I was having a bad day yesterday, you see. It started off OK and then got progressively worse.
My professor never showed up for the class chat session for one of my online college courses Tuesday night, and we had been told his assistant would be sending an e-mail to explain what was going on yesterday. We waited and waited all day for it to show up.
In the meantime, I posted something on the discussion forums for another class about an anti-pornography law that came up as a side note in our reading for the week and then got worried it would offend somebody or get me in trouble and I went back an erased it.
On top of that, I had a good friend ask me a question which, while not meant that way, rather hurt and annoyed me because I felt it showed something of a lack of trust in me and unwillingness to give me the benefit of the doubt. Hurt because they were partially serious and I thought they had more faith in me than that, annoyed because they were partially joking and I didn't think it was a laughing matter.
We got that smoothed over, but it led directly to me discovering I'd unintentionally and unknowingly made a screwup with a different friend, and though I apologized and we resolved it as soon as I knew, it still made me feel pretty bad.
While I'm still reeling from all of that, the aforementioned promised explanatory e-mail finally arrives at 6:00pm and basically doesn't explain anything at all, forcing me to write back to ask for the information all of us in the class actually need (what assignments we're supposed to turn in this week - usually announced in the chat - what reading we do for next week, whether the missed chat affects the date of our midterm exam next week), knowing that I probably won't get an answer for a day.
At this point I'm somewhere between discouraged and furious or a combination of the two, but I have to head off to church because I volunteered to help get things ready for the easter egg hunt, which is a big event and maybe the church's most important community outreach for the whole year. My dad drops me off at 6:45 and drives away expecting to pick me up at 8:00. I enter the church and discover that they have everybody and everything they need and my assistance with the easter egg hunt is not required for the evening.
So now I'm stuck at the church for 70 minutes with absolutely nothing to do and no phone to get dad to come pick me up early (I suppose I could have used a church phone). I'm actually more bitterly amused than angry, reflecting what a "perfect" crappy capoff this is to my perfectly crappy day, when...
I jokingly explain my plight to Mr. Lashley, who is one of the organizers of the church's Wednesday-night kids clubs. He promptly drafts me to help with the 4th and 5th grade boys, who are short-handed one adult. I had actually asked about doing this last fall, but they were only getting 3-4 kid each week then so I wasn't needed. However, since the new year, the end of fall sports has seen attendance shoot up to more like a dozen each meeting.
So I show up, find out a couple of the boys are in the Sunday School class I teach, pretty much immediately get right in the flow of things, and generally have a great time. (I've discovered I really like working with kids.) And when we're done, the leader says he'd be glad to have my help every week.
So my point is, God is very good, and will very often turn things around for us if we're willing to let Him and not be determined to wallow in frustration and self-pity.
