But I'll Miss Him

Chris is miserable sick. You know the kind of sick that makes everyone around him miserable too. The dog needs another surgery. I need to go to the grocery store. The next six weeks of school need to be planned. And I have another headache.

I was on the way to the grocery store.

He isn't asking us for perfection; He is asking us for faithfulness.

Perfect, or even good, faithfulness isn't going to stop Him from accomplishing His will. 

The statements from various sermons played in my head as I was trying to dodge the jumping bean of an injured dog and not slip on the ice that can be neither melted nor shoveled away (I have tried.)

It just makes me want to hang it all. What is the point if nothing I'm doing really matters?

My thoughts devolve comparing the way I wanted this first Friday in 2013 to look and the way reality has painted it. 

Really what does it matter? I turn from starting the car to give the rabbits fresh, unfrozen water, and sunshine.

I trudge up the path I've made in the snow wearing my inappropriate for snow winter boots. I miss the thankful in all those times I trudged in appropriate for snow winter boots making the path so that I don't have to change boots before the store (or wear boots I don't want to wear).

I slide passed the dog, take extra steps to the path shoveled between house and driveway. 

I would really miss Him. If I hung it all, decided it all didn't really matter in the grand scheme of things, I would really miss Him.

I remembered other sermons by a different pastor. Talking of Billy Graham's friend turned atheist then interviewed. He spoke in the interview of missing Jesus. (I looked up the quotation, but frankly, am too lazy to do the research necessary to determine for sure if it is a Christian urban legend or not. And I'm not sure for my purposes if it matters.) 

I miss You. I would miss You. I miss you now. I don't want to hang it all; OK most of it, but I would miss you. I just want to see you. . . 

My thoughts change with the idea of missing Him for I would. I know He's been compared to an imaginary friend (and I'm making Him sound like one here), but I know His presence, and I know His voice, and I know His touch. 

This year hasn't started the way I wanted it to, and we are in various states of flu-recovery, some more frustrated than others, and there is talk of dog surgery and permanent birth-control treatment of symptoms, and other babies expected for other families (a hard rejoicing). It is true. But there is visiting at the Target entrance with a best friend, and there is the man passing along the cart at Aldi when I didn't have a quarter to trade, and there is pasta and sauce in the pantry, and a new friend made in the feeling unfamiliar church becoming ours. 

And I shuffle words on a page, and I think through a new year: plans, resolutions, words, hopes, and I remember that it isn't about perfection and it isn't about faithfulness. It is about Him, and how I would miss Him if I hung it all.