Day of Defeat Ended in Thankfulness! What?!?!

   What a day filled with defeat!  So many things went wrong today starting with my alarm going off and rather than joyfully getting out of bed to start the day right I reset the alarm for later and got more sleep.  As a result, no morning work out or critical time in the Word.  Already a bad start.  I raced to get myself and two of my boys ready to go to the Dr's and my three year old daughter ready for school.  Went to make myself my dietary smoothie for breakfast and remembered I was out of frozen fruit.  My daughter was on the bus at 7:22 and we were on our way to the Dr.'s at 7:25 with the other two staying home with a Dad/Nana tag team.  I was the first to arrive as a walk-in patient but the door said the opening hours began at 8 and it was 7:45 so we stood outside and waited.  at 7:55 another mom arrived and walked up to where we were at the door.  She asked if it was open to which I told her I didn't know, I was just waiting until 8 like the sign said.  She checked the door and went in to which I held the door and asked the receptionist if we could come in.  We were allowed and the lady who had gone in ahead of me went up the desk and signed her name FIRST on the sign in sheet!  I couldn't believe it!  She knew I had been standing out there first and still signed her name in on the top line.  So she and her daughter were called in first while I stayed in my chair in the waiting room and fumed!  Circumstances like this or worse continued on the rest of the day for me.  It is now 8:00 at night, feels like midnight though, I am exhausted and feeling absolutely defeated by the day.
    Defeated in my own flesh.  Incapable of self-discipline to get up and get in the Word and workout, frustrated I didn't make time yesterday to go to the grocery store to buy the fruit I knew I would need for my smoothies, frustrated I had way too many carbs for my breakfast as a result, angered by a woman who felt entitled to see the Dr. first, lacked patience, quick to anger, and no self-control with my son Jonah, forgetful of my five year old child who wound up sitting in timeout for a minor offense for over an hour, overwhelmed by homeschool curriculum choices and the window of time I once viewed as vast I now see is quickly closing with each, crazy-fast, passing year; and the list goes on.  My flesh is weak.  Far beyond cure.  I am self centered and selfish just like every other human being on the planet.  Sin exists, therefore sin exists in me.  How freeing it is to know that I am not held accountable for my sin.  In those moments when I recognize my flesh welling up squelching the Holy Spirit and strangling His ability to do His work in me, I become overwhelming grateful.  For at first a momentary feeling of defeat rushes in but then the gentleness of the Father reminds me that His love, forgiveness, and patience is unconditional because His Son Jesus the Christ has covered up ALL my transgressions, all of my sin, all of my flesh by paying my price of my deserved death!  Suddenly each moment I recount throughout the day doesn't seem like defeat to me but rather VICTORY!  Did I fail a lot?  Absolutely!  Yet in that, I have experienced God's forgiveness, His unending forgiveness!  I have felt God's love, His overwhelming love for me!  And I have realized His patience, His abounding patience with me!  I am weak, I am a sinner, He is strong, He is holy and capable of all things.  "So I am grateful, that I'm incapable of doing any good on my own!"  I'm thankful that I need Him!  I'm thankful that I am nothing without Him!  He created me, He saved me, He redeemed me, He made me holy in Him, He teaches me and He reminds me of all of this, and I am thankful.

 Although, I want to do good, evil is right there with me.  For in my inner being I delight God's law; but i see another law at work in me, waging a war against the law of my mind and making me a  prisoner of the law of sin at work within me.  What a wretched man am I!  Who will rescue me from this body that is subject to death?  Thanks be to God, who delivers me through Jesus Christ our Lord! 

Romans 7:21-25