When you’re at the hospital preparing to take home that 7-pound bundle of joy, the nurses don’t provide any advice on dealing with stress. They don’t even hand you a book.

I was thinking about stress recently when my wife called me at work and said, in a tone of voice that matched the circumstance: “There’s water in our basement!”

We already had a garbage disposal that wasn’t working, a dishwasher that was leaking and a clothes drier that wasn’t drying. With three small children, clean clothes and dishes are a necessity. Things weren’t looking good, but God soon provided. The basement leak slowed, and we pinpointed the problem. We fixed the drier (lint blockage) and then discovered that the dishwasher leak was linked to the broken garbage disposal.

Through it all, we told one another: Don’t stress out, this is small potatoes. In other words: Keep things in perspective.
Continue reading →