(Okay, so it wasn't that bad - and the title I stole from a great children's book)
"Am I still good even when everything else is going wrong?"
This morning was a time when I really wanted to tell God "no." The question resounded in my head while I stood rummaging through my purse for my work badge to let myself in this morning. I was already late, going on more late. This morning, I stepped outside to drive to work having not anticipated the snowfall after days of beautiful weather and rain, which melted months of Ann Arbor snow away.
I got up early enough this morning for my overtime shift. Got enough sleep last night, showered and dressed, ate breakfast - and I usually run out the door before eating breakfast, which is eaten a commute later at work - and armed myself with materials to entertain myself between calls for nine hours at work today.
I thought I'd have enough time to drive to work at a nice leisurely pace, but I found myself running and slipping, frantically trying clean off my snow-encrusted car. By the time I reached the State Street commuter lot, I had 6 minutes to 9:00 am - when I was supposed to be on the phone. Better yet, I was stuck behind a car that was driving below the speed limit on the snowy roads - as any competent driver would. While praying that God would hold off the calls until I got there and gripping the steering wheel all the while, I managed to make it to the intersection of State and the entrance to my workplace by 8:59 am - not great, but a lot better than I had anticipated.
Of course, the winding and unplowed Avis Drive would prove slippery and dangerous this morning: my car was swerving wildly as I maneuvered around the curves. At the first curve, it appeared that my car was headed straight for the ditch right next to the lake - not a great prospect for a girl late for work, on her way to being even more late, and possibly stuck in the snow.
Once at work, I grabbed a few support letters for my intended trip to Jakarta so that I could send them from work today - and of course, a few of those slipped from my gloved fingers onto the pavement drenched with salty, dirty snow. And once inside the first set of double doors, I couldn't find my work badge to swipe myself in so I could get on the phones - which is why I came into work this morning in the first place.
Got to my desk, logged into my phone, and the calls started pouring in. It's tax season, so even though I'm routing calls, the stress and frustration from people on the other end - however brief our time together is on the phone - pours into my ears. I had managed to salvage the letters that had fallen to the ground with the exception of two, and placed them on my desk to let the wet parts dry. I felt horrible because I was late, because of the people I'd spoken with this morning, and because of the letter fiasco.
But then I heard a voice behind me asking, "Iris, is Sandy here this morning?" It was a technical support representative named Doug, who had formerly been in our department. I had met him once before in the Customer Service kitchen, and we had exchanged polite conversation at that time - I was just grateful to have remembered his name. "No, she'll be in at ten," I told him. "And are you Indonesian?" he asked, referring to the nearly dried letters on my desk. I told him that I was Filipino and explained to him about this trip coming up. I had no idea of his belief system, but told him that if this is what God wanted, He would provide everything that we needed.
Doug proceeded to share with me that he meets with international students in the Ann Arbor area on Friday evenings and they participate together in a time of Bible study and fellowship. I was set to have calls come into my phone while we were talking, which was quite some time, but no calls came in. I realized that the conversation might not have taken place if I hadn't been late, dropped some letters in the snow, and laid them to dry out on my desk. I actually got choked up when I realized this during the conversation, thinking about how God is good even when everything feels like it's going wrong. And, I'm hoping to meet some of these students and learn about what it's like to live abroad - and perhaps even share with them the love of Christ.
So, 7.5 more hours to go until my Valentine's Day dinner plans (the men in my Bible study are making dinner for the women!) - but I won't be counting down. I'm actually excited to see how else God is faithful while I am sitting at my desk today, even when I am so faithless.
Saturday, February 14, 2009
Wednesday, February 11, 2009
green lights; or thoughts on how I ended up here, writing this post
Sipping lukewarm Biggby hazelnut coffee with the ever essential hazelnut creamer and sugar in it - I never drink coffee black - between calls. This is significant because on the rare occasion that I drink coffee, the coffee available to me is either straight from the work coffee pot or from the 60 cent cups in the vending machine next to the coffee pot (my favorite flavor is the chocolate mocha raspberry...)
It's lukewarm because Wednesdays are my "late shift" day. Work starts for me at 10:00 am, as opposed to 8:30 am. This morning, the Renewal Services team hosted an appreciation breakfast for everyone in Customer Care and Retention (the internal name for our department). I missed the initial warmth of the coffee because I was having breakfast with my friend Steve at Panera on North Campus.
Breakfast with Steve is significant also because I think the last time we saw each other was probably this time last year. We met through mutual friends as seniors in high school. Steve played in a jazz quartet with some friends of mine, and I was a regular at their gigs. At their last gig before we all left for college, I finally introduced myself to Steve because I found out through the grapevine that we would both be attending the University of Michigan that fall. Found out that he would be in the Engineering School, and that he'd be living on the Hill Campus. I was a liberal arts kid living on the Central Campus, so I figured we'd never see each other once we got to school - was I ever wrong!
My first Sunday as a student at Michigan, I slept in and woke up close to noon that day. I was horrified about the prospect of missing church - a part of my Sunday mornings since the day I was born. Fortunately, some people from New Life Church defied the solicitation policy in the dorms and put an invitation to attend their church service on my door. I threw some clothes on and rushed to the Modern Languages Building (MLB) to catch the service at 12:02 pm. After the service, I watched the lecture hall go from a sea of unfamiliar faces to just a few unfamiliar faces - except for one.
I knew the face behind the glasses under a mop of curly, dirty blonde hair. We ended up talking about church and played ultimate frisbee at a welcoming lunch after that. I didn't think I'd see him again, but when I walked into my Musicology 341 lecture the next day in the MLB, I saw Steve sitting in one of the rows towards the back of the auditorium. We decided to "church search" together that week, and spend the rest of the semester counting the "um's" and "uai's" uttered by our lecturer (who was a very learned man! But I think we counted about 125 in one lecture, which means at the very least that we were paying attention...)
One day, Steve said to me at class, "So, there's this church I think you would really like..." I asked him to describe it to me, and I realized that it sounded very similar to a church that some of my international student friends had told me about. "What's it called?" I asked him. "Harvest," he replied. Upon hearing about this particular church body initially, I recoiled at the thought of attending a church that was predominantly Asian demographically. But here was this this non-Asian friend of mine offering to check out the church with me on Sunday, and should he meet me in front of my dorm? Sure.
Ironically, I was the one who ended up staying with the church called "Harvest" and Steve ended up becoming very involved with the Campus Crusade for Christ ministry. After our class together, we barely saw each other due to studying different disciplines, boyfriend/girlfriend relationships, and our various scholastic and church-related commitments. Despite the never-seeing-each-other that I had anticipated prior to our college days, we managed to pick up where we left off each time we saw one another.
I mention all of that because I found out last week that Steve had remained in Ann Arbor after graduation, was working in a lab, and got engaged last July - so I made him have breakfast with me this morning before I went into work. We still couldn't be more different from one another, other than the fact that we are both living in Ann Arbor post-graduation. I'm not engaged, and I'm planning to move to Indonesia in July.
Steve mentioned this verse in his prayer over our breakfast: "Help us to 'Trust in the Lord with all of [our] heart[s], to not lean on our own understanding; in all of our ways, acknowledge [You] and [You] will make our paths straight.'" (Proverbs 3:5-6) After that, he said it was his prayer for this season in his life. I guess one other thing that we have in common is the fact that, though trials and difficulties come up (a lot of things are up in the air for this move to Jakarta; Steve is wedding planning with his fiance while job searching), I see how God has sovereignly directed our paths, however they differ from one another. And He still is.
When I dropped Steve off at his home after breakfast on my way to work, he said that sometimes when he drives down State Street (my route to work), he gets all green lights and the trip goes by really fast. That has never happened for me before, but today it did! I am not saying it's because Steve said it - and perhaps it is; regardless, I saw it as God knowing that I needed the time to get to work on time (which I did, with time to spare). It was a reminder to me that God really does care about the little details in my life - and if you're reading this, He cares about the details in your life, too.
It's lukewarm because Wednesdays are my "late shift" day. Work starts for me at 10:00 am, as opposed to 8:30 am. This morning, the Renewal Services team hosted an appreciation breakfast for everyone in Customer Care and Retention (the internal name for our department). I missed the initial warmth of the coffee because I was having breakfast with my friend Steve at Panera on North Campus.
Breakfast with Steve is significant also because I think the last time we saw each other was probably this time last year. We met through mutual friends as seniors in high school. Steve played in a jazz quartet with some friends of mine, and I was a regular at their gigs. At their last gig before we all left for college, I finally introduced myself to Steve because I found out through the grapevine that we would both be attending the University of Michigan that fall. Found out that he would be in the Engineering School, and that he'd be living on the Hill Campus. I was a liberal arts kid living on the Central Campus, so I figured we'd never see each other once we got to school - was I ever wrong!
My first Sunday as a student at Michigan, I slept in and woke up close to noon that day. I was horrified about the prospect of missing church - a part of my Sunday mornings since the day I was born. Fortunately, some people from New Life Church defied the solicitation policy in the dorms and put an invitation to attend their church service on my door. I threw some clothes on and rushed to the Modern Languages Building (MLB) to catch the service at 12:02 pm. After the service, I watched the lecture hall go from a sea of unfamiliar faces to just a few unfamiliar faces - except for one.
I knew the face behind the glasses under a mop of curly, dirty blonde hair. We ended up talking about church and played ultimate frisbee at a welcoming lunch after that. I didn't think I'd see him again, but when I walked into my Musicology 341 lecture the next day in the MLB, I saw Steve sitting in one of the rows towards the back of the auditorium. We decided to "church search" together that week, and spend the rest of the semester counting the "um's" and "uai's" uttered by our lecturer (who was a very learned man! But I think we counted about 125 in one lecture, which means at the very least that we were paying attention...)
One day, Steve said to me at class, "So, there's this church I think you would really like..." I asked him to describe it to me, and I realized that it sounded very similar to a church that some of my international student friends had told me about. "What's it called?" I asked him. "Harvest," he replied. Upon hearing about this particular church body initially, I recoiled at the thought of attending a church that was predominantly Asian demographically. But here was this this non-Asian friend of mine offering to check out the church with me on Sunday, and should he meet me in front of my dorm? Sure.
Ironically, I was the one who ended up staying with the church called "Harvest" and Steve ended up becoming very involved with the Campus Crusade for Christ ministry. After our class together, we barely saw each other due to studying different disciplines, boyfriend/girlfriend relationships, and our various scholastic and church-related commitments. Despite the never-seeing-each-other that I had anticipated prior to our college days, we managed to pick up where we left off each time we saw one another.
I mention all of that because I found out last week that Steve had remained in Ann Arbor after graduation, was working in a lab, and got engaged last July - so I made him have breakfast with me this morning before I went into work. We still couldn't be more different from one another, other than the fact that we are both living in Ann Arbor post-graduation. I'm not engaged, and I'm planning to move to Indonesia in July.
Steve mentioned this verse in his prayer over our breakfast: "Help us to 'Trust in the Lord with all of [our] heart[s], to not lean on our own understanding; in all of our ways, acknowledge [You] and [You] will make our paths straight.'" (Proverbs 3:5-6) After that, he said it was his prayer for this season in his life. I guess one other thing that we have in common is the fact that, though trials and difficulties come up (a lot of things are up in the air for this move to Jakarta; Steve is wedding planning with his fiance while job searching), I see how God has sovereignly directed our paths, however they differ from one another. And He still is.
When I dropped Steve off at his home after breakfast on my way to work, he said that sometimes when he drives down State Street (my route to work), he gets all green lights and the trip goes by really fast. That has never happened for me before, but today it did! I am not saying it's because Steve said it - and perhaps it is; regardless, I saw it as God knowing that I needed the time to get to work on time (which I did, with time to spare). It was a reminder to me that God really does care about the little details in my life - and if you're reading this, He cares about the details in your life, too.
Sunday, February 1, 2009
contentment
I have to be at work in about 7 hours and I am writing at this ridiculous hour of the night because....
my heart and tummy are full (after a weekend which started with The Problem of Pain, by C.S. Lewis, discussing the idea of suffering, breaking fast with community, learning more about Indonesia and Islam, chatting with friends on the other side of the world, two Superbowl parties, and an hour-long episode of The Office!)
my mind is racing at a million miles an hour thinking of everything to do, and how little time I have left here (but soon I'll have to learn how to convert that to kilometers - and also account for the traffic in Jakarta...)
my body will likely be tired once I set foot on the Thomson Reuters "Kinesis" logo rug immediately after the two sets of double glass doors of 880 Technology Drive, Suite B
but "while outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day."
And if this is all confusing to you just know that I have learned how to be content with my circumstances, and am trying to learn how to be content in all circumstances - whatever may come. (And if this is confusing, it's probably because I have neglected to post on recent significant developments in my life, which I guess means subsequent posts to come!)
my heart and tummy are full (after a weekend which started with The Problem of Pain, by C.S. Lewis, discussing the idea of suffering, breaking fast with community, learning more about Indonesia and Islam, chatting with friends on the other side of the world, two Superbowl parties, and an hour-long episode of The Office!)
my mind is racing at a million miles an hour thinking of everything to do, and how little time I have left here (but soon I'll have to learn how to convert that to kilometers - and also account for the traffic in Jakarta...)
my body will likely be tired once I set foot on the Thomson Reuters "Kinesis" logo rug immediately after the two sets of double glass doors of 880 Technology Drive, Suite B
but "while outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day."
And if this is all confusing to you just know that I have learned how to be content with my circumstances, and am trying to learn how to be content in all circumstances - whatever may come. (And if this is confusing, it's probably because I have neglected to post on recent significant developments in my life, which I guess means subsequent posts to come!)
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