Picket Fences

She pulls onto her street. A group of neighbor kids are playing ball. She stops and waits until they get safely our of her way. Her neighbor is washing his new car, his wife comes out their door and waves a friendly hello. She waves back before she pulls into the driveway of her own beautiful home, stops the car, grabs her purse, and opens the car door hoping the neighbor went inside so there wouldn't have to be any conversation. Instead, her neighbor calls out a friendly hello. She says hi back as she shuts the car door. "How are you?" the neighbor asks. "Good," she nods her head walking toward her front door. "You?" "Really good. Everything is going really well right now." "That's great to hear," she feigns a smile while unlocking the door to her home. She steps in and calls out, "Have a good night," before closing the door tight behind her.  Her cat is there to greet her as she slips off her shoes. She p

I entered the freeway having limited time to get to an appointment. Typically, it was 20 minutes away, but due to traffic it was 39 minutes away according to my Google map. If nothing happened along the way, I would get there with a few minutes to spare. Taking a deep breath I repeated a verse from the Bible, I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me. Then I relived the last couple of hours that caused me to feel stressed out. I thought and thought about who mainly caused the problems and how that person should have done this, and should have done that as I   kept repeating the verse. It suddenly occurred to me that yes, I CAN do all things through Christ who strengthens me, or I CAN continue to do all things through the stress that put me in this position. I decided I would let Jesus get me through. I decided that whatever actions the other person did, they were not going to propel me through the rest of the day. Jesus would get me through the day. I de