Small Stuff

“Rule number one is, don’t sweat the small stuff. Rule number two is, it’s all small stuff." Robert Eliot

A few months ago I drove over a deep pothole and instantly knew my tire was busted. 

On the way to the car place, I was explaining to my daughter, in a slightly exasperated, woe-is-me voice, that we were going to get the car fixed. I explained that she had to be patient because it might take a long time and we would have to wait until the car was done to drive home. 

She stopped playing with her dinosaur and started bouncing excitedly in her car seat.

"Mommy is that the place with the table and chairs and the kid toys?!"

"No honey, we're not going to a restaurant or the library. This is the car place."

"Yeah, where we get our wheels fixed?"

"Yeah, that one."

"Mommy, there's a table and chairs and lots of toys there! Are we gonna play with them?!"

I was too preoccupied at that moment to answer her question. After all, I had more pressing matters to worry about, like how much this was going to cost, and how it had put a kink in my entire day, and how dumb I was about having not paid more attention to the holes in the road.

When we got there, lo and behold, there was a kids area in the waiting room, complete with kid-sized table and chairs, blocks, play food, and puzzles. My daughter made a beeline for them as soon as we walked into the room.

"See, mommy. I told you there was kids' stuff here," she told me, as she handed me a little a basket of plastic fruit to "eat." 

I had beaten myself up the whole drive here for not being more careful and for needlessly costing us money. But here was my daughter--she had actually looked forward to her time in the waiting room, while I had been anxiously dreading it. Worry had not prevented this moment or made it better. It had just made the entire time up to it miserable. 

I got a bit of a wake-up call that day. Why do I worry about what might happen or what has happened? Why have I let so many hours, and weeks, and years of my already short existence be consumed by the anticipation of things that must happen anyway? 

I actually had a lot of fun waiting that day. I barely felt the four hours go by. We played and chatted with some of the older folks also waiting. Then we walked next door to get some lunch and watched the mechanics work on the cars through the windows. It had turned out to be such a good day of bonding with my daughter. 

Holy Spirit, thank you for children, who teach me to live one moment at a time. Teach me to enjoy the small stuff that's important and let go of the stuff that is not. 

"Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own." Jesus of Nazareth

“When I look back on all these worries, I remember the story of the old man who said on his deathbed that he had had a lot of trouble in his life, most of which had never happened." 

Winston Churchill