First off, a link. The Council on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood has a new website. I imagine we have both “egalitarians” and “complementarians” among our readership, but I’m a complementarian, so I like this organization and its site. Make of it what you will.

Today was a day rich in drama for your humble correspondent. It encompassed in a short span all those stages you’ve come to recognize in my response to crisis: First shock, then base despair, then self-flagellation, then the working out of things, then Never Mind.

First of all, the guy who’d said he’d cut down my tree came to my office and told me he didn’t think he could do it. Too tall; too close to the house. I thanked him, and contemplated the prospect of hiring a professional, and all that would cost me.

But he knew a guy, he said, and he’d ask him to take a look. “Please do,” I answered, large beads of sweat extruding from my furrowed brow.

I began to plan what I’d do when the Guy He Knew said he couldn’t, or wouldn’t, do the job. I’d have to find a professional. The professional would either a) say he had to do it this weekend, which would interfere with my plans to go out to Dallas, Wisconsin with the Viking Age Society. Or b) he’d say he couldn’t get to it till next week, which would mean I’d have to be here and wouldn’t be able to go to Minot. Which would mean I’d miss the Sissel concert and my life would be utterly, totally pointless.

Furthermore, the extra money it would cost probably indicated that I ought to give up on Minot anyway. Ragnar is expecting me there to do live combat shows with him, but these things happen.

If things worked out just right, I figured, I’d be able to disappoint pretty much everybody.

Then my guy came back and said his friend had looked at it, and could do it. Only he couldn’t cut the tree down for two weeks. However, my guy said he could clean up the branches on the ground this week.

In other words, it looks like it’ll work out perfectly.

Except that it’ll cost me a little more, but still it’s about half of what the professionals ask.

So how did I handle this test of my faith? About C-, I think. Maybe D+.

I’ve been thinking lately that maybe I worry too much about my emotional responses. The important thing, it occurs to me, is not how I feel, but how I force myself to say, “Praise God. Thy will be done.”

On the other hand, my feelings affect how I deal with other people, and my expressions of faith and peace could be much, much better.

Ah, well. At least I can put it online. “Praise God. Thy will be done.”