Bits for Sunday, August 12, 2007

Well it’s been an interesting week here in Bekahland. There are weeks that just exude confidence and then there are weeks that just confirm the need to crawl under a rock…or move to Nebraska and start over.

This week was more the second sort of week for me.

You've already read the post about my rather awkward impression with my new boss this past Wednesday. That started my week rolling. (If you haven't read it....just keep scrolling.)

Although I worried that he might be scared of me after that, a couple of days later, he did venture past my door again. This time I was eating my peanut butter and jelly toast sandwich that I have every morning. Great. A few hours later that same day, he wandered by again, this time with his family in tow, showing them all of our offices. I was munching on a cookie that time.
So now I’m pretty sure that he thinks I’m only capable of eating and crying. Kind of like…a baby?

And let’s not forget Friday night. I left work, anxious to get my walking out of the way and settle down for a long evening’s scrap, so I changed from my work clothes to my workout clothes as quickly as I could.

Apparently I changed a little too quickly. About 11:30 that night, when I was getting ready for bed, I discovered my tank top was on backwards. The v-neck was shooting right down my back. Had I only been inside the house that night…no biggie. But of course I’d walked four miles AND made a coffee run when I was done. A coffee run in which I ran into our student worker and her friend. No wonder her friend gave me some weird looks! Who’s the idiot who can’t dress herself correctly?

Yes, there are weeks when to hibernate or move seems preferable to getting up the next day and trying again. At least trying again with the same crowd of people from the day before. And while I generally have a pretty good sense of humor, when dumb moments like this (combined with other dumb moments I’ve blocked out) pile up in a rapid fashion, I lose sight of the humor altogether.

I was looking for something in Ron Mehl’s book God Works the Night Shift, when I found this that I’d underlined on a read-through many months ago. Ron quoted Psalm 40:1, which says, “I waited patiently for the Lord; and He inclined to me, and heard my cry.” He says, “The Hebrew word for ‘inclined,’ natah, paints a very tender image. It’s the picture of a young child trying to get a busy dad’s attention. The child tugs on Dad’s pants leg and the big man stops everything he’s doing, sets it aside, gets down on one knee, looks his child right in the eyes, and says, ‘Okay, honey, I’m listening. I’m all ears.’ Natah implies a bending down to listen, a focused attention, a willingness to turn aside and hear every word…Everyone in the world might be too busy or too preoccupied to hear my cry for help, weak as it is. But God hears me! God drops His intergalactic agenda and falls to one knee to listen to my words.”

And that is a good thing. On the days when I do dumb things like snot all over a new boss or wear my shirt backwards, or say something I didn’t mean, or worry about something completely preposterous, or have a ridiculous dream that proceeds to make me unable to return to sleep…God cares about that. And He doesn’t think I need to crawl under a rock or move to Nebraska. He just listens. Mops up the tears. Laughs (only at the appropriate time). Sends a hug.

And I like that.