May. Day.

In fine form and fashion, I've ended May 2015 in only the most appropriate way possible.  As Ivy and I headed out to try a new cafe, I decided to stop and get some gas.  Having done this in town in the past, I figured it wouldn't be a big deal.  After translating the signs and double checking just to make sure, I started filling up the tank on the car I'm currently driving, which, I might add, is borrowed from another Marine.  Thinking I'd done just fine, I started driving toward what we hoped would be some delicious local food, we got about a mile down the road, the van started driving kind of funny, and we promptly died.  On the side of a hill.  In the middle of a neighborhood.

Long story short, we met some friendly English-speaking Chinese who helped us (and by us I mean Ivy) push the Red Dragon up the hill and off the road, we waited a couple hours for a tow truck, and we made our way back to base crammed in the cab of a tow truck with an über friendly Okinawan.  

If I reflect honestly on this month, I have to say it's been a challenging one.  Move to Japan, broken leg, surgery, convalescent leave, and putting the wrong type of gas in a borrowed car.  Never did I ever think I'd be the one who got off to a rough start.  That kind of stuff doesn't happen to me, remember?  I leave things better than when I started.  How can I possibly have already caused destruction?

Your chariot, m'lady.

So friends, it's easy to see and note the good that's come from this first month on the island, but it's a heck of a lot harder for me to reconcile why this month happened the way it did.  Reminder: it's not my job to ask, "Why," but to question, "How will I handle this? What will I do with this situation? Who can I affect positively in these circumstances?"  As much as we like to say, "Oh, just give it to God.  He'll always take care of you," James 2:26 tells us, "For as the body apart from the spirit is dead, so also faith apart from works is dead." This pertains not only to big sacrificial acts of faith, but how we choose to react to the small situations in our lives.  How we treat others in the midst of frustration, how we take or deny responsibility, how we decide to choose joy over negativity, will be evidence of our faith.     

This month it became oh, so clear to me that I am human. I am not the one who causes the earth to tremble.  I am not the one who created the universe and I am certainly not at the center of that universe. I will fail, but every time I will rise to a loving God who will push me through the mess and use my shortcomings for good. 

"When anyone thinks he is something, when he is nothing, he deceives himself." -Galatians 6:3 ESV

"Come now, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we will go into such and such a town and spend a year there and trade and make a profit”—yet you do not know what tomorrow will bring. What is your life? For you are a mist that appears for a little time and then vanishes. Instead you ought to say, “If the Lord wills, we will live and do this or that.” -James 4:13-15 ESV

James 4 also tells us He gives more grace.  More grace than what?  More grace than our biggest mistakes.  More grace than our biggest, ugliest, most disgusting sins. Friends, he gives more grace and it is new every single day.  Whether this week, month, year, decade has been the best or worst of your life, you have a loving Father who hears you, sees your frustration, and walks beside you.