Bits for Sunday, April 12, 2009

In my office, I have a copy of the bestselling (how??) book Who Moved My Cheese. I’ve never actually read the book, but I have seen the movie. (If you know the book at all, you will understand the extreme disturbance of that sentence.) According to the Wikipedia summary, the book is “a motivational book by Spencer Johnson written in the style of a parable. It describes change in one’s work and life, and four typical reactions to said change with two mice, two ‘little people,’ and their hunts for cheese.”

I love cheese. Real life cheese. Not parable cheese. And my reaction to both real life cheese and parable cheese is not “Who moved my cheese?” but rather, “Put down the cheese. Step away from the cheese. DON’T TOUCH THE CHEESE!!!!”

Life in Bekahland has undergone some interesting (and I use that word very loosely) changes in the past couple of weeks. My friend and co-worker Rachel is on maternity leave and I miss her terribly. When I went to see her and meet the baby, I told her I think I got her post-partum depression because every time I think about how her absence changes work, I cry.

Friendships change – and some change so much that they’re never again what they once were, and that is always hard for me. I try to welcome it because I know that the loss or change on this hand might bring about new opportunities on the other hand. But I still don’t like it.

So in the midst of being stretched and pushed and pulled and trying to hunt the stupid missing cheese that has probably just completely left the state…I hold firm to my stance of not asking who moved the cheese. Just step away from the cheese, please.

Today has been a rainy day here in the great state of Indiana. It didn’t start out that way. I awoke to the promise of sunshine (since evil DST has delayed sunrise from its appropriate hour, I currently get up BEFORE the sun – but I could tell it was on its way) and a warmer morning than I expected. I fixed a for real breakfast, drank extra coffee, donned one of the summer collection dresses – and my sunglasses – and headed to church in the warmth and the light.

When I came out of church, it was raining, windy and cold. And it has stayed that way ever since. I have spent much of the day strolling through the house wearing a much-too-large fleece blanket in a cape-like fashion. It is, after all, April, and I refuse to turn on the heat.

As I stood in the kitchen, making my lunch, I noticed the bird bath in the backyard was completely full – almost spilling over into last year’s dead flowers beneath it. I muttered, “When the bird bath is full, it’s time to stop raining.”

Later in the day, that sentence came back to my mind. How many times has my life felt as full as that bird bath? How many times has the flood of grief or pain or moved cheese seemed to overtake my life and I hastily inform God that it’s time to stop because I have reached my saturation point?

Today it didn’t stop raining. And even six or so hours later, the bird bath hasn’t quite overflowed. I guess it can hold more water than I thought.

And maybe my life can handle more missing cheese than I think.

Even so – this is a verse I have come to love in these days of kidnapped co-jack. Normally I’m an NIV-only sort of girl, but this verse from the New Living Translation is stated so beautifully: You keep track of all my sorrows. You have collected all my tears in your bottle. You have recorded each one in your book. Psalm 56:8.

God knows where my missing cheese is hiding. He sees my overflowing bird bath. He doesn’t miss a thing.