Tip of My Iceberg

There are things I participate in while in Colorado that I never do in Orlando.

Perusing garage sales is high on that list.

I don’t make time to go to neighborhoods to look at other people’s stuff back home. It makes me uncomfortable. It feels like I’m passing judgement on their taste or things when I paw through tables of their salable items.

It doesn’t bother me here. Maybe the weather is more conducive for treasure hunting. Maybe it’s the neighborhoods being new and different.

Maybe it’s the options. People get rid of really good stuff.

We had a mission. (Looking is always more fun if there’s a purpose.) We’d been tasked with finding wooden chairs. Straight-backed and sturdy. Our daughter, Melody, is on the design team for our upcoming conference. She needs 200 wooden chairs that she and her team will sand down and paint white.

She has specific elements of design in mind.

I’d seen some chairs I thought would work. I jumped out of the car and made a beeline for ones I saw at one home. Three dollars a piece. Wood bar stools that could benefit from some sanding and white paint.

When I got them to the car, Heather deadpanned, “Mel won’t like them.”

I was now personally invested, to the tune of nine dollars. “They’re wood. They even swivel. What’s wrong with them?”

“She won’t like them. They don’t fit the design.”

Design? 200 random used chairs and she’s talking design?

I huffed and puffed a bit. When a good effort is overlooked because of a lousy outcome, it stings a little.

I got over it when I found the colossal elephant.

Still on mission, daughter Tiffany and I were looking for treasure. She found a white wood chair and managed to get it for free.

I found a huge stuffed elephant that was bigger than half the grands.

Really big stuffed animals serve no real purpose. They take up a lot of space without doing anything. No batteries. No automatic moving parts. They’re just there.

They make me smile.

I asked the young girl how much, and she looked questioningly at her friend. “Three dollars?”

I looked in my pocket.

“Would you take two?”

“Sure.”

I walked out with the largest stuffed animal I’ve ever gotten. For two bucks.

Hang the chairs. This was my find for the day.

The little ones were lying all over it, like a furry body pillow.

There are times that the things I want to do in life aren’t fitting the design of who I am. Who God’s made me to be. Compromise is the easy way. Not a lot. Just fudging a little.

Compromising a perfect design plan is never a good idea.

And yet, God always surprises me with the unexpected. Things that delight me that I hadn’t been looking for.

It’s like a grin and a high five from Jesus. Every day of my life.

I need to stick with the plan of who I am. Not mess with His design that works.

It’s why great plans work. A lot has gone into making them the best.