It’s funny, when we moved to a lake on the East Coast, in so many ways, we had no idea WHAT we were getting ourselves into. Escrow closed, and we moved into our new (to us) home in late October. In September we drug our little eighteen-foot boat across country and put it in storage until we got into our home. As our movers were unpacking the truck, one of our new neighbors, a retired three-star Marine general, came over to introduce himself in the sub forty-degree weather. He mentioned that we will need to ‘winterize’ our boat; they were going have someone come to the lake and take care of their boat this week, and he would be willing to make a call to see if we could piggy-back on them, and get our boat ‘winterized’ at the same time. We had no idea that ‘winterizing’ a boat was a thing, and that we needed to take care of it. The next day, even though it was really cold outside, the wind was blowing hard, my husband decided we needed to get our boat out of storage, on the lake, park it at our dock located on the lake behind our house, so we could raise it out of the water and the ‘boat guy’ could come and ‘winterize’ our boat when The General set it up for us. My husband bundled up in his warmest clothes and went to the storage yard, hooked up the boat, and brought the boat and trailer back to the house. The General and another amazing neighbor saw the boat in front of our house and offered to help my husband get the boat tucked away on our dock. The three of them jumped in our SUV and pulled the boat to the launch ramp a few miles away. It was only then that my husband realized the plug was not in the boat. Embarrassed and panicked, he came bounding into the house, where I was unpacking my ‘Precious Moments’ collection all over the floor in his office, out of the way from all the traffic in the house. As he ran in the office, he reminded me of a young child running through a yard full of leaves, kicking the figurines with every step he took. Heads flew in every direction! I sat there, with my mouth gaping open, looking at the office floor as if it were a battlefield. Not even seeing the damage he had done, he began dumping boxes all over the place, looking for the boat’s plug. ‘The General’ came in, saw the broken figurines broken all over the floor, suggested that he could take my husband in his car to Walmart to pick up a $2 boat plug. As they left, I began retrieving all the pieces, and looking for unbroken figurines. To my surprise, although there were pieces everywhere, only a few figurines were broken… some of the Precious Moments had flown through the air but did not break or chip. When my husband and the neighbors got back from getting the boat in the water and tucked into the dock, he came into the house and apologized for the massacre and mayhem he created. I told him that it was okay, I had fewer things to find homes for. We had a good laugh out of it.
How many times have we gone through a season where we run aimlessly, leaving a wake of little dead bodies in our wake, so inner focused, we have no idea what is happening around us.
“Don’t be interested only in your own life, but care about the lives of others too.” Philippians 2:4
Sometimes we need to slow down, look around, and take into consideration the people around us, what they are going through, and how they are affected by our actions. He didn’t mean to harm anyone or anything, he was only focused on getting the boat in the lake and had no idea that the floor of the room he ran into was full of figurines strategically place all over the floor. As he made sure he didn’t take up too much of “The General’s” time, he did not see the office more like a minefield, with obstacles in his way. After the boat was in the water, my husband came in and helped me finish cleaning up the devastation left behind. He stopped being inner-focused and became aware of the precious moments on the floor. We also found that is was ironic that these were “Precious Moments” that had been tossed, crushed, and left in devastation. It was a reminder to us that we can trample, ruin, and hurt the ‘precious moments’ we have with family and friends, by being into too big of a hurry, and not enjoying the little moments in life.
