Sometimes

The guy in the garden center at Lowe's helped me load up my new red mulch and my beautiful new doomed flowers and ridiculously overpriced handpainted flower pot that I just HAD to have and he asked me, "Do you believe you have a calling?"
It was a pretty deep question from a guy in the Lowe's garden department.

I told him, "Yes, I believe that." Even though I am still trying to figure mine out but I didn't say that.

He had a very heavy spanish accent so it was hard for me to understand every word but I was listening intently to try and get all the words because he was talking really fast. He eventually went off to talk about how he thinks he was born to be a fighter in MMA and someone out of the blue told him he should be an MMA fighter and he thought it was a sign.

I wasn't sure where it was going from there but it seemed really important for him to tell me this and so I listened as we loaded up the huge bags of mulch together because I was stubborn and wouldn't let him do all the work.

The conversation went quickly, only the time it took to load up two carts of full of flowers, mulch and a toilet seat (can you tell me the difference between a $10 toilet seat and a $30 toilet seat? Is there really that much difference? All I care about is that it is hard plastic, which most of them are. Beyond that, what are the perks? Different post for a different day I suppose.)

So we were finishing and I said, "Thanks so much for helping me!" and he said, "Thank you! I really believe God sends angels to give us messages don't you?"

And I said, "Yes. I do."

OK so this sounds pretty crazy but for some reason that last comment impacted me.

It actually made me cry when I got in the car. I know. Really random, from the guy at Lowes talking about being a MMA fighter.

But still.

It was a big question and it was a question that was on my heart last night when I got an email back from my son's teacher at his school.

Do I believe that God sends me messages?

I do.

With my whole heart.

Sometimes I get a nagging feeling about something, a gut feeling, where I am compelled to do something I would never even imagine doing, and even in a desperate sort of way because it is something that I CAN'T NOT do. I don't believe this is my mind talking.

Sometimes my fingers fly across the keyboard without so much as an actual thought in my head and I wonder where the words came from.

Or there is something that is a total shot in the dark, it makes no sense whatsoever, there is no way in the world it will work out, but it does. It works out. And I've learned not to ask why because I will always figure that part out later.

There is always a because. A reason that something has happened.

Sometimes I find myself at a crossroads and I cry, I mull over the possibilities, the choices, I agonize and I pray for an answer or a direction.

I get one. Maybe not on my time. But I get one.

When I get over "myself" and look outward, toward the bigger picture, I close my eyes and listen, and in days, sometimes weeks, the answer just comes. Whatever has happened to me that makes me question or agonize or worry, the answer is almost never about me.

The picture is always bigger than the one I have in my head. The answer sometimes simpler, sometimes not even one of the options.

So this past week, I discovered Socks for Japan.

I've been in agony over how to help besides donating to the Red Cross and Socks for Japan spoke to me and I kept going back to it in my mind and I couldn't stop thinking about it. I wanted to do this with my kids but will my tiny contribution with just me and the boys be enough to make any impact whatsoever? And I think, "No. It has to be bigger than that. But how?"

So I open up an email and start typing away to my sons' teachers about Socks for Japan to see if they will get the class involved in this project and I do it without thinking and I think my fingers aren't my own, they are typing for someone else, and a couple hours later she has emailed my email to everyone and now I am spearheading a Socks for Japan project at their school.

I still don't know where it's going or if it will be successful, but it doesn't matter. It's like my mom says, you send out little seeds into the world and you find out which ones stick into the ground and grow and which ones don't and they aren't always the ones you thought would sprout.

That nagging feeling? That voice in your head? The person sent to you as if out of nowhere to talk some sense into you, support you, identify with you?

I don't know if it's angels. I don't know if it's the man Himself doing all that, but I do believe that if you listen, you will hear a voice in your heart, your head, your gut or where ever it lives and who ever is saying it will tell you "why" and "what." It is more than a conscience and I believe that.

It won't always be what you want to hear or the answer to the "why" that you asked. And it won't tell you everything, but it will tell you something.

You just have to listen. Like I'm listening now.