Hanging up the phone, I felt so helpless. My friend’s trembling voice was still echoing in my head, “Ms. Reese, I want him back now! Just tell me what to do.” I knew that the return of a prodigal son wasn’t as easy as waving a magic wand and repeating Abracadabra. It took six long years of praying and fasting before our oldest son returned back to God!

“And he said unto them, this kind come forth by prayer and fasting” Mark 9:29

Pushing the shopping cart down the beauty aisle at the grocery store, I sorted through my Loreal $2 discount coupons. It would be very evident in 2 weeks time that I would be wearing a skunk stripe down the top of my dark brown hair. I figured the cost up in my head and I was spending over $800 each year on coloring my hair. I decided that I would break up with Loreal #4 and go gray. What I didn’t know is that it was going to be a long 2-3 year process to go gray, but I wanted it now!

“But if we hope for that we see not, then do we with patience wait for it.” Romans 8:25

I could go on and on with stories on how I insisted on having it my way, and it didn’t work out at all… my way! One really good Bible Story, that I’ll never ever understand, is when Sarah wanted a baby so badly that she had her husband go into the tent with Hagar, her handmaid, and have a baby. What was she thinking? She wasn’t, ha! But Sarah wanted it her way. I want it now! Then she ends up throwing Hagar out, but she comes back. (One big soap opera.) She made a mess of things!

Veruca Salt in the Willy Wonka Movie was a spoiled brat that had to have everything her way. She wanted a squirrel, a glass elevator, on and on… You can see where it got her!

Sometimes we think we have to have everything asap. (The return of a prodigal child, gray hair, material things, etc…) Girlfriends, there’s a price that has to be paid for what we want, the price of patience. God is working everything out perfectly in His time.

“For I know the thoughts that I think toward you, saith the Lord, thoughts of peace, and not evil, to give you an expected end.” Jeremiah 29:11

Choose Happy!