With Jen and the boys out of the house, and me being a little under the weather, I decided to retreat to the bedroom for a much needed nap.

As I began to doze off into the land of REM, I felt it...a slight tickle on the back of my neck. I immediately took care of the problem with one swat of my hand.

But before I could drift back into Napville, I felt it again; and again. I quickly turned on the light pulled back the covers and put on my glasses.

The problem? I was sharing my bed with a group of ants!

Every year around this time we have an ant problem. A few years ago, we came home from Thanksgiving and found our kitchen infested with ants who had invaded our food pantry. We spent several hours pulling out all of our food and throwing much of it away. I had to make a special trip to the store to buy more ant spray.

We thought we had corrected the problem only to find more ants the next morning. We weren’t sure where they were coming from but they were somehow getting into the house and into our food.

We finally decided to call a professional who came and sprayed around our whole house. Since we’ve been on an exterminator service, our ant problem has been severely reduced, but it has not been completely eliminated.

Just last week, the exterminator was here to spray around the house and the next day, we had ant in the house.

I thought to myself, “Why in the world are we paying for this service?” The fact is though, without the service, I’m sure our problem would be 100 times worse. And with one phone call, the exterminator came out, sprayed some more and took care of the problem...until today.

The ants were invading our bed because there were food crumbs left there by our twin boys, who often eat graham crackers in our bed while watching a video when mommy or daddy takes a shower.

The food crumbs were just enough to attract these unwelcome holiday visitors.

It seems to me that our lives are often invaded by unwelcome visitors in the form of unforseen circumstances, trials and events. The impact of these unexpected events is determined largely by how much we’ve prepared for them beforehand.

If we’ve been in the habit of doing preventative maintenance, then when the trials come, the impact is manageable. If not, the impact can be damaging and costly and we may even need to get a “professional” to help with the problem.

In my own life, I’m realizing that I haven’t done a good job lately of building reflection time into my schedule. The result is that routine “invaders” have had a more negative effect on me than they should.

Please pray for Jen and me—that we would be taking “preventative measures” to help us deal with the trials and unforseen events that come up in our lives.

Pray for our marriage also. Pray that we would be building into it so that when trials come, we are prepared for them and their impact is minimized.

Thanks so much for your partnership with us in reaching students for Christ.