ABRACADABRA

The mulch pile had turned as black as the delta. We were trying to beat the heat, so we were up early, moving mulch to flowerbeds. My husband’s laughter sounded childlike as he turned the tractor over to me.

I wish I could say I was happy about that. For me, it was just doing what had to be done to get the yard back in shape.

What was on my mind? The heat, a computer problem, needing to write my Monday blog, wanting to add two more poems to a manuscript, a granddaughter. My feelings? Concern and worry.

That’s how it goes when I let my mind wander wildly.

How could the morning have gone better? I could have used the three words in a short prayer that I learned last weekend: Help! Thanks! Wow! My friend found the words in a book and passed them to me. When I pray them, Abracadabra! and then, I’m in the present (not the future, not the past.) I offered them to a children’s class Wednesday night, now I pass them to you.

I just need to keep reaching to God: Help! Thanks! Wow!

Before dawn this morning, heavy rain. No working with mulch today. I now have time and space to write a blog, create and edit poems, make a plan for the granddaughter, and the computer is working! All of yesterday’s worry, for nothing. It did me no good. Not one iota of light in that darkness.

I’ve concluded that there are only a few lessons in this life, but I am faced with the same lesson over and over in different scenarios until I learn it. Interesting. God must want me to learn it. He loves me that much. Once the lesson is learned, life gets simpler.

It may depend on what I do in that one momentary pause when I choose to trust God with the things in my head or I choose to worry, thinking it is helpful to somebody. Hey, there’s no abracadabra in worry.

This is not a new lesson for me. It has been life-long, and the minute I think I’ve conquered it, it comes haunting me again. I find myself back in a deep well. There have been times when I lifted myself out of the well one inch at a time with fingertips. It can take hours or days to get out.

Then there are these three little words: Help! Thanks! Wow! They are a ladder for climbing out of a deep well. Abracadabra! Does that sound like weakness? Paul says we humans are weak, but he writes, “I can do all things through Christ which strengtheneth me.” (Philippians 4:13, KJV) That’s Christ. That’s strength. That’s abracadabra.

Once I’m out of the well with a happy heart, I can sit up, find my boots, go outside and work. To that, I whisper “Thanks” to a big God.

Blessings,

Pat Durmon

P. S. – I thank you for your comments. I read them every week.

Half of a mulch pile near Norfork, Arkansas. Photo by Pat Durmon, July 14, 2017.