Let Me Talk About The "Other" Man in My Life...

His name is Dyson.

My Mother gets "cracked up" over my relationship with Dyson. She says that nobody has ever had a relationship with Dyson like mine.

How can you NOT love him? He's the biggest sucker-upper on the planet. Got a mess? No problem! He's there. Feeling emotional? He'll make you feel so much better...so much more organized...and even cleaner.

His latest project was to tackle another favorite...Froot Loops. Now how well do you think he did on THAT? Excellent, as always!!!

In fact, I was thinking this morning, if Dyson could take care of ALL my issues and frustrations the way he takes care of toddler and children messes, as well as my psychological issues...life would be perfect.

And I would be deceived!

Isn't that what we ask of God, so many times? A quick solution. An immediate response. A perfectly cleaned up situation. So...what do we learn from that? Ummm...
Nothing.

Except maybe to treat God as though He is OUR servant. On the ready to do whatever we ask. Patiently waiting for us to tell Him what we need next.

Might sound really good, actually. But there is a huge problem with that. How can we order God around, when we don't know what the future holds? If we don't know the master plan, then how can we expect God to just give in to our every whim? After all...that goes against the very nature of a holy and loving God...to give in to us, even when He sees the mess that our whims will cause. Simply put, that's not God. He would never lead us into a situation that would destroy us. And I didn't make that up...I didn't say that.
He did.

He practices what He preaches. And sometimes that is what we call "tough love". Love IS tough sometimes. It's tough to hear your child BEG for something that you know you can't give them because it's something they just can't handle. It's tough to stick to your guns. Life is difficult, and at times, seemingly unbearable. But God has the master plan. In fact, He IS the master plan. And guess what that means? We win! We overcome! We succeed in the highest form of the meaning of success!

But before we can experience that end result, we must stop expecting God to act like a vacuum cleaner. God is NOT going to suck up all the bad stuff and make everything be as it was before. Instead, He is going to show us how to clean up our own mess, and He's going to help us and love us every step of the way.
And we learn lessons
that we could never learn otherwise.

While I know that teaching my edible little almost-2-year-old to clean up his own Froot Loop mess would be the best thing for him (and possibly for me!), I can't help but give into Dyson. But I can tell you this...God is no Dyson. God is real, and He's more interested in what we know and learn about Him, than He is in quickly fixing whatever problem or issue arises in our life. He's interested in our character, as well He should be.
He's God.

He's our Father...our Healer...
the Lover of our soul.

And Dyson, for all his wonderful sucking-up...is still...

just a vacuum.