"Don't Kill the Mouse!"

I had a very strange dream a couple of days ago.

I dreamed that I was chasing a mouse. I wanted to kill it. I'm not sure how I was planning on killing it, but I knew that I needed to catch it first. It was very quick...too quick for me. I was annoyed that I couldn't get it. I was even more annoyed that whenever I would wake up and go back to sleep, there that stupid mouse would be in my dreams. It would not go away. Then, in my dream, I heard God say, "Don't kill the mouse."

In the morning, I woke up and told Chris. I thought that the dream came because my students have taken to hiding plastic mice in random/strategic places in order to scare me. Chris immediately said, "maybe God is showing you that your work is a mouse" I laughed at first, but it does make a lot of sense.

Everything I worry about...everything that stresses me out about my job is not stressing God out. He is not (to use one of our professors words) "pacing the floors of heaven, pulling out his beard and wondering, 'Oh no, what will I do now?'" I have made a mouse out of a mountain. I thought that it was not my fault because I am having to spend over sixty hours a week on my work, but that is not an excuse for my attitude towards work. Yes, it devours most of my time, but for whatever reason this is where God wants me to be. I need to stop fretting and trying to kill a mouse that God does not want killed. I have to start looking at my job the way God looks at my job. He is not punishing me with all this work. He is training me and building me....For what? I don't know, but I should feel loved and honoured that he should care so much. I should also know that if He put this mountain in my way, then He will help me climb it...One long day at a time.

2 Corinthians 4:16-18
"Therefore, we do not lose heart. Though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day. For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all. So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen. For what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal."

Thank you, everyone, for your prayers and caring words.


p.s. we're expecting another baby - This might also account for my strange dream 8)