WHEN THE BOUGH BREAKS

Remember the song with the words, “when the bough breaks, the cradle will fall”? Have you ever caught yourself falling – or fallen – only to realize you should have noticed the bough breaking?! I fell flat on my plump (not) derriere (fancy word for butt) only to realize that I should have seen the bough breaking.

Not that I was sunbathing high up in a bird’s nest along with the zillion other birds on my property tweeting away from their pretty perches on any number of magnificent boughs, but hey. Not all falls are physical, and today I fell – back into irritability and a RAISED (a wee bit of temper) voice. So why exactly did the cradle fall? And why exactly did the bough break?

Honestly? Confession. I pushed myself WAY TOO HARD. And the bough broke because rather than pacing myself through the day and TAKING TIME to sit at Jesus’ feet like He so lovingly, and eloquently, “recommends” when He tells Martha she should park her posterior (another fancy word for BUTT) with her sister at Jesus’ feet to spend time with Him and LEARN rather than hustle and bustle her BIG BUTT (or was it little?) around with her “I’ve got to get everything done NOW” attitude. Ahem. Need I say more?

Okay, I will. My priorities were NOT in order today. I moved too fast. I worked too hard. I focused on the wrong stuff. I shoved Jesus to the side so I could GET EVERYTHING DONE. Boom. Crash. The bough broke. Not too hard, thank God. It was only a little loss of temper. Certainly not like the tempers of the past. Nevertheless, I fell short.

But do you know something? What happened when the cradle FELL? I certainly can’t tell you a single other thing about “Rock-a-bye Baby”, the song whose name my middle-age-memory (yikes!) now remembers, but I can tell you this. My redeemer LIVES (Job 19:25). Jesus, who sits at the right hand of the Father, is totally there for me. And so is my Father. And what is SO AWESOME is that I can pick my little old butt up off the floor, wipe off the dog poop, leaves, dirt, who knows what that I fell down on, and CONFESS MY SINS to the Lord.

And guess what? He forgives me, and He cleanses me. The Bible says so. And no, please don’t worry. I didn’t really fall and land on dog poop. But sometimes when I fall backwards into old behavior, it feels and smells that way. You know?

At any rate, now that the bough has broken, and the cradle has fallen, I’m off to make my confession – and receive forgiveness – from the Lord.

Amen.