That time I yelled at God. And he whispered back.

Earlier this evening, I had a strongly worded conversation with God. Allow me to set the stage...

I got back to Athens around 9:15, unloaded my car, and fished my keys out of my purse that Mary Poppins would have totally carried had she carried a red bag. Typically when I put the key into the deadbolt and turn it, the deadbolt clicks over and I proceed to open the door, and well if you know how to read, then you should know the next step so I won't insult your intelligence by explaining it. No such luck tonight. The lock will not budge. So instead of heading inside where dinner, exercise, and The Grammy's awaited, I loaded Cash back up into the car and headed to my least favorite place in this entire town: Wal-Mart. Darn you Target for closing at 9:00 on Sunday. Of course like always, adding new frustration to my already currently increased frustration level only made this new situation seem a little more overwhelming. On the short commute to retail hell, I might have asked God a few questions. I might have asked them with a raised tone of voice. I might have even been yelling a little bit. Or a lot.

Questions might have included: What do you want from me? Isn't enough, enough? Can't something just be simple for once? How much longer are you going to keep this up? What have I done to deserve this? What have I not done to deserve this?

Once inside Wal-Mart, the search for first, WD-40 and second, a Wal-Mart associate when I couldn't find WD-40 ensued. I was not very successful. So what did I do? Called my mom, of course. I might have gotten a little bit snippy and impatient with her when she couldn't tell me immediately where to find WD-40 at the Wal-Mart two hours away from her house. I finally found the WD-40, swung through sporting goods to buy Cash some tennis balls because he might have been on his best behavior ever in that short drive over in which I was interrogating God. I got back home, brought out the WD-40, sprayed the lock, inserted key, and turned. ...Obviously I didn't yell loudly or clearly enough.

Or maybe, just maybe, I was too busy yelling that I wasn't taking time to listen. Earlier today I went to church. It was a great message centered around this passage of scripture found in 2 Chronicles. Allow me to share: "if My people who are called by My name will humble themselves, and pray and seek My face, and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin and heal their land." 2 Chronicles 7:14.

Does a humble person yell? Is there a thesaurus in the universe that includes "demand" as a synonym for either pray or seek? Did I get locked out of my house at 9:00 on a Sunday night as punishment because I'm a wicked person? All of these questions share the same answer: No.

Will God forgive me of my ugly sinful yelling tirade? Yep, when I ask humbly.

Did God provide a solution to my problem? Obviously, because as much as I love my smartphone, I certainly don't have the patience to type this much on a touch screen keypad.

Was it the solution that I would have imagined or preferred even? Nope.

And why not? Because I couldn't do it myself. I had to depend on others to help me. I had to be an inconvenience. I had to ask for help. I had to wait longer than I preferred.

Do I enjoy asking for help? Not one little bit.

Does God know this? Yes.

Does he also know what I need even better than I do? Yes.

I think the picture of this broken key and the whole 2 hour ordeal of getting inside my house is a great illustration of life in general: We're all broken. [Even when there are no obvious cracks on the surface.] None of us are beyond repair. [Even when it looks like or feels like we are.] We can't fix ourselves by ourselves. [Even when we try with all of our might.]