I've been on this kick lately to get my life together. By this, I mean living each day perfectly. My perfect day would be something like this: get up in time to read my Bible, take a shower, prepare a healthy lunch, be an awesome teacher with kick-ass lesson plans, come home and walk my dog, clean my apartment, make another healthy dinner, and then enjoy an hour or so in a hot bath while reading a good book.
My problem is that if one tiny things go awry, I give up. For some strange reason, I feel like I can only communicate with God if I'm making good choices and my life is in order. If I feel like my relationship with God isn't good or He's upset with me, I have this strange feeling that the day is lost anyway, so it doesn't really matter.
Today, for instance, I got up early, read my Bible, and made a salad for lunch. In all my self-congratulations, I forgot to grab my lunch from the kitchen. The rest of the day did not go well. I rushed off a school letter that my boss had to correct and then my kids went crazy in the afternoon and refused to learn anything.
I was going to recover, though. Nope, they weren't going to get me down. I had a list of things from Target, Petsmart, and Trader Joe's and I mean an expansive list. This list included fruits, vegetables, lesson plan binders, and toilet paper.
I'm on my way to Target and I'm at this intersection from Kingshighway to 64 West that no joke takes about 5-10 minutes to get through when it hits me: I forgot to turn off the coffee pot at school. Crap. In those few seconds, I know that my day is totally shot. I lose, Wednesday wins. I think, in internet-safe terms, screw it.
I turn my car around, drive back to school and unplug the coffee pot, and head straight for home only pausing to pick up a bottle of wine at a gas station. My day is over. I failed. I might as well give it up for lost and start again tomorrow. I order take out, turn on Law and Order SVU, and pull up a blog that I've read through about 30 times.
Where is grace in this day? Why do I not feel free to fail and try again? Why do I have to wait until tomorrow to start over? I honestly want God to fit in this neat little box on a healthily, happy, day between 6am and 7am. I feel like if I read my Bible and pray before I go to work, and then am productive throughout the rest of the day, then that's good enough.
Maybe the reason I keep failing at this ridiculous goal of "getting my life together" is because I refuse to let Jesus into the hum-drum, messy parts of my day. When things are going great, I pray. When things are falling apart, I pray. When I make bad decisions or slightly aggravating things happen to me, I ignore God until I can start again.
This is just a theory, but I feel like if I let God into every part of my day, prayed before I gave up on going to the grocery store, prayed before I picked up that bottle of wine, prayed before I ordered take-out that I obviously didn't need, maybe I wouldn't need to skip the grocery story, get a bottle of wine, or order take out. My day falls apart and I go to an easy fix, an easy way to forget my problems.
God needs to be in the messy parts of life. He doesn't fit into a quiet time or into a life that runs smoothly without Him. God loves me a lot more than I'm giving Him credit for, and I have a feeling I'm hurting Him as much as I'm hurting myself.
