I ducked my head as a nerf dart whizzed past my right ear. I had become a pawn in a nerf gun war between my grandson Lucas and my daughter Nikki and my grandson Asher and my son-in-law Adam. My living room became a battlefield and my husband, my mom, and I had become human shields. Darts were flying at us from various random directions. I had no recourse but to pick up my own nerf gun and defend myself, or at least try to. Turns at I’m a terrible shot, granted I’m not any better with a real gun, but seriously have you ever tried to hit a bullseye with a nerf gun? Those darts just tend to float and have a mind of their own. Neither of my grandsons want me on their team. Instead they hand me a nerf ball. “Here La, these are grenades. They are easier to throw. And you don’t have to hit a target with these. They just got up in smoke wherever they land.”
This morning as I sat in the stillness of the moment, I felt as if I was having a nerf war going on in my mind. My thoughts were flying around as fast as nerf bullets. I couldn’t zero in on a single thing. My worries were bouncing off the wall and coming back at me. I was searching for solutions and just when I thought something was beginning to take shape it would whiz right by me and vanish in a puff of smoke.
I grabbed for my journal. “Lord I feel so scattered this morning. Please help me gather my thoughts that are flying all around,” I wrote in my journal. I read one devotional. “As a shepherd takes care of his scattered flock when it is found, I will take care of my sheep. I will save them from all the places where they were scattered on a cloudy and dark day.” Ezekiel 34:12. I looked out my window. The sun was just breaking the horizon. I saw the rain clouds forming. It was going to be a gloomy wet day. At that moment my day was cloudy. It was a dark day at 7:00 AM.
I think the Lord was trying to tell me something. I read another devotional. It began, “As a shepherd takes care of his scattered flock when it is found, I will take care of my sheep. I will save them from all the places where they were scattered on a cloudy and dark day.” Ezekiel 34:12.
Okay. I grabbed a sticky note and wrote, “As a shepherd takes care of his scattered flock when it is found, I will take care of my sheep. I will save them from all the places where they were scattered on a cloudy and dark day.” Ezekiel 34:12. I have kept that sticky note with me all day long. It is now afternoon. It is still raining. In fact some streets are flooding. And I still have no solutions to the dilemmas I am facing. But I feel that the Lord doesn’t want me to solve these issues on my own because I suffer from operator error. My nerf gun bullets just won’t hit the bullseye and my nerf ball grenade falls way short of my target.
Instead my problem will be solved on my knees in prayer. God will take care of this. I am a scattered soul, but the Lord has promised to save me. My thoughts may have gone in a thousand different directions this morning, but God has put them together again. Just like Humpty Dumpty when he fell off the wall, only God can put us back together when we are scattered.
By the way, our nerf gun war ended. Asher and Lucas gathered the scattered nerf bullets, then they took them to the playroom and there they lay. Throughout our days Kevin and I still come upon a lone nerf bullet or two. Just like the Lord does us, Kevin and I pick them up and add them to the pile.