Moments in the Mundane

Today was a supremely disorganized day at work…not because of me, not because of anyone, really. Things just did not go as I had planned. The day began with a fire drill, which included the staff running around and forcing people out of bed, and into the hallway – pajama clad. The weather was smoking hot, forcing us to cancel our outdoor games. We decided to throw together a “jam session” (not the jelly - the music). The woman playing the piano had no sense of what song she was playing, the man playing the guitar broke his pick, got up and left, never to return, and the omni-chord would have been fabulous, if it could have been about sixty times louder. Luckily those listening had a good laugh about all of the shenanigans.

I hate the feeling of not being in control of a situation. I want guarantees; I want things to go my way (who the heck doesn’t?) God asks us to surrender our lives to him, giving up control and potentially sacrificing our own desires. This scares me! I have to remind myself daily that His ideas for my life are much, much better than my own plans.

I don’t really understand Psalm 37:4, “Delight yourself in the LORD and he will give you the desires of your heart.” The desires of my heart have not always matched up with His…I know this because some of the things I’ve prayed about were not addressed how and when I would have liked them to be. In retrospect, I am thankful for this. Perhaps it is because I’m not really ‘delighting’ myself in Him.

I suppose I have come to understand and embrace the fact that I do not always know best, and I am willing to follow someone who knows. I say I’m willing…some of the time I’m willing, a lot of the time my stubbornness gets in the way. Sometimes I am simply apathetic; I get carried away with what seems important, focusing on what is present in front of me at the moment.

There are times when I am woken up. I was reading part of this book called Velvet Elvis; the author was talking about these “…beautiful moments in the midst of the mundane” that cause us to become aware that there is something bigger than what we can know or understand.

I was thinking about what some of these moments have been for me…I know I’ve experienced them. There was a moment like this last week at work; on Friday a resident received a fruit basket for mother’s day; she brought it out at tea time to show it off…she wasn’t really showing off the gift, she was just so excited that her son had cared enough to think of her. It was just a simple, special moment that we could see inside of her.

These are times when I need to see this...moments like this cause me to re-focus and re-direct my thoughts and myself.