Last night I had the pleasure of being completely man-handled in a tennis match.  It was absolutely miserable.  It was one of those matches where every ball was coming fast and hard and right at your face.  At one point, my partner commented that they were hitting everything right at me.  She was right.  There are several reasons why that happens in tennis.  Maybe they perceived me to be the weaker player.  Maybe I was standing in a vulnerable position.  Maybe after hitting it at me a couple of times they could tell I was flustered.

If you play tennis, you can probably relate to how miserable this was.  After the match, as my partner and I were rehashing our misery, we said we couldn’t even come up with one positive thing that we gleaned from that beating.  Are you getting the picture here?  We got whooped!

This morning I woke up early.  My alarm didn’t go off.  It wasn’t one of my early days to run.  It may be that I have so much swirling in my head right now that I couldn’t sleep.  But, I think it’s more likely that God woke me up.  This has happened to me on a number of occasions.  It’s pitch black outside, super early, and my eyes are wide open.  In my Spirit I know God is calling me to spend time with Him.

Instead of fight it like I often do, I went ahead and got up and had a shower and got dressed.  As I was pondering everything going on in our lives right now, I realized I feel a lot like I did in that tennis match last night.  Balls are coming at me fast and hard.  It feels like I am a target.  And it feels like this match will never be over.  One of these “balls” on its own would be ok.  But when you have “ball” after “ball” after “ball” coming right at you, it’s hard to keep your chin up.

My Mom said something to me a couple of weeks ago that I haven’t been able to get out of my mind.  I’m not sure if it’s theologically sound, but in my own experiences it seems to be true.  She said, “God rarely shows up early, but He always comes through”.  And just as I was reassuring myself of that, as I was slipping on my shorts, I came across something in the pocket of my shorts that was like a little wink from God.  It’s like He said, “I’ve got this.  Stop worrying.”