Life is Stupid. God is Good.

You know those Life is Good t-shirts you see just about everywhere you go?  I always thought they were really optimistic, joy-focused shirts and sometimes I get a good chuckle out of them and their simplistic, yet creative artwork.  In the middle of the night last night, I thought of a new t-shirt idea.

J ate some ramen noodles last night (she was craving them and so C ran to the store to get them because it's the first time we haven't had to coax her into eating all week) and here we are like 20 hours later and we haven't seen them again.  In fact, she wanted more of them again this morning.  Yay!  She's doing a lot better today.  I'm just praying it holds and she doesn't take another turn for the worse tonight or tomorrow.

We still kept her in our room for the night to be sure.  An hour before C's alarm clock sounded for his first day back to work, our dog, Nova, started begging and pleading to leave our room (we assumed she needed to go outside).  As C got up to let her out, he noticed something terrible in the shadows of light and dark that fill our room thanks to our well-lit neighborhood shining in between slats in the window blinds.

On went the bedroom light and sure enough, Nova had vomited on the carpet by the door of our room.  When the lights were on, I noticed she also vomited by her bed on the other side of the room.  I whined as I grabbed stuff to clean up the vomit, because to tell the truth, if I never see another mess of vomit ever, I've already cleaned up more than enough to last me a life time.  I'm sorry, Lord, for not serving gladly in this capacity ... but I'm only human.

C went to grab the carpet cleaner, while I got the first layers cleaned up.  Meanwhile, J woke from the noise and the light and she was middle-of-the-night delirious and asked what happened.  I told her about Nova and she started rubbing her hand in circles on the carpet beside where she was sleeping and said with joy, "Look, Mama, I'm helping you clean it!"

I thanked her and assured her that there was nothing over by where she was laying.  She nodded and rolled onto her side and back to sleep.

While C was using the carpet cleaning solution to get the rest of the mess off the floor, he said, "What is with our life?!!"

I said, "Life is stupid."

He said, "My alarm's about to go off ... I don't feel ready to get up and go to work."

I said, "Maybe we should make t-shirts.  'Life is Stupid,' and then we could detail all the ironic ways it is.  We'll make a fortune and you won't need to go to work."

As we crawled back in bed, I actually started pondering the thought.  And instead of leaving it hopeless and negative (which is really not me when I've got my brain switched on), I thought, "And then we could add 'God is Good' on the back of the shirt so people know there is always hope.  He's always in control.  And maybe a Bible verse reference to back up the point."

In the light of day, creating a t-shirt business sounds like a lot of work.  But it's an idea.  So who knows.  But if someone gets to it before we do, they took the idea from me.  Life is just that stupid sometimes.

But God is good.

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After falling back to sleep after cleaning up our carpet, I had a very unusual, but strangely relaxing dream. 

I was in Costa Rica (never actually been), walking along a pier on the beach (are there piers there?), wearing swim trunks and a very loose fitting t-shirt (pajama-like, my favorite).  I stopped into a bar and ordered a beer (I don't like beer or bars) and sipped it slowly while enjoying the best piece of fried chicken I've ever eaten in my life (to which C commented in response, "My wife dreams about eating fried chicken ... we were definitely meant to be together!").  I remember looking out at the beautiful scenery and then hearing the person next to me (a stranger) talk about his life and all of its troubles.  I sure did feel blessed to have my life. 

Even if it's not a beach in Costa Rica...