Today was a tough day. Wednesdays usually are. I won’t go into details, but suffice to say emotions ran high today in the Butz house, and they wore this mama down.
My victory is not that I took it all in stride or responded consistently with love or managed to turn it all around for good – those are the things I was hoping would be true. But my victory is that I stayed in it. I tried. I persevered. I prayed, “Oh Lord Jesus” more times than I can count. He stood with me as we held the hill in the battle. It doesn’t feel so much like victory as it does just not throwing up the white flag. I live to die another day. For now, I collapse into bed.
Um . . . . full disclosure? I don’t feel like writing tonight. I feel like I have nothing to report. Today was a pretty ordinary day. I got up, exercised, prayed, got ready. I got the kids up, made them breakfast, drove the carpool to school. I helped in Megan’s classroom and hung around while she had a meeting after school. We drove home. I made dinner, changed, and drove Megan to soccer. I tried running a little while I was there, then gave up and walked instead. We came home.
There were no magical moments. Nothing seemingly life-changing (aside from the fact that I did become an aunt today for the first time – but that is clearly my sister-in-law’s victory and I applaud her). It was not a red letter day for me.
I want the big victories. I want the obvious, significant, recognized moments, the ones that make the world take notice, but life doesn’t have many of those.
Instead, it has days like today. Lots of them. So was there any victory today? Yes. My victory today is that I was faithful to do what God gave me to do. That’s all, and that’s enough.
I am not a spontaneous person. I’m not free spirited. I like plans, routines, to do lists. Sometimes, I wish this weren’t true about me. I’d like to be more relaxed and just take life as it comes, but I’ve learned that I function best when I stick to what I know. God made me a planner, and it is good.
So yesterday I took time to plan out my week. I made menu plans, scheduled activities, even wrote tasks for each day. I felt good, because I knew that when I do that I put my time into the things that matter to me. It seemed like a victory was ahead.
But then I came home last night with a raging headache that kept me up until after 1, and made me sleep till 8. Suddenly, my best laid plans were off. There just weren’t enough hours for all my to do’s. See, this is the problem with schedules – when you make them, you’re acutely aware of when you aren’t following them!
It would be so easy to look at my list and see what didn’t happen, to be disappointed, to be stressed. Throughout the day, whenever this temptation came to mind, I said simply, “grace.”
Plans are good. Intentionality is good. But life doesn’t go the way we expect so much of the time, so instead of looking at what didn’t happen, my victory today is to be happy for what did. For all the rest, it’s just grace.
That’s it. That’s my victory. It’s embarrassing to admit it, but that’s what I want to celebrate from day 6.
It might seem like a small thing to you, but it is not to me. I hate phone calls. I don’t even particularly like talking to my friends on the phone. If I have something to tell you, I would rather walk to your house and tell you than call you on the phone.
But this phone call was motivated by love. I had arranged a little get together for a friend’s birthday last night at a nearby restaurant (and that in itself I can celebrate because I am not an organizer of people). In the afternoon, it occurred to me that I should make a reservation. I argued with myself a little, trying to convince myself it was unnecessary, but in the end I decided that I wanted the night to go well for my friend, and that required a reservation.
So I made the call. Victory! Secondary victory: having the guts to admit that this is a significant victory to me. Double bounce!
It’s hard to find a clear victory in a day when all you did was sit in a chair listening to a speaker for 8 hours. It might be my victory is that, despite less than 5 hours of sleep, I did not fall asleep. Ok, I only fell asleep for brief moments. But I did not fall off my chair. Victory!
So instead I was going to ride on our daughter’s coattails for the day, because while I was fighting off sleep she was not only scoring her first goal of the season, it was the winning goal for the first win of the season. Victory!
Erik said I can’t steal her victory, but I feel victorious so I still think it should count. Just as I was sitting down to type though, our son peeked over my shoulder and said, “I like it when you do things like this.”
“Like what?”
“Like since you started writing about victories, you’re . . . . nicer. You seem happier. I wish you could be this way all the time!”
Oh boy.
Me too, kiddo. But who says I can’t? I feel like the places where I’ve seen victory this week have just been the times when I was cognizant enough to say, “Hey, God can give me what I need in this moment” and then I asked him for it.
So really, it’s all Him. It’s His victory in me. And that someone else can see it? Victory!
Friday mornings are one of my favorite times of the week because I get to spend 2 1/2 hours hanging out with several incredible women as we dig deeper into life and try to listen well and love each other where we are. It’s good stuff, I tell ya.
After “group” as we call it (which makes it sound like therapy, which it kind of is except free and more fun) I often have an hour and a half to kill before getting my son and his friend from school. Today, I determined that I would spend that time writing.
Apart from my blog, I have been starting to work on writing a book. I’ve had this idea in the back of my mind for a long time, but it’s amazing how I can find ways to not work on it. I try to schedule times to write it, and suddenly I am incredibly motivated to clean my house to within an inch of its life, or I find many things on the internet which I must read, or I have to organize my closets or run errands. Yesterday, I had planned to write all day but God decided to send me to the emergency room instead. I’m calling that not my fault.
So my victory today is that I said I would write, and I did. It’s that simple. I ignored the voices that called me to do something else, and I just wrote. It wasn’t hours, and maybe I’ll erase everything I wrote the next time I look at it, but I wrote. Victory!
Did you know that if you say you’re having chest pains at the ER, you get in immediately? So you could say, “I broke my arm. And also, I’m having chest pains,” and you’d be at the front of the line. I will warn you, though, chest pains will result in lots of expensive testing. You need to decide how much money that time you just saved is worth to you. Your call.
I know this, because that’s what I did this morning. I’ll skip to the punch line and declare that my victory of the day is not dying from a heart attack at the age of 40!
Well, I could stop there, but the bigger victory for me is the way God led me to respond to this emergency. Around 7:30 this morning I started experiencing pain in the right side of my chest. Taking deep breaths hurt a lot, which caused, naturally, shortness of breath. My inhaler didn’t seem to do much so we sent the kids to school with someone else (shout out to my awesome friend Jenny for stepping in with 10 minutes to get ready!) and Erik took me to the ER.
As we were arranging all this, and googling, “heart attack symptoms women,” I started to be very fearful, panicked really. (FYI panicking when you are having trouble breathing is a poor choice). We climbed in the car and started driving, and I started to pray. That was when God reminded me of Isaiah 26:3-4, “You will keep in perfect peace him whose mind is steadfast, for he trusts in you. Trust in him at all times, O people, for the Lord, the Lord is the rock eternal.”
And right there was my victory, and it was all God. Because as I read those words over and over, I just felt held in his perfect peace. Whatever happened, I was in his hands.
So as we spent 4 hours in the emergency room getting my blood test, chest X-ray, and CT scan, I was at peace, because he kept me there. And you know what? It all turned out exactly the same way that it would have had I gone into it with fear. Except everyone had a much more enjoyable experience because Gina stressed is not a blessing to anyone.
They don’t know what happened. They suspect, and so do I, that it was something muscular that caused my chest, then back, then neck to tense up and constrict my breathing. This is wonderful justification for me to have regular massages to keep my muscles relaxed. I’d rather do them for $4 on the beach in Thailand with a lime drink in my hand, but I’ll take what I can get.
That was a relief to me because faith is not my strong suit. It’s not my faith or lack of it that carries me, it’s His faithfulness. When I think about the transitions we’ve gone through as a family, I can see how true this is.
God’s Faithfulness through Transition
When we moved overseas, God showed us His sovereignty and goodness, when we questioned whether having a baby, leading a team, and learning new language and culture all at the same time was really the best idea. It was, for His purposes.
In becoming a mom, He showed me that He is El Roi – the God who sees us, even when the world might not.
When we moved to Singapore, and He knew how hard it was for us to leave, He showed us His tenderness and compassion through working out all the details in perfect timing.
When we moved back into East Asia 5 years later, things didn’t go quite so smoothly. I remember saying to God, “But last time you worked all these things out so well! Why not now?” And He said, “Because that’s not what you need now.” What we needed was to be refreshed and renewed, and He showed His delight in doing that for us.
When we moved back to the U.S., I wondered, “How will God reveal Himself to us this time?”
God’s Recent Faithfulness
There were huge decisions to make. We had to buy a house – here we were at 40 years old but we’d never bought a house before! We had to decide what part of Orlando to live in, and we discovered that our friends could be very evangelistic about what part of Orlando is best. It was confusing; They all sounded good! We had to decide where to send our kids to school – we’d not had a lot of options before. It was overwhelming, and the best pro/con list in the world wasn’t going to help us. The house we bought had the most pros, but it also had the most cons, by far.
What we needed was His wisdom. If you ask me today why we chose this area, this house, this school, I will say that it was simply because God told us to. With each decision there came a day when He clearly said, “This one. This place.” He has been our wisdom and our guide.
Day 2 could have gone the way of the terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day. I only managed to fall asleep at 2 am with the help of Z Quil (which, by the way, is really just Benadryl) which made me wake up at 6:55 feeling like I was walking through molasses. Being the introvert I am, I truly need at least an hour upon waking during which I am not required to interact with anyone. Two hours is a safer bet. Otherwise, my reserves are low and I grumble through the day feeling like I’m playing catch up. Basically, I was like a bear who was yanked out of hibernation and asked to mother immediately.
It got even better. The dog threw up on the carpet. There was a giant cockroach in our living room. The kitchen hadn’t been cleaned properly for two days. The laundry was reaching climbable heights. And me, looking at all of it from empty.
That’s when I decided that this would be my victory today – I would not be the mama who waves the white flag just because the day doesn’t start out on her side. It’s tempting to feel like it’s such a small thing – basically, I chose a good attitude. But that small choice set the course for the whole day. At lunch Ethan stopped and said, “You know, I’m having a good day,” and I thought, “if I had chosen differently, he might not have said that.”
Ok, here goes. I can tell already that this is going to be a good challenge for me, if for no other reason than that it makes me think about it all day. This detracts from me thinking about other, less important things, like where I could find some chocolate or whether or not my hair is behaving.
I also have the feeling though that the things I will be led to call victories will require a higher degree of transparency than I might typically want to display on a regular basis. Yikes!
Take today, for example. This morning, my husband and I were asked to share for a few minutes at the day of prayer about faith. I’d been thinking about what to say for a few days and felt confident of what I should say. In the few minutes before we were going to speak, though, I started getting nervous.
So I asked myself why I would be anxious, and the answer is: this was one of the first times I was speaking to these people. I wanted them to like me. No, if I’m honest it’s more than that – I wanted them to think well of me and be impacted by what I said. I wanted them to be impressed, to find me valuable.
When I realize things like that, I can get discouraged. I don’t like that I care so much about what others think, about the image I portray. But I’m learning to take those desires at face value and say, “I get why you feel that way, but Gina, it doesn’t matter what people think. What matters is that you say what God has put on your heart. He has already established your value. This changes nothing.”
So I had that little internal pep talk with myself, right there in the second row, took a deep breath, and relaxed. And right there, that’s what I’m calling victory.
