#95

Bo and I see many crazy things as a result of living on a farm.  You just never know what animals are going to do.  We have a particular goat that is a few fries short of a happy meal.  We have come to lovingly call her #95 (because that's the name in her eartag) and we don't have the time or energy to name all 40 goats.  Anyway, she continually gets her head stuck in this fence.  Morning and evening, this goat without fail puts her head through one of those squares and gets stuck.  We’re not sure why she hasn’t figured out after about 100 times of getting stuck, to just stop.  I tell Bo all the time that she’s just not right in the head. 

One of my close friends recently made a startling discovery to me.  That goat is sort of like us.  How many times do we continue to go back to the same things that entangle us in sin and get stuck again?  We do it over and over.  We make excuses, tell ourselves this is the last time, promise to never do it again, and we still find ourselves stuck in the fence. 

Well, my husband did something so wonderful for this goat.  Of course I was tired of hearing her cry every day because she’s stuck and sometimes I would try to free her.  We have friends like that.  They try to grab hold of us and help us out.  They even give us a swift kick in the head to try to push us back through to the other side…which I may or may not have done to this particular goat a time or two.  But my husband fixed the problem.  He put up a boundary.  He took a piece of metal barn siding and put it against the fence so she would stop. 

So anyway, I thought this was a good lesson for myself especially.  What is that one thing in my life that I keep running to and getting stuck in?  What boundary should I be making to prevent it from happening?  

There is an answer.  One thing that helps me overcome a life issue that I am dealing with is memorization of scripture that has to do with that issue.  One I have had to deal with in the recent past was anger.  Within a matter of seconds, I could go from normal Sarah to screaming banshee.  I know that may come as a surprise to you.  Right???  I seem like such a calm person, right…lol!  But God has worked and worked on me through this.  One of those verses I memorized was:

 Colossians 3:8 “But now you must rid yourselves of all such things as these:  anger, rage, malice, slander, ad filthy language from your lips.”  And…

Psalm 19:14 “Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be pleasing in your sight, O Lord, my Rock and my Redeemer.” 

So when I start to feel myself going to the place of no return, I have to start repeating these in my head, and the Holy Spirit calms me.  God’s Word does that a lot. 

Otherwise, you are going to keep looking like this…and that’s just not fun.  Put up the boundary before you get stuck in the fence again.  I don’t want to have to kick you in the head.  J