A String of "Bad Luck"

A few weeks ago I wrote about the subtle changes that are occurring in my life now that I have walked away from some of the old mindsets that I once had.

I've noticed another change. You see this week we have had a string of “Bad Luck.” At least that is what some people in the world would call it.

I run a small service company and for the life of me I can’t seem to keep our older minivans that we use in the business out of the shop. It has almost gotten comical. One van finally bit the dust due to a thrown piston – whatever that means - and so Husband took a trek to a dealership about an hour and a half away to buy a “new” van. He drove it home and on Saturday took it on an errand and it died. Yes he bought the short term warranty, it just goes to show the season of “luck” that we are now in.

Then last night I got a call from Husband's cell phone. It (the cell phone) was supposed to be with one of our daughters while visiting her sister in Philadelphia. Only it wasn’t my daughter on the phone. I could hear voices of a party that I was sure my kid wasn’t at. Sure enough she had left the phone in the car and the passenger side window was smashed and the phone gone. Not just any cell phone – the kind that you can get internet - $400 dollar kind.

It is things like this that have been happening with increased frequency over the past few weeks.

Now you need to know that a year ago I would have had three responses.

First I would have looked for any sin and especially rebellion that was present in our lives. (Yep this investigation would have spilled over into poor Husbands life as well.) I owe him a lot ;(

Then if finding no sin or rebellion I would have looked at our “giving.” After all I pretty much lived that we could buy God off - see my post on tithing here. We gave – He would protect our stuff. And since He obviously wasn’t on the job last night in Phily, it would be all our fault. Now if the giving was up, and frankly in our case it always was (although you could still feel guilty about not doing that “extra part” in whatever offering had been taken that week) then you had to move on to your third choice.

The third choice was that it was an “Attack of THE ENEMY.” (come one now…say it in your best Sponge Bob Hall Monitor voice) This choice was a good one. The “Attack of THE ENEMY” proposition left you feeling two things.

One, you felt kind of honored that THE ENEMY was coming against you. You must be doing something really important for God for THE ENEMY to single you out to steal your phone or make your cars not run. That made you feel good and it also gave you something to brag about to all your Christian friends that Sunday at church. They would pray long prayers for you that THE ENEMY would leave you alone and you would be protected.

But at the same time another feeling would kick in. We all know that we are not an angelic power. Satan has much at his disposal that he could hurt us with if he chooses and God allows. So in many ways, I again was left with fear. Fear that he had me in his sights and would take out something more important than a cell phone or a truck. I was always afraid.

WHAT AN AWFUL WAY TO LIVE!!!!!!!

How schizophrenic can one person get and still call it following God.

The change in me this week is that I didn’t attribute the things happening in our lives to our giving, my sin, my husbands sin or THE ENEMY.

I found myself living like the pagans do in a small way this week. I am just going to chalk it up to the fact that I live in the world. This world is broken. Trucks don’t last forever and there are broken people around who want to steal my stuff. No one sinned, no one deserved it for their disobedience in finances and I’m not going to make Satan more powerful and intimate than he deserves.

I know that we Christians hate the word Luck. I was taught to avoid it at all costs. No pot lucks when I was growing up. No wishing “Good Luck” to someone. No lucky rabbit’s foot in our pockets. You can't have your kids looking for 4 leaf clovers in the grass - at least not at the church picnic!

But every now and again, when it seems that life is just a bit lopsided toward the unwanted, it would be nice to be able to chalk it up to a bit of “bad luck” and not make it all the other huge things that I used to make it.

Can I have permission to use that word….just for today at least?