WISH I HAD A PICTURE

Stay alert! Watch out for your great 

enemy, the devil. He prowls around 

like a roaring lion, looking for

someone to devour.  

(1 Peter 5:8, NLT)

 There are many things I wish I had pictures of, like the cute little fluffy birds perched on my balcony railing this morning, or the slippery mess of a box Amazon left outside my door the other day.

Back to the other day. A day at the tail end of a very exasperating week when very little had been accomplished, and my "bucket" was quickly filling up with drop after drop of increasing frustration. I was feeling overwhelmed and frazzled by computer issues, unwanted interruptions, not being able to get a response from customer support to my many requests for help with the software I had purchased from them that was not functioning and that was preventing me from being able to do my work, and the return of the lanternflies that I had been so happy seemed to be gone this summer.

When I went out to water the wildflowers on my balcony and spotted a lanternfly sitting on the leaf of one of them, it felt as though Satan was having a field day pushing my buttons and thumbing his nose at me while getting a good laugh at my expense.

Could anything else go wrong? The last drop fell into the bucket when I opened my door to retrieve a box Amazon had delivered, and it was so slippery I could barely turn it over to open it. How I wish I had thought to take a picture of that.

In the box was a jug of detergent, the cap of which had somehow managed to get unscrewed, and its soapy contents had spilled out, filling the box and pouring out of it. Great gobs of slippery soap were all over my doormat and the hallway carpet in front of my door. I can't even start to imagine how the delivery person was even able to get the box all the way from the truck through the courtyard, to my building, and up the stairs to my second- floor apartment.

That's when I was struck by how ludicrous this string of events that I had allowed to rattle me had been, and now I was the one getting the last laugh at the absurdity of it all.