What would we be caught doing? I often wonder, since God sees everything and He knows our hearts, what do we really think we are hiding from Him? And how often does He delight in catching us doing something He didn’t have to prompt us to do?

Today I was sitting at my desk with my phone off because I was at work, awaiting the arrival of my youngest, who was coming to get something out of my car trunk. I knew approximately when he might arrive, but got involved in something I was doing and missed a text saying he was there. Meanwhile, a young mother I had noticed outside was on the phone, holding her baby, and standing outside of her car.

She was having car trouble, as my son obviously noted, and he had pulled his car alongside hers and was proceeding to hook up his jumper cables to her battery when I noticed him.

She drove off shortly after and he proceeded to get the item from my vehicle and go on his way. I thought afterward how effortlessly he had stepped in to help where help was needed. I was very moved by what I saw when it hadn’t been me who encouraged him to do so, frankly I was way more impressed because I didn’t even see the need.

When we catch our children doing the right thing or a nice thing when they don’t know we are looking is the very best time of all! I remember reading a parenting book one time that exhorted: “Catch your child doing something right!” I remember taking that to heart and trying to notice all the things they did correctly rather than the few I was trying to help them improve.

I will bet you God feels the same way about His children, when He sees them doing something He didn’t even have to nudge them to do.

Because it is no longer well enough. I was having a spirited conversation with a spirited friend and that is what came out of my mouth. We can’t leave well enough alone….at the voting booth, at the dinner table, at our job. Things are not well enough for us to do that. We have turned the other way, gone back to our TV show, put our head in a book of fiction so long that while we weren’t watching, things happened that we cannot reverse.

If we continue to let others speak for us, decide what’s best for us, we will lose the right to speak up at all. I read a very interesting email about the women who went to jail to insure our right to vote. Their story may come out in a movie soon. It is truly amazing the lengths to which they were willing to go to provide something  we often find an excuse not to exercise. How often I have heard ‘I had to make dinner’ or’ I had to pick up the kids at gymnastics’, as a reason someone didn’t vote.

It is curious that I  am more likely to hear “it’s to die for!” referring to a dress or pair of shoes than something like our right to vote, or our freedom to worship as we choose.

I truly believe the time is nearing where we will have to choose what we are willing to die for. Where what we believe in our heart of hearts will take precedence over all else. It may not be everyone who is forced to choose this way, but I do believe those who enlisted early on into God’s army will have to make hard choices, where there is no middle of the road.

I hope, if and when that time comes, to know my belief is substantially more important to the future of my children’s’ children than a pair of shoes, and I hope to be remembered as a woman in their lineage who was willing to stand up for something she believed, no matter what the cost.

I had the very good fortune to have a lot of fun and happy moments packed into a 24 hour period two days ago, and I realized after that it is almost more difficult for me to process the happy emotions than the sad. How crazy!

I went from one great moment to another…a trip to Tampa for a closing and a concert after with a wonderful young couple I have been working with who were purchasing their first home. Because the date of closing fell on the night my son was to play in concert in Tampa, I invited them to enjoy it with me in celebration. We happened to have a notary closing (the only type that made it movable, and it was a purchase from a builder so the seller did not have to be present either). So we moved the closing to the hotel where we were staying and closed between lunch with my son and dinner before his show!

It was only after I got home the next day that the tears of joy began to flow. I thought what am I crying about? I just had an amazing and wonderful time!

Only then did I begin to realize that while I have become very adept at handling the crisis that come in life, I am less adept at having fun and participating in the warmth of people around me and things going smoothly and well. I am used to always being ready for the thing that could jeopardize everything and I have become perhaps too vigilant being the lookout! I don’t see that as sad, but I am now aware that it happens to me. I now will be more prepared when tears of joy seem to come from nowhere.

Perhaps God wired me differently. I seem to find good in even the bad things that happen in life, but am I finding bad in the good? I don’t think so. I think I just recognize that life is indeed full of a lot of emotions, and sometimes they stay inside and sometimes they come out. Isn’t this why we cry at movies when sometimes our partner or spouse or friend doesn’t?

Always hard to explain to someone else, but just know it’s OK….sometimes we can be so happy we cry, or so sad we don’t. It’s all good and it will all balance out in the end!