Sometimes I hear God loud and clear.
It’s not that He’s sometimes speaking to me, but more that I’m sometimes listening.
And when I’m not listening very well to something He is adamantly saying, He sometimes has to show me. And most of the times, when He sometimes has to show me something, I don’t see it. Not the first time. Probably not the second. Maybe I will see it the third time, but I can’t say for certain that’s always a truthful statement.
Today, God showed me the trashcan. It took THREE times before I saw it plain as day, and realized that I have an awfully quick handed relationship with that thing.
FIRST GLIMPSE (I totally missed this one):
I thought it was a container of butter.
It wasn’t.
I was scraping it out into the trashcan before I realized it was orange frosting.
My mother-in-law’s frosting, to boot!
Horrible, horrible mistake.
It looked like re-solidifed soft butter.
Butter that had been firm, then melted, and then re-firmed.
You know what they say about looks…that they can be deceiving?
They were. And I didn’t think twice about it.
I thought it was something it wasn’t.
SECOND GLIMPSE (missed this one, too):
I thought it was trash.
An empty package.
It wasn’t.
I had thrown it away, tied up the garbage bag and hauled it outside to our curbside trashcan before I realized it was a brand spanking new package of chewing gum.
A pack my husband would later be hunting for.
It had been sitting atop the counter in the kitchen with other trash items:
and empty can, broken pencil and torn in half junk mail.
You know what they say about the company you keep?
This pack of gum was hanging out with the wrong crowd.
That’s what happened to it.
I thought it was something it wasn’t.
GLIMPSE THREE (this one I got! I finally got it!)
I thought it was a forgotten soft drink.
There was a ring of condensation beneath it.
It wasn’t.
I said to my son, “Daddy forgot to take his drink to work”,
and I popped off the lid and dumped it in the sink.
It ‘plopped out”, the last quarter of my son’s milk shake.
You know what they say about judging a book by it’s cover?
I did that. And that’s what happened to the milk shake.
I thought it was something it wasn’t.
“Lord, I’m so quick to discard things, discounting them as things they are not. Oh, Heavenly Father, do I do this with more important things, too? Like people – my relationships with them? Situations? It’s so easy to ‘keep tidy’ by throwing things aside, or by getting rid of them all together. Lord, I need Your help to distinguish between the things of value and the things that are to be cast aside. Please help me to see Your hand-sewn opportunities beneath the exterior coverings of people and situations that are of value to You. I don’t want to go through this life missing those opportunities. And Father, I need Your help also in knowing when to let things go. Help me to listen and see better, Lord. Thank you for Your patience with me, and unwavering love, despite how messy I am. I love you! In Your Son’s name, Amen.”
the toenail 