Praise be to the Lord, to God our Savior, who daily bears our burdens. Psalm 68:19
The weekend before our son Chris deployed to Iraq, our whole family pitched in to clear everything out of his three-bedroom house, so it could be rented while he was off to a war zone.
The job was huge. Yet it was nothing compared to the impossible task of making it through the next year under the daily stress of knowing that Chris could be in mortal danger.
How on earth am I going to make it through his deployment? I wondered. I carried a bucket of heavy-duty cleaning supplies into the bathroom.
The walls and floor of the shower were caked with a thick layer of grayish soap film. An impossible job! I thought. I pulled on rubber gloves and sprayed cleanser on the shower wall until it dripped down the drain.
I took a sponge and made a swipe. The gray yuck didn’t budge. I picked up a scrub brush and leaned my whole weight against it. Nothing. Then I repeated the process. Spray. Scrub. Lean. Spray…. In a few minutes a clean patch of white shower wall emerged.
Encouraged that the job really wasn’t impossible, I kept at it. An hour later I stiffly stood and looked with satisfaction at the now white shower.
Cleaning the shower showed me how to get through a huge life challenge like being a mom of a soldier in a war zone. Don’t try to handle the whole overwhelming job at once. Just finish up one small part at a time until the long difficult task is done.
Father, what I’m facing feels impossible but with Your help, I will make a little progress each day.
