20 years & 1000 words

It was about 11 o’clock on a Thursday. My first appointment for the day was at 12:30 pm, about 3 miles south of where I live. I work at home, knew what I needed to get done before this and decided at what time I would need to leave to get to the post office, several miles north of my house, and to this lunch meeting on time. Not that difficult.

Getting out the door took longer than expected. What should have taken me 10 minutes took twice that. I made a mistake doing one thing and had to go back and try again. I left my apartment *almost* on time, only about seven minutes later than originally anticipated.

As I drove north to the post office through I have no idea how many stop lights, it was odd how they were all green. Upon arriving at my first destination, rushing as I pressed buttons on the automated machine, the postage for one of the packages spit out with the wrong city listed. I had mistyped the zip code. Peaking around the corner, I noticed no line whatsoever at the counter. The nice gentleman made it a quick fix, even though at this point, I was pretty sure I’d be late to lunch.

Again, it weird how the lights were all green and the traffic parted like the Red Sea. I made it to my assumed lunch destination in an unusually short amount of time. Now 20-minutes early for this appointment, I thought, briefly, that I wish I had stayed at home to finish one or two things before leaving my apartment so I wouldn’t have wasted time.

Yet, as I was in the lane to turn into the parking lot, it dawned on me that I was at the wrong restaurant. I wasn’t meeting these girl for sushi; we had planned on eating tacos, fie miles mostly east and slightly north of where I was. So I turned around and started driving. It was going to take a while. I considered texting the women I was meeting to give them a heads up.

But I didn’t. I drove. And, again, I drove through empty intersections, only getting caught by maybe two traffic lights. And at 12:30 pm – on the dot! – I pulled into the parking lot of the taqueria. Not a minute early. Not a minute late.

It was at that moment that I couldn’t help but laugh. The timing, despite how botched up it seemed to be along the way, was ultimately perfect.

Often, I make plans. I make plans based on dreams and hopes and needs. I don’t see the things falling into place as I’d prefer. I get frustrated and wonder if I’m praying the wrong prayers, doing the wrong things or am missing what God’s doing completely. It seems as if certain phases and steps are taking too darn long and others go by so quickly that it seems as if I’ve missed out, losing my opportunity to participate. I don’t understand the timing of things and wonder what’s up with that?

But on this Thursday, during this short, minuscule, sliver of life, it dawned on me that maybe – just maybe – God’s timing in the bigger things is just as perfect as my arrival to this lunch meeting, even when it doesn’t match up my thoughts of what writes the best stories, it is the material that makes up the masterpiece of which he is the perfect author for his glory and my good.