When God is in the Chicken Strips

Don’t be sad, because sad backwards is das, and das not good.

I have to be totally open and say that I haven’t written anything lately because I felt like I didn’t have anything “happy” to say. In the spirit of being transparent, if life is made up of seasons, then I am in Hurricane season. And that’s ok. It means blue skies are around the corner, right!? This isn’t a post to complain! I hope it is a post that will encourage.

I have spent a lot of time in my hometown of Columbus, IN lately due to sickness in my family and recently the death of my precious grandmother. While I am thankful I have the ability as a stay at home mom, to travel on a whim and be with my family, obviously I could do without the reasoning behind the travel. One of the things that I love and get very excited about when I head to the Hoosier state is seeing my lifelong bestie, Nicci. I am blessed with an awesome girl tribe. I never thought I would say that. 1 or 2 good friends, sure! A whole slew? No way. I mostly stuck to guy friends as a teenager because lets be real. Teenage girls are 1 of the top 3 meanest things on the planet next to Russian mob members and the Mexican Cartel. Nicci knows EVERYTHING about me and she can look at my face and read me like a book. Needless to say, she took one look at my face a few weeks ago and decided it was a girls night. She is married to the best guy and he kept the kids while we went to Dairy Queen. I am also in a season of eating my feelings, so I ordered my usual Reece Blizzard with extra, extra Reece cups and a chicken strip backset with gravy. We got back to her house and parked in the driveway so we could eat and talk. In the middle of Nicci pouring out heartfelt love and advice, I lost it. It went a little like this…I completely cut her off and I am TICKED. I only have 3 of the 4 chicken strips I paid for!! I WANT ALL 4! Oh, wait. It’s there. It’s just hidden behind the gravy cup. Silly me. Now here is where it gets really interesting. I start laughing hysterically…which very quickly turns into sobbing. Poor Nicci just rubs my back and lets me cry. Like I said, best friend.

I know that y’all have a similar story. Life gets overwhelming, we keep it together because we are grown ups and life needs to be lived. Our kids need us, our husbands need us, there are bills, and your toddler’s screen time to monitor, but sometimes we just have to take a moment and cry! I deal with anything hard in life with sarcasm, jokes, and a fair dose of the ridiculous. It’s just who I am and whether that is appropriate in everyones eyes or not, I like to believe that God gets it and uses it in our relationship. Looking back on my meltdown later that same night, I realized that the overwhelming feeling I had about those chicken strips was that same way I had been feeling about life in general. It was like God was saying, “Don’t worry! I didn’t forget you…you just lost me behind the gravy!” It was so silly. The chicken strip was obviously bigger than the gravy but I still lost sight of it. Isn’t that just how our real life problems are? We know that God is bigger, badder, stronger than anything or any problem that we can encounter but we still let fear and anxiety control us.

…and yet, after all that life brings me, I know of only one thing that is certain and it is that God is still faithful.

If you are in a similar season, know that God hasn’t forgotten you. One of my favorite attributes of God is that he is faithful. He never, ever, ever, ever fails. Trust Him, lean on Him. It can be so hard to let go when we feel like we need to control every aspect of our lives, but that leap of faith is always rewarding when Jesus is the one catching us. There is peace in his arms. Perfect love that casts out all fear. It is impossible to hang on to anxiety when we are resting in peace that doesn’t even make sense or seem possible in the middle of our raging storms. So take a deep breath, cry over chicken strips if it helps, and give it to Him. He never fails.