Hi! I’m so glad you stopped by the Willowdale Women’s blog for a visit. I’m about desperate for a visit. No one has come over to my house in what feels like forever. If you came over to my house, I’d let you choose one of my special teas, and I’d steep it in my glass teapot over my tea warmer and pour us each a cup. Then I’d tell you this story of what God did for me during the pandemic.
I know a lot of women who have had a lot of stress during this stay at home order. Especially at the beginning of this crisis, literally every single woman I knew experienced just a ton of stress. That seemed wrong somehow. I noted how peace and stress mingled strangely in this situation.
I experienced a lot of things that seemed like they should lead to peace. The sun shone down on me, the cherry trees outside the kitchen window were covered with gorgeous blossoms, a glockenspiel on loan from school even appeared in my basement for my percussion loving teen. We all entered this crisis with different assets, and I acknowledge that God blessed me with a ton of them. Not every home is peaceful and full of good things. I know that, so I tried to accentuate the positive. Despite all the good things though, fear lurked in my heart and peace proved somewhat elusive.
Hands down, the grocery store presented the most challenges for me. Walking into Wal-Mart in mid-April and seeing no beans, no cereal, no chicken and signs saying I could only buy two gallons of milk for my six milk lovers pushed my childhood fear buttons. I could hear my Mom saying we were having “skip with a little miss on top” when she had no food to put on the table. I didn’t want my own children to hear anything even remotely akin to that.
As I pushed the cart through Wal-Mart my fear mounted almost without me realizing it, until I got to the butter at the back of the store. My youngest had asked for butter because she loves to bake. Only four boxes of butter remained in the very depths of the case. Thinking only of myself and my daughter, I grabbed all four of them and loaded them in my cart. I hate to admit that fear had reduced me to going through the dairy area in a kind of “combat shopping mode!”
Just at that moment, a woman came behind me looking for butter. I heard her ask the guy stocking the shelves if there was any more butter. There wasn’t. I had just taken it all. I knew God would be pleased if I shared the butter so I quickly turned around and offered her two boxes. She hesitated. I shook my hand a little as I continued to hold the butter out to her. “I’m serious. Take it.” She put the precious butter in her cart. You see, we all want butter on our bread and in our cookies.
That interaction took maybe thirty seconds. I didn’t spend a long time debating about if I should give her the butter, but I thought long about it afterwards. God knew my heart needed His gentle intervention. God knew I needed to give her the butter more than I needed to keep it and perhaps even more than she needed to receive it. He knew that I had gotten myself into such a fear-filled tizzy that the only way to get me out of “combat shopping mode” and into “peaceful trusting God mode” was for me to physically hand her the butter. Only then was I able to remember my butter doesn’t come from the refrigerator in Wal-Mart. It doesn’t even come from the cow out in the field. It comes from God, Himself, and He has promised to always take care of me. I felt better almost immediately.
I know the antidote to fear and the path to peace is trust in God. Consider the words of Isaiah 26:3, “You will keep in perfect peace, those whose minds are steadfast, because they trust in you.” But I can’t just close my eyes tightly, clench my fists and pop out more trust. Only God can work in my heart and make me trust Him.
During this pandemic, God has asked a lot of us to trust Him with the two things I think are the most difficult to leave in God’s care: our bodies and our money. All the scary things that may happen to our bodies and our money are a constant theme in the pandemic news. When God saw my trust flagging, He replaced my fear of not having enough food for my body with the fruit of His Spirit, namely peace, by having me hand butter to a stranger in Wal-Mart.
Thank you, God, that You know what we need, that You amply provide, that You work in our hearts, that You will bring us peace and that Your kindness leads us to repentance.
ABOUT THE BLOGGER
Elisabeth Schelp has been an adjunct professor of chemistry and a lab coordinator in a genetic center. She enjoys working in her garden, goes hiking whenever she gets a chance and feels happy when she makes things. Elisabeth and her husband, Rich, gratefully parent four children – their boys joined their family by birth and their girls came by way of adoption.
TO COMMENT ON THIS BLOG:
Write your comment, click POST COMMENT, fill in your first name (other fields are optional). Click COMMENT AS GUEST. There is no need to login.
OUTDOOR HOLY YOGA
Join us this week for Outdoor Holy Yoga. Click here for details.