The Ultimate Bug Exterminator

Disclaimer: this writer is not responsible for hysterics or broken computer screens that this picture may generate.

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It was the first week of school and our eighty-year-old dorm was airing out after having her doors shut for the summer.

I closed my textbooks and arose from my desk as anticipation mounted inside of me. My “favorite” time of the day had finally arrived and I would greet my beloved pillow once again when I saw it—

“It” was a creature of disproportional size, but known to brazenly roam territories unknown to mankind in the dark cracks and crevices of buildings all over the city.

“It” was the terror from the dark whose strategic surprise tactics are known—on sight—to evoke immediate shrieks of terror as unsuspecting damsels add “in Distress” to their title.

Yes, this horror of BH was none other than my first TUFW centipede who dared to dance on its fifteen pairs of hairy legs across our room floor.

Had I known the danger I was in my reaction might have been different, for I forever disgraced the halls of Bethany with a sigh of mild unconcern as the little intruder scurried behind the bookshelf.

A sudden faint instinct rose inside of me, and for a moment, I eyed its wooden refuge and contemplated whether I should attempt to kill it.

This uninvited visitor, however, posed no threat to my psyche or my life—and I confess that I have an aversion to killing bugs that, when squished, leave too much behind. So I decided against performing the execution with my ever-present intelligent reasoning:

It’s doing me no harm.

The following afternoon I was studying at my desk when two heroic bug exterminators on their dormly rounds showed up at our door with deadly weapons in hand:

“Got bugs?” one asked.

I had barely ended my centipede-sighting story before the two had entered and strategically sprayed the corners of our room.

I admit that I have nursed a suspicion that questions whether these bug exterminations—complete with glamorous puffs of chemical-laden mist—really work, or merely serve as a psychological soother to damsels awaiting distress.

My suspicions were verified that evening when a movement caught the corner of my eye and I turned from my ever present textbook just in time to see that intruder actually run out our open door.

I think I broke all codes of Damsels in Distress by laughing out loud as I strained to see if he was carrying a suitcase.

I have since been reprimanded by an anonymous former Damsel in Distress—a great lady who, on one occasion, took 40 minutes and a shoe to dispose of said terror from the dark.

I blame myself for what took place over the following nine months and wonder at times whether our history would have been different had I killed it. For this creep, with his numerous family members of varying sizes and leg lengths, haunted our halls for the rest of the school year.

It became a common occurrence.

It wasn’t winning the lottery or earning a good grade that brought girls running into the halls in hysterics.

Day-sightings punctuated the air with shrill blood-curdling screams of unique pitches. At night, stifled shrieks were heard through the walls as furniture scraped against the floor and a series of thumping and hitting followed as I imagined the damsel gingerly running after the fleeing long legs armed with that No. 1 Bug Killing Weapon of the Twenty-First Century: the Flip Flop.

Although I know several damsels who irrefutably believe that these centipedes are a result of The Fall, I can’t help but think about how these creepy crawlies can be compared to the presence of sin in my heart. I only wish I would scream as loud as my neighbors every time I see it.

Its presence is everywhere—hiding behind the bookshelves of my mind and creeping through cracks and crevices kept in disrepair by my unsurrendered sin.

But instead I grow dull to sin as our culture—even within “Christian” circles—accept and even promote the very conduct that God calls evil, foolish, vain, worthless, crude, and immoral.

Why? Why do I allow this in my life, my mind, my mouth, when I carry the Name of Jesus Christ?

I have grown careless, and in fateful moments of each day I reason myself out of taking action against my sin:

Perhaps this little sin isn’t threatening enough. Perhaps if I see a visible or immediate consequence then I’ll commit to do something about it. Perhaps I’m just too tired, too lazy to exert the energy, or too afraid of the mess it will make.

But unlike our own earthly and heroic bug exterminators who seem to succeed only in scaring away these terrors for a time…our Ultimate Sin Exterminator can smash them! Yes, it gets dirty, my friends, but we can have victory if we strive to wield our weapons surrendered to Christ!

“Submit yourselves therefore to God. Resist the Devil and he will flee from you.
Draw near to God and He will draw near to you.” James 4:7-8

God & My Alarm Clock

My spring break is over.

I successfully got both of my feet into my dorm for five minutes before a classmate reminded me of an assignment that I had forgotten. It was due the next morning.

To make matters worse, I was already planning to get up early to study for a Dr. Hensley quiz for the same class which started at 8 a.m..

What a way to end spring break.

All day I had taken great care to remain afloat on happy memories made in the previous 10 days with family and friends. Now it all dissolved into thin vapors of reality as I came dropping down to earth with a thud felt in my stomach.

This means I need to get up earlier than early.

With a sigh, I set my alarm for 6 a.m.. I was tired and already retiring several hours later than planned.

I could almost see happy dream clouds floating above my bed reminding me that head + pillow = sweet sleep. A great equation even if Jacob of the Old Testament had a different definition for the term “pillow.”

When I finally crawled into bed and happily avoided hitting my head on the bunk above me, I suddenly began to fear whether I would actually wake up to my alarm. Obviously previous scares from such things have left me scarred.

While I was praying (a nighttime habit from my childhood that I’m in the process of reawakening), I asked God to specifically wake me up the next morning. I knew that if I groggily "shut the noise off" and slept in even 10 minutes the chances of getting a good grade would probably move toward extinction. Then I promptly fell asleep.

There’s something incredibly relaxing about falling asleep knowing that God hears silent prayers in the dark.

PAUSE.
Imagine with me now what one might hear in our room during the wee hours of the morning as Amber occasionally moans and moves restlessly while our haunted water pipes CLICK and CLANK loudly overhead as if Scrooge's deceased friend, Jacob Marley, is on his way down. Kristina’s breathing is somewhat louder since she’s fighting a cold—though she’s been known to attempt to sing the Winnie the Pooh refrain in Russian. And I might be interrupting the atmosphere with sound waves that resemble sighs, "groans" (as Amber claims) and, on rare occasions, a few incoherent sentences.
UNPAUSE.

Suddenly I was awake. I realized that my alarm hadn’t gone off yet, but I felt strangely alert. This can mean only one thing. My insides twisted as the big foreboding words “I overslept” darkened my vision.

I grabbed my phone and flipped it open. The glaring numbers that stared back at my squinting unfocused eyes read 5:57 a.m.. Strange.

For “some” reason, I decided to checked my alarm settings and found, to my amazement, that in my sleepy state of mind last night, I'd forgotten to activate it.

Some people will call it “coincidence,” but I can’t. Rarely do I ever find myself laying wide awake in bed at 5:57 a.m..

Once again God had surprised me. He knew and He cared enough to wake me up.

Apart from feeling compelled now to argue the fact that there is no such thing as “an ungodly hour,” I must confess that I broke all Night Owl Codes of Morning Behavior when I actually smiled into the dim morning light that penetrated our dark room with its bluish-grey hues.

God makes no secret of the fact that He cares for every single one of His children. The real question is—

Do I care enough about Him to ask Him to be apart of my every day?

Be My Valentine

A throbbing headache pulsed through my brain as I sleepily pulled on clothes. It was Saturday morning and my class started at 8:30 am—and it wasn’t scheduled to end until 5 pm.

I desperately wanted to go back to bed, but missing even a few hours of this class would cost losing valuable information that I needed to know. Then I remembered:

Today is Valentine’s Day.

I looked down at my navy blue shirt and blue jeans. One of these has to go. I was determined not to wear the funeral garb of a depressed single on the national pink and red day of romance.

Since I don’t own a pair of pink or red pants, I changed into a red sweatshirt that had light blue heart designs on the sleeves—even if it is the same thing I wore last Valentine’s Day.

My headache was bordering migraine status and I was feeling sick and dizzy when I finally pushed open the door of Bethany Hall.

The mystic silence that has accompanied snowfalls since the beginning of time met me as I entered a fairyland of big drifting white snowflakes—and this is not even the magical land of Narnia. Everything was covered in a delicate layer of snow, and a sense of delight swept over me.

PAUSE.
I am aware that the word “snow” may create in my readers a mix of emotions from fear of its evil cousin, Ice, to the grumpiness that follows disappointed wishes for the warmth and sunshine of spring. But for about two years now, snow continually points me to its Creator. It doesn’t matter what time of year or season it should be, snowfalls will always help me catch a glimpse of God’s mysterious and unfathomable love for me.
UNPAUSE.

I think I even smiled as I started down the sidewalk. Just because I don’t have a boyfriend doesn’t mean I’m not loved.

I had walked past a little white candy sweetheart sitting forlornly on the wet cement when my curiosity—and perhaps my sentimental girl nature—got the best of me.

I walked back and stooped down half expecting a corny message like “Get Lost” or “Got Love?” to be written on its surface. But wait, the pink words were partially washed off but I could just make out—

“Be Mine.”

Were those tears that stung my eyes or just the cold wind?

He didn’t have to do it.

An unexpected snowfall points me to an outer-worldly God Who exists outside of time and has no need for my love—but offers His unconditionally.

Someone’s forgotten candy heart whispers a worldly message that symbolizes love, and turns it into a sweet reminder that God delights to be a part of my every day.

Both embraced me with the warmth of real God-love.

Love that reaches through space and time.
Love that can touch me no matter what time of day or season.
Love unshakable and love unchangeable.
Love that holds the promise of eternity with Christ.

On the days when it is so easy to think of what or who I don’t have, do I remember Who and what I do have?

Yes, my head still throbbed and I still had a long day of class ahead of me, but is He enough?

Or is He just a forgotten and unappreciated part of my daily life?

Only His touch can make the dreary and the forgotten truly beautiful. Only His finger can leave sweet messages on the sidewalks of life.

Liquid Ice

The icy water flowed over my head, weighed down my hair, and successfully gave me a royal neck ache. Briefly I questioned why my head was hovering over this big sink in the laundry room of Bethany Hall—when I remembered: It was Sunday morning, 6º F outside, and the hot water that had mysteriously quit Friday night still remained conspicuously absent from our dorm pipes. Why did the hot water have to be out today of all days?

This current attempt at hair washing had become a desperate last resort when I realized I had two options: 1) not wash my hair and suffer the embarrassment of church attendees distractedly wondering how long it had been since I’d washed my hair <painful answer: a week>, or 2) wash my hair and be able to focus on the sermon knowing that everyone was doing the same while blissfully ignorant that they could have witnessed a wild Laurie morning.

My eyes were squeezed shut when both my head and I agreed that we couldn’t handle this liquid ice for another moment. My skull had approached that painful stage called “nearly numb” that comes right before it shuts down. This feels worse than the icy mountain streams of Yosemite that we swam in years ago!

With a few numb handed twists the faucet was silenced and I stood there, my hair dripping over my face, trying to voice my agonized gasps of pain while the obnoxious THUMP, CLUNK, THURNK, of the malfunctioning middle dryer filled the room. Why, oh why couldn’t the hot water just miraculously turn on?

Back in my room, with my hand thawing around my regular morning cup of tea, I felt my body relax as I pulled out my Bible and a little notebook titled: “Journal of Daily Thanksgiving to God.”

It was something I’d started two years ago when I realized how little I thank God for the every day things of life: Thank You Lord for this new day! Thank you Jehovah-rapha for no headache today! Thank you—

As I thought through the little and big things of my life that I could write down, my grudging heart realized how much I had that I was not crediting to the generous hand of my God. I mean, the hot water goes out and I take on the attitude of a martyr!

I don’t live in a country where drinking water is the murky color of mud, nor does it takes two hours to fetch, and our land is not experiencing a drought.

What if I didn’t have water at all? –No clean dishes, no clean clothes, no tea, no running toilets, no showers...

I have so much and yet when one little part of it takes a vacation, I resort to grumbling in my heart. I forget that my God is the God of Living Water that never stops flowing—my only source of true joy that never should grow cold.

Thank You God for running water!

"...but whoever drinks of the water that I will give him
will never be thirsty again.
The water that I will give him will become in him a spring of water
welling up to eternal life.” John 4:14

Beginnings...

"In His hand is the life of every living thing and the breath of all mankind." Job 12:10

After years of contemplating, praying, and tossing around the idea of starting a blog, I finally have been convicted to just do it and allow God to work despite my weaknesses and fail attempts.

There is nothing glamorous or special about this blog but it is dedicated to encourage, refresh, inspire and convict those who read to live a life more fully with Jesus Christ--Who is the only One who really matters in the long run.

What is written here are my thoughts as I seek and struggle to live this one life before my God, with my God, and for His Name and glory.

Join me as as together we seek God with our every breath in the "every moment" of every day.

"Let everything that has breath praise the Lord! Praise the Lord!" Psalm 150:6