I've got a top-rate annoyance that just won't buzz off. This one is a real doozy. Nails on the chalk board type. Scale of 1 to 10...an 11. Every time I come within ear-shot, it takes just about everything within me to not knock it about in hopes of the racket ceasing. A good shake wouldn't hurt, right? If anything, it would relieve the tension it's causing...or I think it's causing. {But, you'll be glad to know that those years of intense "gentle and quiet spirit" training is paying off and I refrain because I know full well that it won't do any good.} But I digress.

It just won't stop. It's constant. A real irritant.

{You'll laugh when you find out what it is.}

My toilet won't stop drip-dripping. There's obviously some kind of leak going on, and instead of taking the time to figure out the problem and then a solution, I find myself getting increasingly annoyed by it. I've focused on it to such a degree that the noise just rings in my ears and I can hardly brush my teeth from the distraction. Sad, I know.

While sitting in my quiet, peaceful office earlier today all the now-apparent spiritual applications from such pesky thorn flooded my mind. I've had plenty of what the world would call "true crisis" come my way over the past month. Real downers. For example, my mother spending close to two weeks in the hospital with a nasty infection. These "big" issues are handled easily, with grace. Trusting the Lord that He has everything in control. And then there's this leaky toilet. I can hardly keep my temper under wraps...and all due to a silly little annoyance.

In some ways, it's in those silly "little" problems that we find out what we're really made of...our finiteness becomes glaringly real. Oswald Chambers wraps it up perfectly, "It is one thing to go through a crisis grandly, but another thing to go through every day glorifying God when there is no witness, no limelight, no one paying the remotest attention." (and there's certainly no one with me in the bathroom lol) It's the mean, trivial things in this world that mark our character, and to a degree, reveal our walk with Christ.

A healthy evaluation of one's self is often beneficial. Thanks, leaky toilet.  :)

Ireland.

How I will miss thee.

You have charmed me through and through.

Your green is of such a shade that words do not do it justice.

Your people have a knack for making perfect strangers fast friends.

Your love for a good laugh brightens even the dreariest of days.

Your roads are crazy. {Corkscrew Hill road, anyone?!}

Your eggs are awful.

......But your shepherds pie, soups and tea are delightful.



Someday I will return.

{pictures coming soon}