A Screaming Micro

We own the most irritating microwave on earth. It yells at you. If you put a coffee cup in it, reheat the coffee and take it out and go back to the bedroom for devotions, that microwave will unleash an unending series of bleeps. It will bleep and bleep and bleep. IT NEVER STOPS. You hafto click the cancel button.  

You can try to ignore it, cover your head with a pillow, turn the music on high, drown it out with dog frolicking, but nothing works. It will go for as long as its circuitry is still in existence. I’ve thought of heaving it over a cliff, but there are no cliffs here in San Antonio. I’ve entertained happy thoughts of taking a sledgehammer to it while laughing with manic glee. But alas, wifey is not on board with my sadistic fascinations.  The only way out is to go back and click the button. 

Some internal expectations are like that. They bleep inside our minds like our cursed microwave. But they have no button. They simply have to be given the boot over the cliffs in the mountains of our minds.

We had a lawn once in Texas.  It was a beautiful little lawn. Our lawn was a happy place where little Monty once frolicked.  Our backyard was graced with greens of many shades that brought satisfaction to our weary Texas eyeballs. But then–in one fateful stretch of two weeks while we were gone–our in-home sitter neglected to water it. The Texas summer sun took its toll and promptly fried our green idol.

We have a way-busy good schedule in place for the next couple months before our senior graduates and we host a little Covid-sized party in our backyard. Tradition bleeped, “GET A GREEN LAWN! THIS IS HOW THINGS ARE DONE!” We big-picture-debated it and put it before our priority jury and hucked this-is -the-way-its-always-been-done expectation over our mind-cliffs with a big fat “NO!”  Peacefulness and relaxing sweet times in the midst of new busy-ness were more important.

Three weeks after our monumental expectations-hucking, we got a Texas-drought kingdom mandate: “Don’t you dare try to water your lawn more than once every two weeks or the water police will take you away.”  San Antonio has endless weeks of high 90’s -100’s summer lawn-frying temps. No water=NO lawn. Lawn genocide is coming in SA.  

If we hadn’t wisely mind-hucked the stress-producing expensive idea of doing things as they were done before, we would’ve been involved in one painful exercise in futility. 

Less is more in what pleases the eyes sometimes leads to God’s peaceful waters and green pastures! 

“The LORD is my shepherd, I shall not want. He makes me lie down in green pastures; He leads me beside quiet waters. HE RESTORES MY SOUL.” – Psalms 23

Sometimes we have to ascertain the true will of God and do some expectations-hucking. Then more of God’s unexpected beauty can arise and He can restore our hearts to new gladness and bring new fruitfulness!