God can and will use ANYTHING to speak to our hearts.  Join me this week as I share one of His creepy crawley visual aids!

Tale of Two Serpents

You can only procrastinate for so long … the garage HAD to be cleaned.  Our two-week old puppies would soon need to be relocated, so the big push was on.  It took several days to get everything off the shelves and systematically piled in the driveway.  Barren shelves made it easy to see that a coat of paint was definitely in order. If you’ve ever painted anything, you understand that one stroke of the paintbrush leads to everything in sight getting painted!

Fifteen extra-large garbage bags and one over-sized trip to the Salvation Army later and my garage was spotless!  I was so elated that I even posted pictures on Facebook!  Driving into the garage was pure satisfaction, and I think my chest even puffed out a little as I strolled from my car to the back door.  Ahhhh …. I had done well!

Oh, I suppose I should mention that my son Jordan was the one who gave me the extra push at the very end when I was ready to call it quits.  The crowning blow was our neighbor showing up with a slithery five-foot black snake dangling on the end of his shovel.  Jordan and Ronnie wrestled that thing to the back of our acre lot all the while I was screaming, “Don’t let that thing get in my Day Lilies!”  What?  It always intrigues me to hear what absurd thing comes out of my mouth in a crisis.

Clean Garage. Check. Survived snake sighting.  Check.  My illogical logic reasoned that since this was the first snake larger than 12” I had seen in fourteen years, there surely wouldn’t be another one any time soon.

Tuesday was a great day.  After all, I had a clean, freshly painted and well-organized garage, I had survived a snake sighting, and did I mention that I had a clean, freshly painted and well-organized garage?  Well, Tuesday was a great day until I opened the back door to step out into my clean, freshly painted and well-organized garage to get the dog food, and I noticed about two feet of a black tail slithering under the steps.

I’m not quite sure how I got there, but I found myself in the driveway guarding the steps from a distance until my husband got home from work.

To make a long story short, Darin wrangled all six feet of that serpent out from under the steps and finally managed to kill the beast.  It was quite an ordeal … all the while, the Lord was speaking to my heart about some very important matters.  I’ll share those with you as we move through the week … one Dose of Encouragement at a time!

From my heart to yours,

Tami