My husband has often told me that I make mountains out of molehills. In fact, he seems to think that all the women in my family do that. Not that he’s wrong, after all, my sisters and I can labor over a decision at great length. We’ve often nearly missed lunch by trying to decide where we want to eat lunch. My husband on the other hand is far from indecisive and I admire that about him. What I don’t admire is his ability to irritate me. For instance, those times when he uses cruise control on a rainy day causing me to want to go Ally McBeal on him, especially since he’s often told me to never use cruise control while it’s raining. For those not familiar with Ally McBeal, she was a character from a television comedy drama whose imagination allowed her to enact things in her mind that she actually wanted to do in reality.
I think we’ve all been there, mentally slapping someone for being rude while smiling through gritted teeth. Not that I’ve mentally thought of slapping my husband for using cruise control in the rain. No, nothing like that. I find it much more productive to vocally remind him that it was him who told me to never use cruise control while driving in the rain. His underactive response to that usually irritates me further and so I can’t say that my husband isn’t right with his analysis of my often overaction to trivial things. In fact, he’s usually correct when it comes to my ability to stress over the most ridiculous things. An example of that happened several months ago when I had decided to clean the windows in our house.
Seemed like a simple enough task, one that couldn’t possibly turn a molehill into a mountain, right? Wrong!
After cleaning my first window to clear perfection, I realized that the easy to clean pop in window wasn’t as easy sliding back to its original position as it should have been. After several attempts and a few sighs of frustration, I realized that the window was not going to budge. Although the weather wasn’t cold outside, the fact that every “stink bug” within range began nose diving through the open window started to raise my frustration level.
I found myself swatting them out as fast as they were invading my home. All the while still trying to push the top window back into position with absolutely no success. My irritation at the stinkbugs and my inability to get the window back to its original position left me with only one thing left to do, scream for my husband to help me. Just merely seconds earlier, he’d told me that he was taking his tractor over the hill to do some work.
In all our years of marriage, I had never known my husband to move as fast as he apparently did on that day because he was long gone and far from my cries for help, or was he? Here is where a tiny mound of dirt in my mind started becoming a mountain. I was certain that my husband wasn’t actually out of hearing range, but instead that he was ignoring me. Of course, I was equally as certain that the man who’d built our house had carelessly installed our windows and just as certain that had he been within hearing range, I would have given him a piece of my mind. With no other choice, but to continue trying to close the gaping hole in my living room, I gathered herculean strength as I again pushed that window upwards. It still didn’t budge.
There are many times in life where we must accept defeat and unfortunately for me, this was one such time. The harder I tried to close the window, the more incompetent I felt. I could feel that mountain growing as my frustration piled on imaginary dirt and rocks to the peak of that molehill.
My once happy mood was quickly being replaced with irritation at my husband, the window designer, the store who’d sold them and especially the man who’d installed them.
That mountain before me was getting bigger as I realized that I’d been defeated by a stupid window. I felt that I had no other choice left, but to call my husband’s cell phone and ask him to come to my aid.
“Yes,” he answered my call. Was it me or did he actually have the audacity to seem annoyed by my interrupting his tractor time?
“I can’t get the stupid living room window shut,” I sweetly spoke to my seemingly annoyed husband. Okay, I actually sternly told my imagined annoyed husband that the stupid window was stuck.
“I will be right up,” he calmly assured me, and in the distance, I could hear his tractor making its way back to our house. In he came without an ounce of frustration on his face, as he walked to the open window. What should have been done easily by his brawn strength, turned into a ten-minute struggle as my husband’s luck at closing the window was equal to my own luck in closing it. I watched as he patiently went outside and then came back inside several times trying to get the window back on the track that it somehow had managed to slide out of.
Standing there in my flustered state, I watched my husband work, never once losing his patience.
It was then that I looked at him and asked, “How do you do that?”
“Do what?” His reply came in the form of a question.
“How do you not lose your temper over things that irritate me?” “After all,” I continued, “We paid good money for those “stupid” windows and they should open and close easily.” I tried excusing my ill-mannered attitude as I spied the many dirty fingerprints that my husband was leaving on my once clean window.
“I don’t get upset over things that I can’t control,” he spoke so calmly that I found myself embarrassed by losing my cool.
As a Christian, it is one of my biggest flaws, getting upset over things that should have absolutely no power over me, but as I’ve mentioned in earlier posts, we Christians are imperfect and when it comes to that department, I am a dud of imperfection. Thank God that He has blessed me with a husband whose sense of humor is able to chip away at those mountains I have often created in my mind.
One such time was after I’d returned home from a frustrating day of being surrounded by rude people. I’d anticipated an enjoyable day by myself, shopping. Instead, I felt like a magnet for every rude person in existence. Maybe it had to do with the fact that I’d worn my “Not today, Satan, not today” t-shirt that every mean person in the world seemed to be within two feet of me at any given moment. Let’s face it though, I was practically egging old lucifer on by wearing that shirt. Regardless, I came home worn out and reliving each moment of my day to my husband. Dramatically pointing to my shirt saying, I even wore my “not today Satan, not today” t-shirt.
Without hesitation my husband replied, “You didn’t wear it inside out, did you?”
Instantly I found myself laughing as I quickly realized how foolish I’d been in letting others affect my mood so easily.
The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy; I have come that they may have life and have it to the full. John 10:10
Needless to say, I’d allowed Satan to steal, kill and destroy my good mood, and so on that present day, as I watched my husband finally get the window back into place, I felt God whisper to my heart, “It’s only a window Cheryl.”
As Christians, we need to realize that there will always be rude people, there will always be windows that won’t close and that Satan will always be sneaking around to steal, kill and destroy our happiness.
It’s up to us to draw nearer to God, building up our defenses and to stop handing Satan a shovel, allowing him to join us in building mountains out of molehills.
Thankfully, no matter how many times I stumble and no matter how many mountains I face, God will always be there to pick me up and to help me to see that mountain for what it is; a simple molehill that with His help, I can easily overcome.