I wore eye make-up for the first time in weeks yesterday.  Maybe months. Well, unless you count yesterday.

You see, I was scheduled to speak to the female students at a local nursing school.  It was in my calendar. I had reminders set. The date was stuck in my head.

Two days ago I refused to help a coworker with some tasks because I hadn’t prepared my message yet and I knew that if I didn’t devote that morning to it, I’d regret it.  I wanted to have a good presentation ready for the students, and I didn’t want to risk struggling late in the night to get my PowerPoint slides prepared.

I made sure I showered that night, not leaving it for the morning, creating potential issues in the land of no hair dryers.  

I put on the perfect outfit.  Professional enough, yet comfortable so that my clothes wouldn’t be my mind’s focus at any point while 250+ faces had their eyes on me.

I woke up the mascara, and even eyeliner, from their hibernation in my makeup bag.  Once upon a time they were a part of my daily routine. I’m not sure when their retirement began…

My computer was ready.  I even removed the unnecessary contents weighing down my purse, and threw in my charger cable.

I was ready to go, and even early.

I talked to my friend who had arranged the invitation about where exactly I needed to go.

He answered my questions, but with a bit of hesitation in his voice.

Then he said, but it’s tomorrow.

What?

I’d even had my kids pray for me that morning that the talk would go well and be impactful for the audience.

It’s tomorrow?

Yes it absolutely is. It was as if scales had fallen from my eyes and once again I could see the dates of other events happening this week, making it painfully obvious I was a day off.   I don’t know how it happened, but somehow my mind got mixed up and I had myself all prepared a day in advance. Somehow, as I was preoccupied with being ready to share on the topic I was given, I had mixed up what I knew was true and exchanged it with false information.  I guess it was better that I’d been ahead of schedule than behind, right?

Well, I sailed down the hallway to my bedroom and changed my clothes, carefully laying out the perfect outfit to be put on again the next morning.  Not long after I’d fasten the belt on my jeans, my phone’s alarm went off, reminding me that at that time the next day I was scheduled to be speaking.

Thankfully, the blessing of my little mix-up gave me the majority of the day suddenly unscheduled, free, available.  It almost felt like an unexpected gift. It was glorious. I enjoyed the time and was even quite productive.

So this morning, I went through basically a repeat of yesterday: same black shirt and silver earrings as before.  Only this time I actually climbed into the van, drove to the school, met the students, connected my computer to the projector, gave my presentation, signed the visitor’s book, received gratitude from the ladies who were in the session with me, and was on my way to the next appointment.

My eyeliner and mascara are still in tact, and I almost wish I had another thing happening this evening to show off my effort to a few more people.

Yet, when I think about yesterday, I still can’t believe how I’d gotten the dates mixed up, how my mind pushed aside what I knew was true and replaced it with wrong information.  Wrong information that I wholeheartedly acted upon.

Unfortunately I do this more often than I’d like to admit.  I don’t mean mixing up things I’ve set up in my calendar.

I mean, sometimes, the things I know are true are too easily pushed aside and replaced with false ideas.  Sights and circumstances all around me mess up my mind. Certainly Satan is at work in those mix-ups, maybe even more often than I realize.

I know God’s timing is perfect, yet when I always seem to be hopelessly waiting for things to happen I begin to wonder if maybe this time He is actually turning up too late.

I know God is good, but sometimes the heartache and devastation surrounding me makes we question His goodness in the midst of it all.

I know that God loves me, however, when my heart is repeatedly broken and beat up by people, I doubt His love for me when He allows it to happen.

I know that God is faithful, although impossible situations looming over me cause me to hesitate to trust His intention to intervene.

Like the alarms on my phone, I need to find a way to set myself straight–to recalibrate my thinking onto the truths I know, letting go of the falsehoods I’ve grabbed onto.  Instead of living in the doubts, I need to live in the truths.

I need to be grounded in God’s Word, the testimonies of my past and of others.  I need to live in a posture of prayer, rather than stooping to the worries of this world.  

Though I may or may not need to reinstate my daily routine of applying mascara to my eyelashes every morning, I should be consistent in communing with my God so that I don’t end up setting my mind, heart, and whole self on the wrong interpretation of what lays before me.

If I don’t make this a priority, then I will keep getting mixed up.  I will continually find myself living in what seems to be, rather than what is, unless I am regularly reminding myself of, and meditating on, the truth of God’s Word.