The Day from – – Well, You Know

You’ve had those days, haven’t you?

You’re trying your best. You’re giving it your all. But nothing – and I mean nothing! – is going as it should. Clients are jumping up and down, each one wanting their own matters to be moved to the top of your “to do” list. Deadlines are approaching. Work is piling up and your anxiety level is rising. You are being pushed to your limit and you know if you’re asked to do one more task or talk to one more pushy person, you are going to –

SCREAM!

There. Feel better now?

Wouldn’t it be nice to run outside and scream at the top of your lungs every time you’re pushed to your breaking point?

Imagine the feeling of all your burdens being carried away as your voice echoes through the skies.

Imagine the peace you would feel as all your stresses melt away.

Imagine the relief.

Imagine the judgmental looks from all your co-workers standing in the doorway watching you scream your head off and wondering which mental institute to call first.

Yeah. Imagine that.

The days that seem to come from the depths of the Fiery Pit itself will always exist. There’s no way to avoid them but I’ve come to realize that these days don’t have to end in an explosion of frustrations.

So, what do we do when the demands of the day overwhelm us and all we want to do is scream?

First things first: Remember that each day is a blessing.

Yep, even the horrible ones.

“This is the day the Lord has made;
let us rejoice and be glad in it.”
Psalms 118:24 CSB

Each day is a gift, an opportunity for you to serve God, bless others and glorify Him with your words and actions. All the stuff that makes your day seem horrible is merely a distraction sent by Satan to keep you from enjoying God’s gift to you. Don’t let that manipulative joker steal your joy.

Secondly, quit trying to walk through your day alone!

“Two are better than one,
because they have a good return for their labor:
If either of them falls down,
one can help the other up.”
Ecclesiastes 4:9-10 NIV

You are only one person and there is only so much you can handle on your own. Ask for help. Ask for a break. And ask early – don’t wait til you’re about to blow your top!

Lastly, if you’ve reached the point of no return and you just have to scream, try crying out to the One who is always with you, the One who is strong enough to handle everything being thrown your way, the One who gives peace even on the most horrible of days.

“Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened,
and I will give you rest.
Take my yoke upon you and learn from me,
for I am gentle and humble in heart,
and you will find rest for your souls.
For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.”
Matthew 11:28-30 NIV

When the stress piles up and you are about to break, spend a few minutes with the Heavenly Father. Ask for His help. Take Him at His Word and trust Him to ease your mind and give you strength to make it through all of your days.

Trust me.  Crying out to the Father is a much better alternative than making a spectacle of yourself in the office parking lot. 😉

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Don’t Cry Over Uncooked Chicken

Bad days. We all have them. Even me – the chick who’s always talking about happiness. And this past week has been filled with them. One, especially, was a doozy! It began badly and escalated into something even worse. By the time I made it home after work that day, all I wanted to do was vent to my husband and curl up in my bed. But one of my husband’s co-workers was at the house. Venting was out of the question. So I ended up in the kitchen with a new recipe in front of me and a determination to cook away my problems.

I’ve said this before: it is so very strange that I find solace in cooking since I have no idea what I’m doing! It could be that the challenge of learning (and conquering!) something new creates a distraction from the worries of life. Or the appeal may be the creativity involved – gathering all the separate ingredients and putting everything together to produce something wonderful in the end. No matter the reason, cooking has become my emotional outlet.

So with the weight of the day on my shoulders, I set out to cook a chicken, bacon and ranch casserole. I prepared the ingredients as instructed – cut up the chicken into cubes, cut up the broccoli, cooked and crumbled the bacon and mixed it all together with cream cheese, ranch dressing and shredded cheddar. Then I checked the last bit of instructions to see how long the casserole was to cook:

“Bake until hot about 35 minutes.”

Until hot? Wait. That seemed like very strange wording for cooking instructions. I scrolled back to the top of the recipe to see if I had missed something. And there it was – the very first ingredient on the list:

“1.5 lb. cooked chicken, cubed”

COOKED? Really?

I looked at my casserole dish filled with the gooey combination of raw cubes of chicken, ranch dressing, cream cheese and all the other fixings. I almost lost it. I had just spent over an hour thawing out the chicken (cause I never remember to take the meat out of the freezer), cutting the raw chicken into small chunks (which really grosses me out and almost causes me to never eat chicken again), thawing and cooking the bacon (cause I like crispy bacon) and figuring out if I could substitute ranch dressing for the mayo and spices the recipe called for (Why not just call for ranch dressing in a chicken, bacon and ranch casserole?). It was all I could do to hold back the tears.

This cooking therapy session was doing me no good at all!

My initial response was to throw the whole thing out and order a pizza. Actually, throwing it across the room was my first impulse but then I would’ve had to clean up the mess. I certainly didn’t want to do that! So I decided to fish out all the pieces of uncooked chicken and brown them in a skillet. (I may have been able to cook the casserole as it was but I didn’t want to take any chances with chicken.) After the chicken was cooked, I mixed up the casserole a second time and put it in the oven. The finished product was delicious.

We ate. The family was satisfied. My bad day still loomed.

(Photo Credit: Pinterest)

It bothers me to stress over my bad days. I know that there are so many who have worse problems than I. But there are times when the bad seems to latch on and not let go. I went to bed troubled and praying.

The next morning I awoke with a song in my heart:

“Oh, my soul,
You are not alone.
There’s a place where fear has to face the God you know.
One more day, He will make a way.
Let Him show you how, you can lay this down
‘Cause you’re not alone.”¹

God is good, isn’t He? He is always with us, even on the bad days. He walks right beside us and He’ll even carry our burdens – if we let Him. He is big enough to handle every problem, every worry, every sorrow, every question, every fear, everything.

You see, God is pretty creative, too. And just like gathering all the ingredients of a recipe and combining them into something wonderfully delicious, He has no problem gathering all the pieces of our lives, the good days and bad, the triumphs and failures, the joys and sorrows, and fashioning these pieces into something wonderful. It may take some adjustments to the recipe – fishing out what is wrong, reworking it or even throwing it out altogether – but in the end, the results of God’s handiwork are always beyond compare.

Have you found yourself crying over uncooked chicken lately? Have you experienced any bad days? Maybe you’re experiencing a string of bad days. If you are, please remember, you don’t walk through these bad days alone. God is with you and He is waiting for you to hand Him your burdens. So, go ahead, hand ’em over and watch God’s creativity at work.

¹”Oh, My Soul” by Casting Crowns