Tuesday morning I got the kids settled at Kindergarten and preschool and ran back home to get changed for a speaking engagement only to find a sprinkler had erupted and a geyser was gushing behind our garage.
It was literally the worst possible timing for something like this to happen, which is just so like life . . . the unfortunate event disrupts us and delays us and derails us when we are in our favorite shoes and we finally got our hair fixed.
I arrived at the event feeling a little teetery and tottery.
I started, as I often do when I speak, by saying that it’s always a minor miracle when we are able to wriggle free from our lives and carve out time together in a room to connect with each other and with God. Because, frankly, it IS a minor miracle. Or at least it was for me on Tuesday.
I said, as I often do, “Hey, here we are! Clothed and in our right minds (the latter is, of course, said in very loose terms). We did it. We got here. And that’s something.”
I told them about the geyser at my house that morning, and I said, “I don’t know what geyser is or was gushing at your house this morning, what you needed to overcome in order to be here, but I’m grateful that Resistance didn’t win the day. Disruptions didn’t prevail. And, let’s just take a moment and ask God if he wouldn’t mind terribly handling the geysers while we hang out and breathe and drink coffee together.”
So that’s what we did. We prayed for the geysers in our lives—the messes, mudslides, unresolved urgencies, panics—so that we could be in our own bodies, present, and accounted for. We asked God to take the yet-to-be-fixed off our hands for about 45 minutes or so.
And then we communed, and it was so lovely. Probably mostly for me.
Here’s what I know: A soul divided against itself cannot stand. (especially this time of year)
Step 1: Carve out a bit of time, even a tiny bit, and pour yourself some creamy coffee and breathe.
Step 2: Ask God to be in charge of the gushing geysers so you can let go a tad. Something like: “Hey God, the mess is all yours. You’re welcome. Amen.”
Step 3: Begin Again.
(Here’s what else I know: It’s always worth it.)
