Losing your keys

Maybe you recognise these initial thoughts when your daily routine is interrupted.

Here is how my Wednesday progressed after reading that chapter that very morning.

I decided to paint the wall in the study with the testing pots I bought. Opened the first pot of paint and thought the lighting could be better to see what I was doing, so I move the lamp. And that is when instead of the paint hitting the wall as intended, it flowed out of the tub on to the desk and onto my new white t-shirt. Within less than a second I exclaimed “Horlicks”, well something that sounds very similar, and as I sat on the chair pulling at kitchen roll to wipe up the paint my mind was on the very edge of going to my instant reaction, “stupid me, why am I always so dam clammy? Why can’t I just be good enough and do things without something going wrong?”

But instead I started to laugh out loud as I remembered what I had just been reading. As I was laughing and wiping up green paint, there was a familiar sound out on the landing, one of the cat’s was being sick. I admit I stopped laughing at this point but didn’t go to my next instant reaction “oh you have to be joking, really, can nothing go right just once?” So I cleaned up the paint and the cat sick, thinking to myself actually, the paint spilling was a pain but it was not going to be the end of the world, and the cat being sick, while that’s not his fault, we’re all sick at one time or another.

Later in the day, I was putting the dishes in the dishwasher when I went to close the door and nipped my fingers in the plastic that needs mending. Let’s say even though my husband was not home his ears would have been burning as I blamed him for not fixing it. And then the chapter came to mind again. It was not my husband’s fault that my fingers where nipped, he wasn’t even there, and was reminded that he had tried to fix the problem before.

During the day I realised that it’s during the daily ordinary inconveniences that I can and do show “the neediness and sinfulness, neurosis and weakness that I try to ‘pretty’ up and manage through control, ease, and privilege are suddenly on display” as the author writes. It was at this point I realised in the past that I would have made the majority if not all those daily inconveniences personal, that they were an attack at me. So yesterday’s inconveniences would roll in to todays, and both would roll into tomorrows and so on until I would be weighted down in my mind and emotions that everything was against me. And then when there was a true big life crisis put on top carrying all the other small things it became too much to carry, eventually I would become sharp in my words and tone with people, mainly those closest to me. Over time this would exacerbate the mental health illnesses of depression and anxiety within me.

These small daily inconveniences show the other side of me, the anxious wanting to be in control, to be ‘good enough’ need within me and it is at this place that I find myself needing God’s amazing grace and love. I have come to find that if I can deal with and take to God what is really happening inside of me, what the root of my true reaction to the situation is really about, I can deal with the situation a whole lot better. I find I can first ask God to forgive me for my reaction or outburst, and then speak to him about what is really going on within me, anxiety, lack of confidence, wanting life to be easy. I have found that the quicker I can do this and recognise what is being triggered within me, the quicker I can leave it and not have to carry it around inside of me all day, which can make or break the rest of the day.

What I have come to find, as the author had, is that God is interested in every aspect of my life, every second, every activity, everything big, small, convenient, inconvenient, happy or sad, good or bad, God wants to be living every moment with us. Why? Because it is during these daily tasks, those daily inconveniences God can use to bring light to my inner being, my heart, my spirit and help me to work through those reactions enabling me through His grace and love to become whole.

I want to finish with the authors final thoughts to this chapter:

“When Jesus was approached by some “pretty good people” who were offended that he hung out with sinners, he compared God to a women who had lost something. God’s eager love for us ventures into the undignified and outsized, like the woman who is a little over the top about a lost coin, sweeping out rooms and looking under the furniture until she finds it. God searches more earnestly for me than I do for my lost keys. He is zealous to find his people and make them whole.”

Questions: