I woke up this morning in a grumpy funk.  As I tried to finish waking in the shower, my head filled with visions of the whole family going out for muffins and coffee.  Post-shower, I told my wife.  She said she planned to work out.  Could we do it mid-morning after the workout?  Well, that wouldn’t work either.  There were things we needed at the store, and then she needed to shower.  On cue, my son came up and asked it I could take him and his sister to the play area of a local fast food joint.  There it was: my morning was already planned for me, and I didn’t even know it.

So I adjusted.  After taking the kids to play I would pick up muffins and make coffee at home.  It was all going swimmingly.  The kids played, I edited a book for a friend.  Suddenly, I hear a loud, “SPLAT!”  A lidless cup is on the floor.  My son is standing in his socks in a puddle of lemonade.  I’m suspicious since the same thing happened last time we were here.

“Why is your lemonade on the floor?”

“Well, when I was drinking, the lemonade said, ‘I want to be on the floor!’  So I put it there.”

“If you do that again, you won’t get a drink next time we come here.”

His agreement was stated while half-way to the play area, his back to me.  Very repentant.  Later came the wailing when he learned he would get no refill.

“Buy WHY?!?!”

“You spilled your drink.  It’s gone.”  (Cue blood-curdling screams).

We left–my eyes searching heaven, him weeping and gnashing teeth, his sis sipping soda without a care.

Moods, including mine, improved when I explained  we’d grab muffins on the way home.  The kids got a blueberry muffin to share, and I got…(drumroll)…nothing.  Being hypoglycemic I can only have bran or oat bran muffins.  These usually unpopular choices had sped off the bakery racks leaving me to eat the dust of their crumbs.  This was the death knell.  My morning was officially ruined.  I went home, cut up the kids’ muffin, did not make coffee, and slunk away to pray and lick my wounds.

As I prayed, the morning’s disappointments led to facing deeper emotional and spiritual issues.  For awhile, I asked the Lord to give me understanding about these things.  But the morass of my self just went deeper and darker.  I realized I was in danger of becoming a spelunker who gets more and more lost as he tries to find his way out of a labyrinth of caverns.  The Lord brought me to Galatians 2:19-20 “I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me.”  Here was the way out–the only way out.  That guy that woke up in a funk, whose morning was ruined, who is a junkyard of problems, is dead.  The rest of the day I will live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me, who gave Himself for me, who lives in me (Gal. 2:20).