Master Fixer

I stopped by one of my favorite stores on my way home tonight and a necklace I’d been looking at had been put into the 50% off area. The owner of the store was there and she said, “I just put that there! I’m so glad you’re the one who got it.” She’s really terrific – I met her when I first moved to where I live and I stopped in her store one day when a friend of mine had given me a gift certificate. She has a boutique with beautiful clothing and jewelry, and you’d think it was really expensive, but even when it’s not half price it’s still really reasonable. When it goes into the half price area, it costs so little people can never believe me when I tell them. I give jewelry from her store as gifts all the time and I own some really lovely pieces now so I can have fun dressing up.

The necklace I bought tonight was in perfect condition – the only reason she’d moved it into the half price area was because she was putting new stock out and wanted to find a place for something else. But when I got it home, for some reason one of the links that held part of it together had come undone and even though I’m really good at fixing things like that, for some reason I just couldn’t do it. I tried for over two hours – yes, it took me that long and I kept at it, something that amazed me at the time because I don’t really have a good sense of patience for anything. But even after those two hours had gone past, I still couldn’t get the darn thing back together again. It shouldn’t have been that complicated – there were two pendants that hung from the necklace, and that’s where the link had come undone, but for some reason it just wasn’t working. I tried everything and it was just an effort in frustration. Finally, I started thinking of what could I use that was quick and simple to put it together, and I remembered that I always keep those tiny safety pins that come in clothing sometimes when they give you extra buttons or want to put the price tag on without putting a hole in the fabric. They’ll put a safety pin sometimes through a button hole or the label or something like that and hang the price tag from it. So I said to heck with the link that wasn’t linking and got two little safety pins and voila! It’s done and fixed and the pendants actually hang better than if I had gotten the links together again.

All the while when I was working on the necklace, I kept marveling that I was able to keep my calm. I hate it when things like that go on and on and on, and I don’t have much patience for minute delicate work like that. I’m good at it because I like to get it done quickly, and in the past if something was taking me that long I would have just thrown the thing down and been cursing up a storm. But even though those impulses came and I felt a hint of the same kind of frustration I’ve felt before I was born again, for some reason it wasn’t the same, and I really have to give a round of applause and a shout of praise to God because it’s astonishing to me that it wasn’t.

I know me, and I know I’m not a patient person. I know the way I used to be before God stepped in and started working on me from the inside out – how impulsive and easily frustrated and sometimes downright angry.  But now that He’s been doing His magic, things just don’t affect me the same way any more. I don’t know how to describe it because I still have the feelings, only for some reason they’re more like blips on the radar screen than the all-consuming emotional trauma that I used to experience before.

In John 14:27, Jesus tells His disciples, “Peace I leave with you; my peace I give you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled and do not be afraid.” It really is a supernatural peace He gives – I have no idea where it comes from, but even when trouble comes and I’m feeling the old feelings rising up, He’s able to release it somehow before it becomes the toxic soup it used to get to be. He gives us perfect peace, even in the storm, and helps us to figure out how to fix things and make them right again. Sometimes it’s with some safety pins, and sometimes it’s with the same thing that was giving us trouble for hours on end, but whatever it is, He’s the master at fixing things and He is the only one I know who I know for sure can fix me.

Blessings,

Jannie Susan