and spending money we don't really have and a new found sense of accomplishment. I did it!

Such a big deal because there are so many things that I can NOT fix. So many things, I get bogged down in them. My marriage is not easy, communication is rough. Being a stepparent is challenging at every turn; there seems to be some cosmic law that says that it's not possible to have a great relationship with all of them at the SAME TIME. The relationship with the biological one is strained as he's moved into middle school and seems to wrestle daily with this idea that he loves me and thinks I'm cool and wishes I'd leave him alone and go to another planet. My job, my volunteer responsibilities, the scratches on the truck, my horrible "bad hair day" streak and on and on.

There is so much I can not change about the world around me, the people I love and even sometimes, myself.

Enter...God's perfect love. Even as I'm typing this, I know that I'm not fully amendable to 1 Corinthians 13 as a state of being. Living perfect love, I'm desperate for God to fix this in me. I'm so serious and protective at times I want to be playful and free spirited. I'm calculating, attempting to consider how person Q is going to hurt me the first chance they get. I worry about what people who are no more better off than me will think of me and how they will treat me when they realize how much of a mess I really am. Me, BEING love, it's complicated.

Then I have this revelation...what if I'm as simple to repair as the cheese slicer. What if God is just waiting to tweak me, tighten me in needed areas, relieve the slack in others? What if I'm making this more complicated? Yes, I realize that all of those are yeses or high in probability. The coolest thought I've come to though is that God, like me, wants to fix me and then hold me up proudly to show others what He's done. I have to be moldable, permissive, submissive and willing to allow Him to transform me into His likeness.

Don't get me wrong, while I've made a connection between my heart and our granite topped cheese slicer, I know that God's repair of my heart will take longer, but I now have faith that I don't have to view it as complicated and need to trust that He does not have plans to replace me.

It's good to be a cheese slicer.