It was the worst of times, It was the worst of times…
Okay, that’s dramatic flare, but it’s hard to say it was the best of times because I was going down in flames.
Tuesday night, I sent a frantic message to two of my dearest friends via my phone’s Voxer app (the lifeline for me and my girlfriends).
“I think I’m going to lose it,” I started, always the picture of composure (*snort*), “but you don’t have to help me. You just have to hear me out.” And with that introduction, I was off.
This was the second such frantic Voxer message they had gotten in one week. I’ve had a lot on my plate lately, an extraordinary amount even for me, and I’ve stopped handling it as well as I should. Fortunately, after bad news upon bad news arrived last week, I got a break on Friday. My family and I disappeared for three days to a retreat in San Antonio where we laid by the pool and did very little of anything.
I came back refreshed and ready to go on Monday morning, only to have the week rapidly unravel.
First up, after several threats, our refrigerator irreconcilably broke down. The temperature gauge read 85° when we arrived back in town. Then I had multiple significant work presentations due with little desk time to actually get them done. On Tuesday, my mother fell in her home and was unable to get to a phone or the door. I found out because her friend who had run by her house to visit heard her through the door, and none of us had keys.
All of this against a backdrop of me leaving for a week-long work trip on Sunday which also happens to be my kids final week of school. Tuesday night, while preparing to attend our friend’s funeral the next morning, I discovered one boy had lost a shoe with no back up pair to be found and both boys had holes in the knees of their uniform pants, I started unraveling. As I wandered into another Lowe’s refrigerator-hunting knowing 45 people would be at our house on Saturday for the end of baseball season party, I left my frantic message.
But there is always beauty to be found.
Small miracles await at every corner.
And if anything, I’m more able to recognize miracles when I’m struggling most.
My mom was okay. They broke a window, got her up, and she called sounding okay. Her friends even came the next day to help her put her house back together.
A refrigerator, also miraculously, was delivered Wednesday at noon. We spent all Monday night and Tuesday morning without finding a refrigerator. Plus, the stores reported Saturday was the earliest delivery date (you know, during the PARTY!). Then, I walked into Lowe’s, having already been there twice, and found an in-stock refrigerator in the brand we wanted (somewhat over budget, but exactly what we wanted) and able to be delivered the very next day because the salesman determined a house with triplets and no indoor refrigerator was an “emergency.”
Bray found my dude’s missing shoe in the laundry hamper.
I drafted my two big presentations and had them to their audience in advance of the meeting.
The boys found church pants to wear to the funeral which didn’t have holes.
There is still a lot undone. Pressure and stress and overall end-of-May busyness that comes to loads of families every year.
But small miracles popped up at every turn.
And then, at day’s end, a huge miracle. The kind that is “more than all we could ask or imagine.” (Ephesians 3:20) More on that at a later date.
It’s night’s end. Everyone survived. Our crew are all licking a few short-tempered wounds unleashed under pressure, but nothing that will leave a scar.
We’re okay.
Heck, we’re better than okay.
We’re the recipients of small miracles.
{The second in a series of essays On Living.}
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