Key: Important, Fundamental {Intuition Diaries}

He will be the sure foundation for your times,

a rich store of salvation and wisdom and knowledge;

the fear of the LORD is the key to this treasure. 

Isaiah 33:6 NIV

Why, the question often asked when there is no evident reason for a particular event. Why did this happen to me? Why did it happen now? Questioning of this nature can become an exercise in frustration. Possibly a better, more important question would be how I can respond to such and such situation.

When I go on a vacation, my expectations are at full throttle. My objective is to get to the destination, so we can relax. Leave behind the cares of daily, routine life. Take a break from asking why all the time. Just rest and take in the new landscape. 

My husband and I left early Monday morning for our long awaited trip to the Erie Canal. We made it to Cleveland with our boat and belongings towing smoothly behind our truck.

Tuesday morning, we got a little lost getting out of Cleveland, but once we got back on track, we were on schedule to be at the marina in Buffalo that evening. We had squeezed through the construction zones, talking about the day ahead and just watching the road pass behind us, when we heard a ka-thump. Les slowed us down and pulled off onto the wide shoulder. I said, what happened. He said, I think we lost a tire.

He carefully climbed out of the driver’s seat to inspect the damage. The report: one of the dual axles was bent and a tire was stripped of its tread. We called a towing agency. But our boat was too tall to put on a truck. They gave us a number for a nearby repair place, twenty miles away. Our options were not looking good. Les removed the tire and we hoped there might be a repair place at a marina in the next town a few miles ahead.

Amazingly, we remained fairly calm through the whole ordeal. (As you can imagine, in these types of situations tempers tend to flare.) We needed some other tools that were locked in the boat. So I went to get the boat keys out of the truck. Um…Les, did you put the keys somewhere else.  Um…no.  I…think we left them at home. Why would we do such a stupid thing? When packing for a big trip we live by checklists, but apparently neither of us thought to put the keys on the list.

We could have spent all day asking why did this happen, but instead for some reason I started thanking God for the things that were good: for the wide shoulder, because we had just left a constricted construction zone, for our son being available to overnight the keys to us and for the nearby marina having a repair shop so we didn't have to drive twenty miles on a broken trailer. Our plans are delayed, but as the repair guy said, “It could have been worse.”

When I was telling my mom about our adventure, she said God was with you. And then I realized that this particular day was not like any other day in life. Things happen. We don’t really know why, but God is with us. He provides what we need in each situation.

This post is the first in a series, I will be calling the Intuition Diaries, where I will confess our blunders and share our adventures on the Erie Canal. (At the end of the day, I jokingly told my husband the reason for our hardship was my fault, because I wanted something interesting to post on the blog . . . *smile*)

picture of the Intuition from a previous adventure

5 Fives Friday

 

The years of our life are seventy,

or even by reason of strength eighty;
yet their span is but toil and trouble;
they are soon gone, and we fly away.

Who considers the power of your anger,
and your wrath according to the fear of you?

 

So teach us to number our days
that we may get a heart of wisdom.

Return, O Lord! How long?
Have pity on your servants!
Satisfy us in the morning with your steadfast love,
that we may rejoice and be glad all our days.

(Psalm 90:10-14 ESV)

Five is not a magical number. It is mentioned in Scripture mostly to mark the amount or age of someone...like sixty-five. For some reason we are fascinated by numbers. People will say certain numbers have biblical significance, and they are correct because certain numbers are repetitive in the history of Israel and even into the New Testament. Twelve tribes, twelve disciples, you get the idea.

But five is not like that. It's an odd number. However, I like the sound of "5 Fives Friday" and I do have a practical point to my rambling if you can bear with me.

Last week, I was running at a local park, and I was getting tired of running, so I started a cadence count in my head: "1-2-3-4, 1-2-3-4...etc." That motivational counting soon became boring, so I added a 5. "1-2-3-4-

5... POW!

I got a little surge of power, so I kept counting to five and I kept running and I finished my workout. Cool!

While counting my thoughts lighted onto another idea for getting my to-do list done. Why not list 5 Fives each day and see how much I accomplish on the list? Then I trimmed my goal back to why not just do it once a week and work my way up to 5 days a week. So I have been listing my 5 Fives at least once a week now for the past week. And it works. One time I even listed a sixth 5.

So here's the challenge: Make a List a of 5 Fives and Do Them! Feel free to comment on this post to let us know how it goes.

Here's my list for today:

1. Read 5 pages in the Bible.
2. Drink 5 glasses of water.
3. Take 5 minutes to unload the dishwasher.
4. List 5 gratitudes.
5. Count to 5 before I answer a question. (Remember counting engages the rational side of our brains!)

High five! See you next week.