A Run-of-the-mill Wednesday

First I burned my finger on the hot wooden spoon I haphazardly let lay across the pan. Next I cut my thumb opening a can of kidney beans. Once the profuse bleeding subsided and I was bandaged by my helpful fellows who happened to be home today, I began stirring the chili again, dropped the spoon and spotted the floor with onions. Is God trying to tell me something? Like get-the-heck-out-of-the-kitchen?

Wouldn’t it be great if God’s signs were so simple? I’ve often lamented the need for a neon billboard with specific directions addressed solely to me. Kind of like that big Jumbo Tron screen we’ve heard so much about in Texas this football season. But I’d settle for a message directly from God on the screen at the Super Bowl in Miami this weekend. Dear Maureen, Divine blah, blah, blah… Love, God. No, I haven’t lost all my marbles. Not yet, anyway. Perhaps some are jumping overboard though.

Hasn’t God given us a book chock full of words of wisdom, history, parables and eye witness accounts? Yet still we long for the tailored-just-for-me answers. Maybe it’s because we’ve gotten lazy. Too lazy to read the Bible. To lazy to search for the meaning behind the words in our own lives. We want to be spoon fed like babies. Yet we don’t want to be treated like babies. We are plain never satisfied, are we? I suppose I should speak for myself.

I’m trying to unplug these days. To realize that I can only do so much. I go with the flow hoping the current doesn’t wash me and my marbles downstream. Believe it or not, it’s another learning time for me. I’ve graduated from little boys with little troubles to big boys with bigger, more life-altering concerns. And I have to grow up accordingly. I can’t do this thing called life for my sons. I’m not sure I’m doing such a great job of it for myself! However I have stepped back to let my dear ones sink or swim many times in the past year. By now they all know I’m around with the life preserver if they really need saved, but for life’s little bumps my boys ride out whatever storms they encounter.

And I’m weathering my own storms. Life’s made up of the many little moments, don’t you think? It really isn’t lived on the peaks. Life’s lived in the valleys. Striving toward something or away from something. I’m not quite sure where I am yet. But I do know where I’m not. And that’s half the battle.

At this Sunday’s game I’ll catch a glimpse of the huge TV screen, but I won’t be seeking divine intervention. I’ll just be watching a football game with my five men. Building another little chunk onto my life.