This Ain't Nothin'

This morning was consumed by writing two email responses that I started yesterday. Both emails I was responding to were rather hostile and it took a lot of time and emotional energy for me to respond kindly to them. The first email was to my estranged husband's lawyer. When I felt overloaded from working on this email for a very long time, I stopped writing to take a break. I intended to come back to the email when my head hurt a little less, so I went to save it for later. But when I clicked to "save," I accidentally clicked "send." (Oops.) Alarmed by clicking the wrong button, I moved on to finishing my second email. This one to my Prodigal spouse.

After I sent the email to my Prodigal, I collected an email reply from his lawyer.
"That was too quick," I thought.
'Let me know when the rescheduled court date is,' was the gist of what she said.

At this point, I was at about the the end of my emotional rope. And I moved my cursor to the top of the page to close my brower. But before I could click the close button, I heard a "Ching" notifying me of a new email. So I went to check it out. The new email was from a very dear friend who rarely emails me and I opened the email quickly.

I think I may have momentarily stopped breathing when I saw what the email was. My friend had "cold-called" my husband via email and forwarded the exchange to me. As I read, a knot started to grow in my throat. I love my friend for sticking up for me. I am humbled that he cares enough about my family to risk confronting a complete stranger. I doubt that I could ever, ever have done anything even close to similar. (And let me tell you that I truly do admire anybody who can do something like that.) But I do not know that my husband is yet ready to hear the truth in the message my friend was trying to convey. And the last thing I want to do is drive my Prodigal farther away from home by "siccing" my "crazy religious friends" on him.

It was at exactly this point that I decided I really needed to take a break to decompress with some lunch/comfort food. I put down my computer, put on my shoes, grabbed my purse, and walked out the door. When I got in my car, I put my keys in the ignition and paused. I felt overloaded. Responding to two difficult emails, receiving one aggressive email returned to me and receiving one well-intentioned but possibly damaging email forward had me feeling mildly paralyzed.

Catching hold of myself, I turned the key in the ignition switch and bowed my head to pray over the situation. My heart cried up to heaven as my words came to mind, "Please Lord..." I began. And before I could get any farther, the radio (which I guess I had left on the last time I turned off the car) started to play.

"This ain't nothin'," I heard Craig Morgan sing. Before I had even thought the words to my prayer, it had been answered.

Thank you, Mr. Morgan, for reminding me that, "Nothing is impossible with God." (Luke 1:37)