I Can't See

I'm not a crier. I can listen to sad music, watch a movie that breaks your heart, I can even watch someone else cry. I'm not saying I'm cold hearted and don't feel anything - I just don't burst into tears.

It's the far smaller things that cause me to sit in my car and cry at 6am and wish I could simply crawl back into bed and have a do over.

Let's go back to the end of the work day on Wednesday. Snow had been falling through the afternoon, but nothing too major. This is Michigan and it is February. We should be used to it, but traffic was definitely moving at a much slower pace. For the next hour and a half I drive incredibly s l o o o w. By now, I am starving and cranky as can be. I am close to putting my head into the steering wheel but instead slam my water bottle back down in the cup holder. Maybe an extra time or two for some added stress relief. By now the roads are actually getting bad. All I want is to be home.

Inching my way closer and closer... until.... complete standstill. Cars in front of me begin to turn around and I see the flashing lights ahead. Too many flashing lights. And I turn around and go back the 7 miles I just traveled in order to get to a road that I CAN take to get home.

Finally almost 2 hours after I left work, I pull into my parking lot and immediately realize I forgot to stop at the store to return the movie I rented. I went inside, crammed some food in my belly and went back out in the snow. Slide past the apartment entrance, spend more gas spinning tires trying to get up the hill to my apartment (that they NEVER salt). Finally, now after 8pm I am home to stay. In an extremely unpleasant mood.

I go to bed with hopes of sleeping off the frustration.

I wake up and go about my normal routine. Run outside and start my car (no I don't have a remote start) and come back in for the last minute things. I get out to my car, throw it into reverse and turn the windshield wipers on to clear the snow.

EXCEPT

The wiper on the driver's side is gone! Completely taken off. Who steals a wiper blade? And as I am realizing that all I have is a very bare metal arm, I also realize I am stuck in the snow and ice (still not plowed or salted). As I push down on the gas pedal in futile effort to move, it all comes crashing down and I sit in my car and cry.

Pathetic. I know. I don't tell you this to make you feel sorry for me (As if!, right?)

Now I am running late and depite the conditions that require you use wipers, I head to work. At first I can see pretty well but as I went it got harder and harder to see through the glass. Turning a corner as street lights and brake lights reflected off the dirt splatter making it almost impossible to see, it hit me.

This is how we operate here on earth. Our perspective - it's not clear. There is dried mud and truck splatter. It can get hard to see. We need God to be our wiper blade. To keep clearing off the things that make it hard to see what He sees.


1 Corinthians 13:12 (The Message)

We don't yet see things clearly. We're squinting in a fog, peering through a mist. (or trying to see thru a dirty windshield) But it won't be long before the weather clears and the sun shines bright! We'll see it all then, see it all as clearly as God sees us, knowing him directly just as he knows us!

My day did end up turning out better than it started.

I am very spoiled at my job. The guys I work with are so generous and they have done countless things for me (including supplying me diet coke, slurpees, lemon cookies and licorice). My road foreman could tell I wasn't in a great mood and offerred to get me a slurpee today. I turned him down (That's when you know it's really bad!!) I told him about my wiper blade. When I was about to take my lunch and go buy a new one, he had taken care of it and wanted to surprise me. Which then allowed me to work through my lunch hour and leave an hour early.

By the time I left, I was in a great mood. I had even spent quite a bit of time laughing.

Let's just say for a while lemons and cake will not be the same to me...

and I remember the people who love me and care about me - they alone are enough to make me smile.

And without God, it's much harder to navigate this earth journey.




*swish-swish*

(JD... this is pretty long, maybe even panoramic??)