When life shoots the unexpected in your face

After a day of running errands, I stood in the cosmetics aisle of my grocery store at 3:42 p.m. I had exactly 18 minutes to decide on a lipstick color, checkout, and get home before the school bus arrived. Squatting to get eye level with a row of pink lip colors, I read the labels: rose, pale blush. muted mauve. I remembered why I hate shopping. Why can’t pink just be pink? The eenie meenie miney moe approach sounded tempting. I grabbed a color from the shelf to get a closer look, and the spring that pushes the remaining tubes to the front of the shelf was apparently over-anxious. Six lipsticks shot at my face, scattering up and down the aisle.

Did I mention how  much I despise shopping? And that I had 18, no make that 15 minutes to get home? Grumbling under my breath, I waddled down the aisle collecting the lipsticks. I pushed the spring back to make room for the tubes, but I apparently needed a third hand to hold the spring back because it took two hands just to get each one back in place. After wasting a precious minute, I laid them on the shelf behind the spring.

Growling through my teeth, I threw into the cart whatever nuance of pink had flown at my face . Turns out I didn’t need eenie meenie miney or moe after all.

I made it home with two minutes to spare.

It was just lipstick, but while I was crawling around on the floor, I was reminded that life has a way of throwing the unexpected in our face. Things much bigger than grocery store mishaps. Things we would never ask for. Things that don’t fit into our plans and schedule. We thought we’d be on our merry little way by now, but instead we’re crawling around picking up the pieces to something we didn’t see coming.

I have no wise words of encouragement, no 3 steps of how to handle the unexpected. I just wanted to say to you, whatever your unexpected is today, I care. And I know that God cares for you too. But if you aren’t in the place where you can accept His care and love for you, will you accept mine? And if you are in need of some extra support right now, I’d be happy to pray for you. Feel free to e-mail me at amelia (at) ameliarhodes (dot) com.

And if you’re blessed to be standing upright on your merry little way, look for those who are crawling on the ground. Offer to help them pick up the pieces.