Don’t cry over spilled coffee.
Unless you’re sick. And running late. And barely pull yourself together so you can pick your child up from school and take your sick self to your child’s well-child appointment (irony) where you don a mask to protect others … only to find out the appointment was canceled and rescheduled and you forgot to erase this original appointment from your calendar. And the doctor is not in the office at all, so you can’t get the prescription order your child needs before the rescheduled appointment, so you’ll have to come back tomorrow just to pick it up. But you’re dressed, so then you trudge through HEB because you need supper for your family and hot tea and throat lozenges for yourself. You *thought* you were a coffee drinker, but last week you also thought you had breast cancer, but an ultrasound said “No, it’s cycsts,” and the doctor said “Watch your caffeine intake.” So, now sore throat=herbal tea. And you get home and open your child’s folder to see his behavior clip got moved twice because twice LAST week you forgot to sign his folder, maybe due to a preoccupation with a cancer scare? Likely. So, your son is paying for YOUR mistakes last week, THIS week.
So yeah … you’re allowed a few tears when the coffee tumbler explodes all over your floor. Especially since it was the only cup you’re allowed to have today.
I wrote this a year ago and came across it again today. For the sake of irony, I should tell you that yesterday was incredibly similar, as I once again donned a surgical mask while sick so I could take my healthy child to a well-child appointment, and drug my sick self through HEB to obtain herbal tea and coffee drops. A year to the day, ya’ll. Which brings me to my point:
History repeats itself.
One need look no further than fashion to see this truth. Fads come, they die, they’re shunned for the horror they once were, and they return 30 years later. If you doubt this, simply google the current revival of hair scrunchies and “mom” jeans! (Oh, the Monica, Phoebe, and Rachel of it all.)
I guess the world has run out of new ideas, or just maybe everything is cyclical after all.
Think about it. Even down the microscopic cellular level, our bodies are constantly dying and regenerating. And time? It never stops. Seconds turn, then minutes, hours, days, and so forth. The seasons change. The earth itself rotates. The planets revolve around the sun. Cycle after cycle after cycle.
It makes me wonder: if creation exists in this never-ending loop, then how are we simultaneously running in circles AND slowly ending/dying from the moment of our creation?
I think the answer lies in the question itself. Creation, life, decay, and death … everything exists in a continuum.
I have seen the burden God has laid on the human race. He has made everything beautiful in its time.
He has also set eternity in the human heart; yet no one can fathom what God has done from beginning to end.
Ecclesiastes 3:10-11
It’s a mystery beyond our comprehension.
What we can fathom is this: life on earth ebbs and flows. We will face emotional, physical, and spiritual seasons just like the earth does — of winter, spring, summer, and fall. And it won’t just happen once, but over and over again. Understanding the transience of these seasons helps us to both endure and appreciate them.
For example, as a mom, I feel like every age my children reach is “the best.” I love whatever stage they are currently in, and I don’t want it to change; yet, they’re constantly growing and evolving, and the next stage is always as good or better than the previous one. All these stages are also simultaneously difficult and challenging, or as I like to say, “a different kind of hard.”
Knowing the next stage is now, evolving in this very minute, keeps me grounded, and also keeps me aware of each moment’s blessings.
“Even now,” declares the Lord, “return to me with all your heart, with fasting and weeping and mourning.”
Joel 2:12
Every moment is God’s. Whether in feast or famine, life or death, weeping or celebration … or more accurately, a combination of them all, simultaneously. Turn to Him, time and time again. He holds every bit of ALL of this in His capable hands, eternally.
Repeatedly His,
Expressively HIS ... 