Little Details

                   So, I might be a little controlling in some areas…  

           I like things to be done a certain way.  

But it’s funny the things that I let slip by.  For being such a detail oriented person, I seem to miss a lot.  

It is so easy to get stuck in the motion of a day that I focus on all the wrong details while missing all the right ones.  I can work the floor all day, in and out of patients’ rooms and see the tasks left undone.  I can feel overwhelmed by checklists and hardly stop to know who I am doing them for.  I have heard some of the most incredible life stories, usually in what I had thought were the most inopportune times.   

                                  And it’s not the work left undone I remember.  

The moment’s that touch my heart the most are from the smallest detours in the checklist.  I have been told that the biggest moment in one individual’s day was the smallest break in time for a short prayer together. 

    It is so easy to miss the small stuff but it is very much the biggest stuff in the long run.  

I was recently reminded of a book I read some time ago called “1,000 Gifts” by Ann Voskamp.  In it, the author lays out an idea put into action of tracking all these small gifts that fill out the day giving it meaning.  

These are the gifts God has left us for our sanity, and how easy it is to observe them and never take note of the gift that it was.  I started tracking these for myself, and even when looking back at days I know were very hard, even on those days there have been so very many blessings.  Bright crisp moonlit nights, whipped cream sticking to my nose, sister-friends singing harmonies.  From the harder days came off key Christmas carols by the chemo nurses, baby toe peeking out from an old sock, and long drives with miles of fields rolling by as far as the eye can see. 

Thanksgiving a few weeks behind, and Christmas a few in the future brings these moments of thanksgiving to mind along with thoughts of family.  I am stunned by all the family my heart is drawn to at this now.  Those in my house, and in my parent’s house; the family in friends; and homesickness for a family I’ve mostly not even met yet.  I wonder from these warm blankets what the Christmas without snow will look like for my family nearly 2,000 miles from here.  Even in this, it is hard to focus on the small details instead of the big distances.

 

    

1,224 musical tones from ventilators

          1,225 city of Christmas lights

                    1,226 fuzzy head of almost baby hair

I am focused on getting to Guatemala, but God has been reminding me time and time again to remember the details.  Not the important ones like timing, or checklists, but the unimportant ones like elevator conversations with strangers.  But I think we might have it backwards.  What really matters?  Because it’s not the measurable, but rather the unmeasurable. 

1,227 making the connection through corn and farming talk

           1,228 pathetic snowman facing warmer weather

So, that is where I am right now.  I am working and gaining experience in far more than just nursing skills.  I am going to school to enrich the care I give in the hospital, and in the home.  And I am raising awareness for what God has been doing in the heart of Guatemala.    

Please continue to remember me in your prayers as you remember the ministry and the many, many families giving and recieving the love of Christ.  

            There it is.  

                   Trying to be enraptured by this moment while racing on to the next.  

1,229 line of kids jumping off the last step of the bus

               1,230 dietary tech whistling Christmas tunes down the hall

                                1,231 watching my first nephew grow   

                                                  Thank you God for these many moments.