When life gets messy, maybe you'll learn a lesson or two!

Today was my first day back to work after being away on vacation for an entire week. (BTW, vacation post with pictures coming soon!) As much as I LOVE vacation and enjoy the time off, I truly wasn't dreading going back to work today. I love the girls that I get to work alongside everyday and I really do think our doctors are the best. However, I will say this...they definitely "welcomed" me back with quite the busy day today. We were hoppin' to say the least. I like it that way though. I had some "criers" today. I had two younger, precious little boys today as patients that had to be skin tested - neither were looking at this experience as a pleasant one. One of the little boys cried so hard that he actually threw up. Not in the trash can, but instead on our carpeted patient room floor. Poor thing! All he wanted was for the testing to be over and to go home and play outside in the dirt like little boys like to do! I, myself, wanted to cry because I had to clean throw up off a carpeted floor after he left. But while I was on my gloved hands and knees, with my 409 and wet paper towels in tow, the Lord spoke. He always chooses those "messy" times to get my attention. I'm not a big fan, but whatever works. :) I realized that the reason I was cleaning up this mess was due to the fact that one sweet small boy was absolutely scared out of his mind because he didn't know what was about to take place in his little world. He knew that something was going on and that it probably wasn't a fun something. So he did what most of us do when we're in situations like that. He freaked out and somewhat lost control - hence the vomit. While I was scrubbing the floor I started to think about how I react in these kinds of "fear of the unknown" moments in my own world. Those times when I'm not sure if something is going to hurt just a little or if it's going to hurt a whole lot....or of it's even going to hurt at all. I start to lose control before I even have a chance to know the whole situation, or when the Lord is disciplining me in a certain area in life and it starts to hurt the least bit and I take off running from His correction because I'm afraid I won't be able to take the "pain". In the mind of this little boy, he wasn't mature enough to grasp hold of the fact that this testing was going to be a little uncomfortable for a few minutes. He would feel a little poking and then a lot of intense itching that he wouldn't understand at all. But in the end, once we knew the results of his test and could then best know how to treat his symptoms, he would feel so much better and be a lot less sick. We knew this, but he didn't. I am so much like this little boy! God does things in my life on occasion that scare me to death and make me want to run like crazy. He allows me to go through some "uncomfortable" moments, moments that at first make no sense to me at all. But, God in His Sovereignty, knows what the end results are to all His "testing" and pruning in my life and if I'll just stay "still" and not run like a whimp because I'm scared, He promises to build me up, "make me better", and help me look more like Him in the process. "No discipline seems pleasant at the time, but painful. Later on however, it produces a harvest of righteousness and peace for those who have been trained by it." (Hebrews 12:11)