One of my tendencies is to agree to do things. I offer, or people ask me about a volunteer opportunity down the road and my knee jerk response is "Sure!"
Then as the time to show up looms closer my shoulders drop and I shake my head.
"Why did I agree to give away a whole Saturday
morning?"
But there is a rubber band inside me, one end latched on the promise I made last month and the other to my leaden feet. It helps to accelerate my reluctant self and yank me through unwillingness.
Last month there was one of those days. I had cheerfully consented to babysit the kids who showed up for an event at church. I like kids. But the day before the event the number of children coming mushroomed from five with no boys or
babies to fourteen with boys and babies.
Now let me hasten to assure you that I love boys. I have taken them to the stream to catch crayfish, and watched their delight over marshmallow shooters, seen their tousled heads tucked over a box of Legos fishing for the little man piece and helped them build forts out of sticks and cardboard. I also am a long time baby lover. A single innocent baby can stop my grumpiness in its tracks with one eye open. But boys and babies take
a different strain of attention than five little girls chatting over crayons, and did I mention that the time commitment was 4 1/2 hours?
So I drove to the event with John, while he listened to my complaints. Being a wise man, he made no comment that could possibly be gnarled into ammunition for my rant. He said guarded things like, "I love you."
But as each sunny child came around the corner and joined us at a table full of play
dough, my annoyance evaporated. Three middle school girls came to my rescue and raised the big person/little person ratio. It was a very enjoyable morning. We did not hunt crayfish but we did shoot marshmallows.
I think God knows this about me. Perhaps He knows it about you. He gets us to say yes when our belly is full and our heart is resplendent. He attaches the thick rubber band of commitment here. Then comes the middle of the story when saying yes does not feel
like a brainy idea anymore.
I sometimes listen to couples on the other side of here. These are the ones who have flung through tougher stuff than I could have predicted based on research in songs by the Beach Boys or movies like Anne of Green Gables. These couples have been stretched like a brown rubber band, to love each other across messy terrain, to hang on tight when the speed picked up.
But would I really elect to
have missed the wiz bang of a ride to stay where I was when I began?
