Because I'm Really Not Entitled to Mercy...Please Be Merciful

Yesterday morning I visited the Social Security office to change my name on my card. The woman who helped me was great. She was also left handed. I noticed this because I noticed the scars on her right arm and hand and the fingers that pointed in unusual directions. She could do some things with that arm, but for the most part, it wasn't useful, not like most of us use ours.

Last night I spent three hours mowing less than 1/4 of my yard with a push mower. I have no clue how many times I had to restart the mower because it kept bogging down and dying. At one point, it was dark, I was sore, my body ached, and the mower died...again, and I blurted out, "God, can't I please just have easy once?"

First, I thought about the "expected 2 hour wait" at the SS office that ended up being 25 minutes. Wasn't that easier?

In fact, I had finished all of the day's to do list and most of the next day's to do list, so surely there had been a lot more easier.

But then the simple truth came to me. I have two functional arms and two functional legs, and although they hurt so bad right then, those hurting appendages made it a lot easier to mow than having only one arm or a less than fully functining hand or no legs or legs in casts.

The truth is I had an amazing day yesterday, and I was whining because I was having to work to mow.

Talk about a pathetic entitlement mentality.

Even as I tell you this, I feel embarrassed at the idea I don't think I deserve to work hard or I should somehow be exempt from hard stuff. What a pathetic, unbiblical, ungodly, and totally un-Jesus mentality.

And it isn't even about the woman whose hand didn't work, and I have it better than her. No. It's about the reality that I was focusing on that hard thing and had totally lost sight of all the easy in the day. How utterly shallow of me to lose all the blessings of my day in the shadow of inconvenience.

God have mercy. Do not hold my pathetic selfishness against me, and have enough mercy not to let me hold onto that pathetic shallow entitlement mentality.

--Jerri L Kelley--