Almost 22 Hours

Yesterday I awoke at 4:30 and headed to my weekly discipleship group meeting at 5:15 in the morning (I meet with Pastor Chuck's discipleship group). It was a splendid morning of quizzing each other on our memory verse (Psalm 19:7-11 was this week's passage), discussing 1 Timothy 1 (the verses that stood out to me were 1 Timothy 1:15-16), and lifting each other up in prayer. This weekly discipleship meeting is very valuable in helping me walk with Christ daily. After a typical work day (which included answering a question about Revelation 5:13 for a former student who asked me on my Facebook page about it - during my break) our school had the elementary basketball tryouts. For the past few years I have coached middle school softball or baseball in the winter months and then coached elementary basketball during the spring months. Upon finishing the tryout Nicole and I borrowed my mother's 4-Runner with her trailer in tow and headed for Oceanside. We went to Oceanside (we started our journey around 5 p.m.) because Nicole's Aunt Mary Kay was so kind as to offer us her dining room table and hutch. We got to her house around 7 p.m. and proceeded to eat a delicious meal and catch up with her and her husband Freemont. After the meal, my father-in-law Andy and I started to move the hutch (which had 2 pieces to it: a base and a cupboard top) into the U-Haul trailer attached to his Jeep Grand Cherokee. We quickly discovered that these two halves of the hutch were extremely heavy! Providence was with us though as Mary Kay lent us her furniture dolly to help us move them outside and get them secured inside the U-Haul trailer (all told this took about an hour). We then brought out the chairs for the dining room table one by one. These are easily the heaviest dining room chairs I have ever carried! (Are you sensing a theme yet?) After getting those situated and packed away we then moved the dining room table (also very heavy) onto the trailer attached to my mothers 4-Runner. After trying to tie it down one way and seeing that it was still too loose, so we flipped the table over. In the process of flipping it over my back flared up tremendously in pain. I thought I was done for! Andy finished securing everything up and we started the journey back to Riverside at 11 p.m. All told it took us about 2.5-3 hours to load everything up and secure it properly. When we got back to our new home both Andy and I realized that we forgot to bring the furniture dolly with us. (Oops!) Before we began the unloading I prayed a simple prayer to my Heavenly Father - "Lord, please strengthen my back and prevent it from being injured further so that we can finish this task". At 1:30 a.m. we had finished our task! Most people would dismiss my prayer being answered as happenstance, but not me! My back legitimately hurt and I am exceedingly grateful that God took care of  me and heard my cry for help. After putting a few more things away and taking care of a few odds and ends I got to be just before 2 a.m. The day started at 4:30 a.m and ended at 2 a.m. Thirty minutes away from a 22 hour day. That's a long day! Praise the Lord for His grace and aid in helping me get through the day! Lamentations 3:22-23
-Fei