Tuesday, June 28, 2011

The Best Laid Plans

With a weekend road trip approaching and my car slightly overdue for an oil change, I decided that today would be a good day to take it in for a check-up. I have a card that gives me four free oil changes at the auto dealership, so I took it there. Normally I would just drop off the car, have the shuttle service take me to work and then have a co-worker run me back out when the car was finished, but today I decided to get there early in the hopes of getting in and out quickly. WRONG.

I got to the dealership right at 7 a.m., when the service department opened. There were already a few cars in line ahead of me, but the service guy told me they'd be done in about an hour, so I opted to wait, figuring that I'd be done around 8 and have plenty of time to get to work by 8:30 (my usual start time). WRONG.

Turns out that there was some problem with a piece of equipment that delayed all the service work, so instead of me getting out of there in an hour, it was closer to an hour and forty-five minutes. I ended up being about a half hour late to work; luckily our office is pretty flexible about matters such as this.

My grand plans of getting to work on time (or even a few precious minutes early) were ruined, and I left the dealership extremely frustrated. My only consolation was that the oil change was free, but as a co-worker pointed out, my time is worth something, too. Lesson learned--for the remainder of my free oil changes I will just drop off the car and not wait around for it.

As I drove to work, I reminded myself that, even though I had what I thought was a good plan for my morning, God apparently had other plans in mind. And while I have yet to see the purpose in it, I'm sure there IS a purpose for it. I struggle to remember that my time--all of it--really belongs to God. More so, I struggle to surrender that time to Him. I've become very protective of my time, and I get pretty irritated when something or someone interferes with my plans. So maybe this morning's incident was to remind me that it was really God's car and God's morning anyway.

Anyone else struggle to turn their time over to God? Anyone successfully won that battle and want to share some hints for keeping that reminder at the forefront of your mind??

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