This is one of those weeks where every day seems to bleed in to the next. Not in a way that makes you feel good about it, but in a way that makes you think that you've lived one long, never-ending, bad day. It all started last Thursday. I got to worship practice to find that the sound board we have had everything erased off of it. Lesson hard-learned: back everything up. It's a digital board which for a while made our lives way easier. Now it seems as though the goal of the console is to make life something to not be enjoyed.

On Saturday, I found that my bank account was -$567. Of that amount of money, $208 of it was my spending...the rest was all overdraft fees. I was sick. It was my mistake, I'll admit it. I transferred funds to my savings account before the rent check had cleared. I had figured that my rent check had cleared by the time that I had moved the funds, but obviously I was wrong. So, through calling the bank and explaining the situation, I found that the corporation that currently controls the flow of my finances has absolutely no grace and no mercy, even though in the 13 years that I've had an account in same form or another with their establishment I've always been a good customer and never bounced a check/payment. I called customer service and talked to 3 tiers of associates before I found someone that was willing to help me out, even if it was in the least bit possible. So she told me that she would credit back a minimal amount of funds ,to which I said I guess it's better than nothing, and she told me that no more fees would be assessed. She said that she had taken care of it and I would see all of the information reflected on Tuesday. So what do I find when I check on Thursday night? I find an extra $165 in fees and no credit amounting to $95 (the amount she said that she could credit). So you'll never guess what they told me when I called them about the issue at hand for the second time. "Sorry Mr. Royer, I can't do anything. I understand that if the associate that you talked to said that they would do something for you that it needs to be followed through with, but because it's not the bank's error, there's nothing that I can do." So, let me pose you this question: When did the phrase customer service come to mean doing absolutely nothing?

To top all of this off, we filmed all day Thursday afternoon and evening and when I checked the film on Friday morning, a scene that I thought was filmed had actually not been filmed, so we had to go back Friday morning to re-film the scene and had to wake up at 7:30 am so I could edit before I went to work at Lowes. I also got to wake up at 7:30 am on Saturday morning so I could finish editing before I had to be up at church for sound check. We, fortunately, had more technical problems pretty much all of Saturday night, it felt like I forgot how to play guitar when we stepped on stage to play worship, and due to the technical problems, I had to be at church by 7:00 am this morning to try and work through some of the stuff. I'm tired.

It was mentioned tonight that it seemed like my joy was gone in my work and it made me stop and think. I'm so thankful for my job at the church. I love my work and love the opportunities that I get to use my talents to glorify God. I feel like the main goal of the past two weeks was to push me down and then kick me a couple of times for good measure. But regardless of how much the enemy decides to beat me down...and regardless of what area of my life the enemy decides to pressure, this one thing rings true through my head at this very moment: God's bigger than that. So what if I'm having crippling financial issues, God's bigger than that. So what if I'm tired and just want to sleep and and don't know how much more I can take when I walk through the door at Lowes, God's bigger than that. So what if everything I've worked towards for the past 7 months was for some reason was undone and I'm still feeling the technical ramifications of that, God's bigger than that. Through all the crap that's taken place over the past 2 weeks, I know that God is bigger than all of it and I know that I know that I know that He'll be glorified through this, even if I can't see why or how.