The devil and dryer sheets

Do you ever wake up like her and just KNOW you are gonna have a bad day? Since you can already tell you are going to have an extremely bad hair day, you just might as well be mad at the world too! 

Now, I wouldn't normally exploit the grumpiness of my children for the sake of entertainment- (okay, I probably would) but this picture fits in so perfectly with my thoughts for this blog!! Besides, considering how many times Elisabeth gets me up through the night, chews up my furniture,eats my necklaces- she owes me this.  It won't be long before I probably start meeting her at the crib looking the same exact way!! (Oh how I love my little red headed fireball.)

I teach the junior high girls Sunday school class at our church.  I love those girls.  They are so honest. We were discussing 1 John 1:5-10 yesterday morning. Our talk centered around how if we are going to live in the light as Jesus does we can't have sin in our life.  I asked them if they thought they could go 24 hours without sinning.  This was their responses - "You would have to be UNCONSCIOUS!!!"  "Yea, you would definitely have to sleep all day to not sin"  "You would probably just have to read your Bible ALL DAY LONG and not think about any person."   How often do we wake up planning out our sin? Hopefully not very often, but because we have a sinful nature we easily find ourselves neck deep in  harsh words, bad attitudes, and a grumpy demeanor- usually all before 8:00a.m! Especially when you are trying to get 4 kids out the door, and they are already fighting over who gets to sit in the front seat of the van.  Seriously!?! Teenagers fighting over the front seat - I thought they would have outgrown this like 5 years ago -but no.  If I could only invent a family vehicle with 5 front seats, I would be a millionaire and probably cause alot of  families to be sin-free at least in the morning.

I think Elisabeth was already planning out her sin before I could get her out of the crib. 

 This dryer sheet story actually happened about a half hour after I took this picture...My sweet 10 month old is starting to let her little sinful nature show.  I KNOW that she knows she is not allowed to eat dryer sheets.  She found one on the bedroom floor by where I fold laundry and grabbed it, crawled off to a corner with her back turned to me and started ripping it apart with her teeth.  I tell her no, and when I tried to grab it out of her little hands she laid her body down on top of it!!! Can you just imagine the battles that lie ahead of me with this child.  Lord have mercy.  She was not "livin' in the light" that morning!  Jesus knows that it is impossible to keep our life completely free from sin. He gave us his forgiveness so we can maintain that fellowship with him he so desperately desires.  1 John 1:9 says, "If we confess our sin, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sin and cleanse us from all unrighteousness." 

Elisabeth searches the house for those dag gum dryer sheets. She will lay belly flat on the floor and stick her hand as far back as she can to get what she wants.  Don't search out sin today.  Keep yourself from tempting situations.  I think we are going to have to resort back to laundry without dryer sheets.Who cares if my laundry has static - it will be funny if Chris shows up to work with a black dress sock stuck to the back of his t-shirt.  I just need to remove that temptation completely away from Elisabeth before she really does manage to swallow to much and hurt her little rock filled tummy.(One of the other thing she likes to eat.) I think the devil puts those dryer sheets on the floor - not to cause Elisabeth to sin but to STRESS ME OUT and cause ME to sin! :) Is there a temptation that you need to remove from your life?  Living in the light of Jesus is so much better than living in the darkness of this world. "Happy is the man who doesn't give in and do wrong when he is tempted, for afterwards he will get as his reward the crown of life that God has promised those who love him." James 1:12

Now, there is no way I can  remove this temptation completely from her in the house. We'd all be in trouble!

Have a great day everyone! Don't be a crankypants no matter how bad your hair looks today!  "May you go out with JOY and be led forth with PEACE" as your new week begins!  ~Amy ~(Isaiah 55:12)