Our birds heads are falling off.

You know the movie. It’s a classic-Dumb and Dumber.  In the movie, they use it as the last statement in a succession of other terrible statements…something to the effect of, “We live in a dump, we’ve got no food, we’ve got no jobs, and our birds heads are falling off!”  As if the first three aren’t bad, the absolute worse is that their pets heads are just falling off around them. And so Brandon and I have somehow picked that line up, and use it, in jest and sometimes quite seriously, when it seems like everything around us is going wrong.

We used it on Monday.

What lead up to the line? It started about a week ago. I got sick. I still am sick. I have maleria. I had every single symptom for four days straight. Then when I could actually leave my bed, I agreed to get in the truck to get tested and the result was negative. Apparently, in the case of maleria, you can get a false negative, if you don’t have a fever when you take the test. I did not, because I was only willing to leave my bed once I didn’t have a fever! So, we still don’t know what is wrong with me, but we’ve decided to treat for malaria anyway.

Then, Monday afternoon the generator was acting up. Brandon is Mr. handy dandy, so he fiddled around with it and surprisingly it still wouldn’t work.  He decided to let it sit off, overnight, and try again in the morning.

At the same time, he woke up Monday morning with an extreme case of what we loving call, ‘haitian sensation’. Thankfully, we don’t get it too often anymore these days, but it does come a knockin’ just to give us a good cleanse now and again. He had it bad. So bad he wasted no time taking the good drugs-the stuff that kills everything right away. And so that afternoon, he had to let all his to-do lists stack up  and hang out inside all day, by the toilet.

All this on top of the fact that we have twelve guests arriving at our house in tomorrow. Our last group just left only six days ago, and we are still fixing, straightening,  and cleaning up after that. (Which they were so wonderful though, and don’t worry fun photos to come later when I feel up to it!) You can imagine what prep work would need to be done if twelve people were coming to your house for a week in the states-but add on top of that fact that we do live here-where things are impossible to find, and harder to line up and organize.

So we sat in bed on Monday night, sweating without any electricity (because now we are so spoiled with a fan!) cause our generator was down, Brandon stroking my feverish head and me rubbing his arm. And would couldn’t help but laugh. I mean really. And as we listed all the ridiculous things that had gone wrong this last week, and the ways in which we are being spiritually and physically attacked, we ended with, “and our birds heads are falling off”.

The good news? We immediately sent out an email asking for prayer in all the above mentioned things and a few other things, and the amazing part was watching the Lord answer so quickly. I mean, you know that Bible story about Peter and how he ends up in jail? And all his friends get together to pray that he gets out, and then he does get out and comes knocking on their door and when they open it they don’t even believe it’s him!! Check it out in Acts 12, it’s a good one! And I am so guilty of that too… I’ll pray over something, ask for prayer over an issue, and sometimes God is so fast to respond I don’t almost miss it or don’t believe it!

The next day, Brandon went to check on the generator. He changed the fuel filter-which he had recently done-looked at a few plugs, one was kinda loose. He started it up and puuuur baby puuurrr. It has been purring since then.

I have felt much better. I am not completely better, but just the next day I made it an entire day with no need for Tylenol, and didn’t get symptoms back until the afternoon, and they weren’t nearly as strong as before. Today I had no fever at all. Still am weak and get headaches, but no spike in fever!

Finally, the peace of the Lord has surrounded us. And we know that only comes from the Lord. Because while we look at all the things that are not ready for this team coming in, we know the Lord has them in His hands. His timing is perfect. We have to trust in what He wants to accomplish while they are here, and rest in that.

My point in telling all this? I guess to encourage you. To remind you of the Lord’s goodness. This week has felt like some intense spiritual warfare is going on, and the Lord has been gracious to provide us small miracles along the way to show us He’s right here with us. That He will pull us out of this small storm, these tiny set backs, if we can continue to set our eyes on Him. The weaker we are, the stronger He is and the more His glory can shine through us.