Dealing with God's challenges

I had the joy of spending a weekend with the beautiful woman I've been dating since last May - my age, a lovely mother of six, although she started building her family right away whereas I waited until 32 to have my first child. The result is that although we coincidentally both had four boys and then twin girls, my oldest is twenty and my twins are eleven, while her oldest is thirty and married with a five-year old of his own, and her twin girls are juniors in high school, the same age my second son would've been had he lived. (And my twins and her twins utterly adore each other! The four of them went with my lady to the premiere of Beauty And The Beast a week ago, and ended up in a slumber party making friendship bracelets until four in the morning!)

Back to the story...

I had the joy of spending the weekend with my beautiful lady in nearby Jackpot, Nevada, one of the "resort" towns built on the edge of Nevada to lure folks from the neighboring states in to gamble. We didn't spend a dime gambling - smoke filled rooms do nothing good for either of us - but the food and ambiance were worth the journey.

While we might adhere to the Lord's admonition about pre-marital sex, it doesn't mean we don't share rooming arrangements and body warmth and affection. Normally at home, because of my TAM, I sleep in my recliner - for reasons I don't completely understand, lying flat is much more painful than being in a "lazyboy" position, with a slight fetal curve and supporting pillows under my legs and in the small of my back. But until now I'd been able to sleep in a bed when the situation called for it.

Until now. 

I discovered Saturday that the flat bed is no longer a possibility for me if I intend to sleep. I could "jury-rig" a recliner-like set up on the bed by stealing all but one of the pillows (plus the seat cushions from the funky chair-thing in the room) and setting it up to mimic my chair. It wasn't painful, but it wasn't stable either, so sleeping was near-impossible. I did sleep for an hour or two out of exhaustion, but it was lying flat and sleeping through the pain, not without it.

My days of using a bed are apparently over. 

And that's going to make travelling difficult. It was something she and I spent a great deal of time discussing, as she would be the one I'd generally be travelling with these days. Could my recliner make road trips? How many hotels had recliners to use? Is there something available that's more easily transportable that we could look into buying? She's already gone to the trouble (when she recently bought a new couch for her living room) to find one with a recliner setting in case I stay over at her place. But travel was already difficult on me physically; without a way to get some recovery rest on the far end of a trip, travel was going to be just about impossible.

The question becomes this: Lord, how do I use this challenge to glorify Your Name?

All of our challenges are exactly that: challenges. Tests. Obstacles to give us the chance to refine our character to make us more Christlike in our walk with Him. If life were going to be easy, He would have brought us Home already. The only purposes of remaining on earth as a Christian are to refine our character to bring us closer to the person God wants us to become when we reach His realm, AND to spread the Gospel of Good News to those who aren't yet saved, or whose salvation is marginal or weakened by sin and backsliding.

Obstacles are gifts from God.

Thank you, Lord, for this obstacle to my comfort.

For without it, I wouldn't be learning what You need me to learn. I don't yet know what that is, but I have to find out. That's my job as a Christian.