Skinny Trees, Mouse in the Toilet, and Meeting Mr. President

 Friends, this week has been a rather eventful week for me.  A couple of minutes after I finished my blog last Sunday, I decided to visit the little girl's room.  Imagine my horror when I found a very large mouse swimming away in my toilet.  I looked down into the frightened eyes of the little mouse and did what every big girl would do.  I jumped up and down and yelled for my son to come rescue me from the mouse.  Yes, I admit that I'm a big chicken.  After ten minutes of screaming my son's name, it dawned on me that my son would not rescue me.  I stomped down the stairs and demanded to know why he was not running to my aid immediately, only to find him completely engrossed in a video game.  I then laid on the guilt of what was more important to him, saving a pretend world or protecting his mother.  I regret to say he took a pause in which he had to seriously think about which was more important.  I then pulled him up the stairs and pointed at the toilet and said, "Fix this."  He looked down and called his sister to take care of the mouse since she wants to be a veterinarian and technically this was taking care of an animal.  She looked in the toilet and picked the little Ratatouille up by the tail.  The mouse was liberated into the woods.  I quickly learned that our rescue doesn't always come the way we think it will.  Next came the tree adventure.  My children were begging me to put up our Christmas decorations.  I told them that if they could clean the house then they could decorate the house.  For the last couple of weeks, we have been at a stand-off.  Finally, last night, my children stepped up and cleaned every inch of our house.  I gave in and searched the garage only to find that our Christmas tree was MIA.  Now, my children were waiting for me to keep my part of the bargain when I had nothing to bring to the table!  This called for an emergency.  We rushed to Walmart to find a reasonably priced tree.  Unfortunately, because I didn't start decorating before Thanksgiving, there were no good trees that didn't cost an arm and a leg.  We settled on this sad little Charlie Brown tree.  How did we explain this tree, you ask?  We told the kids that in honor of Trenton's last year here before college, we got a tree to honor him- tall and skinny.  They fell for it.  Heeheehee.  This leads to the final cap to our week.  My son, Trenton, won second place in an essay contest which allowed him to meet President Clinton.  We drove to Little Rock and explored for a while until time to meet at the Clinton Library.  My husband told me that I could wear normal clothes and change before the event.  No big deal, right?  Wrong.  We drove around the neighborhood and found no gas stations with public restrooms or fast food restaurants. Finally, we decided the Arkansas Children's Hospital bathrooms would work.  I squeezed into a stall while trying to balance on one foot and change into a dress.  Once I had accomplished more positions than a yoga routine I was set.  I decided to flush the toilet as any woman is trained to do- using my foot.  The only problem is that my pantyhose had loosened my flats, and I watched in horror as my shoe flew off of my foot toward the toilet bowl.  I held my breath as in almost slow motion it balanced on the edge of the toilet bowl.  Saved!  Whew!  Once the shoe disaster was averted, my husband corralled my son and me toward the car and our destination.  We only arrived two hours early!  I told him that we didn't need to arrive until 6pm which meant to him, "We must arrive way before six so we can awkwardly sit around and be stared at by security for 2 hours."  After what seemed like forever (by the way the staff were super nice and patient with us) we were herded past the Secret Service men into a curtained area where we waited until the President was brought in to shake my son's hand and do a photo opp with Trenton and his family (us).  You can't see that photo yet because it hasn't been released, but I wanted to say how proud I am of both him and my other children.  They are polite and kind.  What great qualities to possess!  So, after this crazy week, I think of Phillip in the book of Acts 8:39.  God told him to minister to others, so I'm sure he was thinking that he would minister just like normal.  He ministered to the Ethiopian eunuch.  When he was done, I'm sure he expected to just continue on that road, but God blew his normal out of the water by translating him onto his next place of ministry.  Can you imagine his thoughts in that 'Beam me up Scotty' moment?  We get so adjusted to the way things are that when we are thrown a curve, those moments shake our faith.  What would happen if we had fearless faith to just go with the flow and trust God to get us where we need to be?  Because, as the mouse in the toilet taught me, rescue doesn't always come the way we think.  What is more important is that rescue will come!  Have a great week high-heeled warrior!