I Love Choo

Blog #4

“For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the Lord, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.” Jeremiah 29:11

Several years ago when I found myself newly separated from my husband and wondering what God would now do with my life, I moved into a tiny 3rd floor apartment with my 19 year old daughter and 16 year old son. Besides missing my spacious house with its backyard and view, I hated cramming into the small apartment, losing my vertical space, smelling the cigarette smoke from the apartment below, and smelling the acrid odor wafting over from a massive hill of beauty bark at a nearby nursery. But the inconvenience that affected me the most was the horn blasts coming from trains that passed nearby. In my previous home, I was a few miles away from the tracks and always thought the faint sound of the train’s horn was comforting. Now that I lived closer to the tracks, the blasts were irritatingly loud, not just a soothing “choo, choo”.

Often times at night, I would just be dropping off to sleep when the blast of a horn would jolt me awake. At all hours of the night, the train would sound its horn to announce it was passing through the intersection. The honking even seemed louder after midnight, as if the conductor was doing it on purpose. I wanted to yell, “For Pete’s sake!! Quit honking your horn! We’re all in bed.” Friends said I would get used to the train, but it was taking a while and I kept waking up in the middle of the night.

“Lord, why is this happening?” I questioned God. “This was the apartment you led us to and worked out for us. Why are so many things going wrong?” Satan seemed to want to get the best of me and my children (I’ll get to the apartment fire and the car breaking down later.) Once again, I was like the Israelites who still doubted God’s provision even though he had brought them miraculously out of Egypt.

I knew I needed to change my poor attitude, but how? I needed to find a way to see that what Satan meant for evil could be something good, something joyful. At that point, I made a conscious decision to let God talk to me every time I experienced these irritations. Every time I smelled the neighbor’s cigarette smoke, I would say, “God is my healer.” Every time I got a whiff of the dirty diaper smell of the beauty bark I would say, “I am a fragrance of Christ.” And every time I heard the blasts of the train’s horn, I would say what God had been telling me all along, “I love you and have a plan for your life.”

One evening, shortly after I developed this positive perspective on the apartment’s disadvantages, my grandson and I took a walk to the apartment’s duck pond. Every time the train blew its whistle, Dylan would stop and say, “choo choo train!” and then excitedly look around for the train. The wailing of the whistle brought him great joy. I told him it was God saying, “Choo, choo, I love you.” Every time the whistle blew, we would giggle and say, “I love choo!” I grew to love the sound of the train whistle too and knew it was God’s way of getting my attention in that difficult season. He was reminding me, “I love you and have a wonderful plan for your life.”

Lord, help me to not stress over negative circumstances, but to see your presence and love through them.