Loud and Clear

There was an incident last night.  The occupant of room 318 decided it would be a good idea to cook at 11:30 at night, starting a grease fire.  The fire alarm went off at 11:54 and we finally crawled back into bed at 1:05.  However, in the process of resetting the fire alarm, it went off again at 2:38 just long enough to wake us up again and start to get ready to leave before it was turned off.  The water damage was so bad that they have blocked off the dinning room area on the first floor with plastic and have fans running to dry the area.  Luckily, our room doesn't smell too bad, but the hallways STINK.  So I drove to work this morning thinking about how tired and hungry I was (because without a dinning room area, there is no breakfast).  I had to remind myself that this is probably just the beginning of me being tired, with the second job kicking into high gear next week.  Why is any of this relevant?

I get to work and open up my email to find my daily devotion waiting for me.  God heard all of my thoughts on my way to work and had a response waiting for me.  Here are a few excerpts you might find interesting:

"Finding contentment doesn't mean we have to like our current situation, but it may require an appreciation for it."

"That's because peace isn't the absence of pressure.  It's the presence of God and our attitude toward His provision in the midst of our stress."

"You may be in a hard place right now and you're longing for freedom.  Maybe you're in a job that feels like a dead end; perhaps you have two of them!  It may be that you live in a space too small for your family and you hate it.  You're not where you planned or hoped to be and you certainly don't like it."

Yeah, you see the "loud and clear" message too.  Let me clarify, I don't think either of my jobs are dead ends.  I really like my full time job and I sought out the part time job to reach a goal.  I know I'm going to have to make sacrifices, and I'm okay with that.  I was more upset last night and this morning with the fact that someone else ruined my precious night of sleep and my reliance on breakfast waiting for me to grab on my way to work in the morning.  Nothing in our life right now is what we had planned or hoped for.  We hadn't hoped to be living in a hotel for 6+ months.  We didn't hope to work 2 jobs each to make our goal of becoming a family a realization and we didn't hope that we would not be able to have biological children.  Are we growing and learning from all of this?  YES!  Are we learning that "finding contentment doesn't mean we have to like our current situation, but it may require an appreciation for it?"  I think so.