After a long day, I stopped by the grocery store for some milk and to mail a package. In a hurry to get home to make supper, I noticed barbecue sauce on sale as I walked down the aisle in front of the deli. Grabbing a bottle off the top shelf, I was shocked when the sauce slipped from my hand, and exploded at my feet like a volcano.

Sauce drenched me. Coating my suede boots. My favorite jeans. My bright pink sweater. Even speckling my face and dripping from my hair.

“I think your boots are ruined,” said a twenty-something East Indian woman with a lovely British accent standing in front of the deli counter. The look of horror on her pretty face matched the feeling in my heart. The ladies working the deli stared at me aghast.

“I’m so sorry about the mess,” I said, longing to cry but sort of laughing. Weariness washed over me. I just wanted to go home, but still held the package to be mailed in my hand.

One of the deli ladies came out from behind the counter to help, but when she saw the sauce all over me, and not much on the floor, she stood there speechless.

“I think I’ll clean up in the bathroom,” I told her. “I’ll be back in a few minutes.”

In the restroom, I washed my face first, amazed the plastic bottle could hit the floor and explode like it did. After washing the sauce off my sweater, my shirtfront was soaked. So were my pants and boots after I scrubbed them the best I could. By then, I felt so humble it didn’t matter that I had to walk through the store an absolute mess to mail my package and buy milk. I went back to the deli, and apologized again for the mess I’d made. The floor was clean. It looked like nothing had happened. At the deli counter, a man stared at me, his eyes wide with questions. It wasn’t raining outside. I’m sure he was trying to figure out why I was all wet.

Thank you, Lord, for humbling your servant, I prayed as I went and mailed my package, then retrieved the milk, and carried it to checkout.

“What happened to you?” Asked the lady working the cash register. I told her about the sauce explosion and she sympathetically checked out my boots. “How bizarre,” she said. “Your boots look terrible. What a bad day for you.”

“They’re just boots. It’s okay.” I thanked the clerk for her compassion, and walked out of the store feeling like a whipped puppy.

Driving home, I realized I wasn’t surprised about the sauce. I was getting used to bad bounces. Again, I thanked God for humbling me. Had the sauce exploded on me a few years back, my ruined boots would have upset me. Today the boots meant nothing. The money to buy them come from the Lord. You give and take away, blessed be the name of the Lord. Job 1:21. I prayed while heading home.

I reminded myself God was good. No matter what happened, God was good.

God is good. God is good. God is good, I chanted driving into the sunset with barbecue sauce in my hair. My leg hurt. The one I’d had surgery on two months earlier to remove the melanoma. The long, tender scar on my calf reminded me I was no longer who I used to be. Cancer had changed me.

I will restore you to health and heal your wounds, Jeremiah 30:17 whispered through my thoughts. For I know the plans I have for you. Plans to prosper and not harm you. Plans to give you a future and a hope. Jeremiah 29:11. The first scripture I’d memorized after accepting Christ as my Savior in 2000. I felt like a baby Christian all over again.

At home, Scott grinned when I described the sauce attack at the grocery store. “You’re probably the topic of people’s dinner conversation,” he said laughing.

“I hope it makes people laugh,” I said. “I wish I could laugh.” In the laundry room, I changed my clothes and poured Spray and Wash on my sweater and jeans, then threw them in the wash, and began scrubbing my boots in our big, steel sink beside the back door.

A few hours later, after the dinner dishes, after bathing four, squirming sons, and surviving the boys’ homework blues, it was bedtime and I couldn’t wait to test God on his promise: Because of the Lord’s great love we are not consumed, for his compassions never fail. They are new every morning; great is your faithfulness. Lamentations 3:22-23. I needed sleep and new mercies in the morning.

Early the next day as I dressed with birds singing outside my bedroom window, I heard the Holy Spirit say, Stop feeling sorry for yourself. The still small voice shocked me almost as much as the sauce blowing up in my face the night before.

Tears streaked my cheeks. Cruz was yelling for me to come pour more milk into his sippy cup. G2 wanted his toast. I’d already been up since five a.m. with Cruz and had gotten the older boys ready for school and out the door with their dad. “I’m tired,” I told the Holy Spirit as sobs shook my shoulders.

Not one of all the LORD’S good promises to the house of Israel failed; every one was fulfilled. Joshua 21:45, the Holy Spirit impressed on my heart at that moment. 

Nearly twenty-two years of raising toddlers and changing diapers and small, determined children dragging me out of bed and off the toilet and away from my dream of becoming a novelist and I just felt tired standing there with the Holy Spirit convicting me of sin.

I knew self-pity had taken hold during my last pregnancy. Funny, the cancer on my leg started then, too. At forty-three years old while pregnant with Cruz, my friends were talking about hot flashes. My hot flashes consisted of me pregnant again hollering at three wild little boys to obey me when they weren’t obeying at all.

My friends were doing lunch, doing ministry, doing pinterest. I was pinning my pregnancy pants, trying to avoid shopping for maternity clothes with moms half my age, while strapping diapers on our toddler, and buying Goodnights for a five-year-old, and doing homework with a seven-year-old, and dealing with three teenagers to boot.

Now after the melanoma storm, I was fighting fear and self-pity and just being a tired mom with barbecue sauce in her hair.

I have restored you to health and healed your wounds. Trust in my promises. Trust in the LORD, encouraged the Holy Spirit.

“All I have are your promises. I’m hanging onto my Bible like it’s a lifeboat right now,” I said to the Spirit. The movie The Life of Pi flashed through my mind. That boy in the rowboat lost at sea with a tiger. I’d only seen parts of the movie because it disturbed me, but my ten-year-old son really liked it, especially the tiger in the boat, and he wanted me to watch it with him.

I felt like God had put a tiger in my lifeboat. That morning after the sauce mess, I realized the purpose of the tiger was to humble me and help me grow stronger. And to teach me once again to hold tight to the Word of God when no other form of rescue appeared on the horizon. When I didn’t feel God’s presence. Didn’t have God’s peace. When the storm raged and the tiger was trying to eat me and the Bible was my only hope.

“Forgive me for feeling sorry for myself. Please heal me of this sin of self-pity and fear,” I prayed.

And right now I pray for you wherever you are if you feel like you’re in a lifeboat with a tiger. Some fear or sin or storm that’s getting the better of you and you can’t see or feel God. You’re in my prayers and you need a Bible. The Good Book will keep you afloat until Jesus delivers you. Trust in His Word.

We all have battles on this earth. The storms that come our way. May God’s Word bring you comfort, strength, and peace until the Prince of Peace himself quiets the storm or quiets you with His unfailing love.