November 20, 2025

Murphy Monday aka Murphy’s Law: if something can go wrong, it will.

A couple weeks back one of my blessings asked if she could do our 35th Anniversary pictures. Now, to understand what you are agreeing to, you have to realize she has to have all the pictures she produces, just right. She somewhat takes after mom and dad in this area for the love of photography but she knows how to do some pretty neat pictures, has a really good eye for effects and such.

I like the result but I don’t think it needs to take so long. She has done photography with me in the past and she places you exactly where she wants you, hair, face, hands, feet, etc. even to the point of one time taking a photo where I wasn’t even looking at the camera. I asked her why in the world do you need to take my sunglasses off if they aren’t even in the picture. In her words, “trust the process, mom!” and then giggled as she continued to set her camera up for the perfect picture.

So when the day was approaching, she said she wanted to do some really neat pictures and that we were going to need patience and I smiled and said, “okay”. Then she said, “a bucketful of patience.” And I looked at her, and cautiously said, “okay”. Then she says, without missing a beat, “a FIVE GALLON bucketful of patience.” As I smiled, I chuckled and said, “well that’s a pretty precise amount”.

So since then, we’ve added that phrase to our other popular phrases we use:

“we’re all just trying to do the best we can”
“and they lived happily ever after perfectly imperfect”
“I don’t have to, I get to”

Recently we had to pull out the newest phrase, “a five gallon bucket of patience”. It started out with a very sick rescue making a big mess of our 4×4 kennel, so we got all the dogs outside, and I started pulling more dirty laundry out and sanitizing the kennel. Then, to get all animals fed and situated so we could take showers and wash our clothes.

I put the pups back in the kennel and then one snuck out of the kennel and ran right through the little cat door, and then the other followed suit. I proceeded to chase them both for a few minutes until my blessing jumped in to help get them.

We finally got them back into the kennel and went to take showers, just to realize we had no hot water. I got out pretty quick, and didn’t hear anything from the other bathroom. I asked, “how was your shower?” She responded, “cold” like it was no big deal. What a good example to me!

Then I go down to turn on the hot water heater switch and do laundry, but alas we are out of detergent. Really?!?! Amazingly enough, I was totally calm in all of this, praising My Lord and Savior, and was actually laughing. Then I remembered I had a dream my washing machine was full the night before. Yep, I had to put all the dirty laundry (two loads worth) piled up in there so it would be out of the way.

We went to the store to get laundry detergent as well as other “necessities” and all the while, just happy to be doing life with all these little creatures, even when some days are harder than others. Speaking of little creatures, my littlest blessing would like to start raising baby snakes. That is where I draw the line to what comes in my home, though somehow she has opened my eyes to the beauty of those creatures, too.

My guess is she will raise them in her own place. Who’da thunk that loving on snakes would be a thing though this was the child who would bring home worms to rescue them from the birds and stink bugs to rescue from I have no idea what. And don’t kill those spiders but catch them and let them free outside.

I believe that we all can learn to wait, to slow down, to learn from the circumstances and the people around us. Many things in life don’t go our way or how we had planned, but if we pause to lean in and learn what God would have us to, we will gain even more patience than we thought we ever had, and realize He had the best plan all along than we could have ever imagined. Sometimes we just got to go through the muddy, sticky, hard, Murphy Monday, five gallon bucketful kind of day. Because in the end, we can look back and see it was all for a purpose to make us who we are today. And, thankfully God is with us through it.

Where in your life have you had to learn patience….a bucketful….a five gallon bucketful of patience?

Blessings,
Jennifer