Thursday, January 24, 2013

Working the Butterfly Way


One of the tricks of learning how to pray is knowing what to pray for. In my advanced (love that word!) years, I can see I’ve avoided asking for the one thing I’ve needed, a finishing school to show me the way to work in an orderly fashion. I don’t think that’s the kind of thing  most finishing schools emphasize. My finishing school would not just be for young women and, to tell the truth, I wouldn’t want someone else to be telling me how to work until a task is finished. I think I know that. So, I’m not sure I want to go to such a school, even if it exists. I’m stubborn that way. I want to figure it out for myself. Let’s talk Home-schooling.

Knowing how I’ve missed the mark all these years is a first step. I get started with great enthusiasm toward some goal. I keep at it long enough to see the possibilities and enjoy a degree of success, but after a while some other attractive option comes along and I get diverted. It’s like going down the road and being drawn into side roads. I don’t want to miss a thing.The side roads have their own side roads and before long I may or may not get back to the road I started on. I call myself a butterfly. A butterfly doesn’t stick to a road. But even a butterfly knows where to go at night. I, too, always go home, and I go to sleep blissfully knowing there’s another day to finish what I've started.

I’m not proud of this pattern. It’s just stating the fact as hitherto observed. So, what to do about it? My better self says, “Shape up, gal. Learn to stick to a job until it's done!” My other better self says, “No! Don’t become tunnel visioned. Take off those blinders you’ve been given and look around. Wander all you like; you have all eternity to succeed.” 

If a day has no particular commitments I love to approach it in my butterfly way. I start what I should do, like making the bed, but I deliberately let myself get side-tracked. Like seeing one of the “just for looks” pillows that occupy my bed during the day. It has frayed corners. I go to my sewing materials, find just the right fabric to make a new cover for it. I get out the sewing machine, and here’s where I generally do finish the task. The joy of seeing my new/old pillow on the bed drives me to finish making the bed. Then I get to indulge in the sight of it the rest of the day.

I’m at the point, this minute, where I’ve set aside both the bed-making and the pillow up-grading to write this blog. Now I know I’m not alone, and out there in the blue someone might exist who knows how I can be better with finishing my tasks and still not deny myself the option to start others before I finish them.

Somehow I manage to get things done eventually, but not in the order or pace that society likes to see them done. Dear God, I’m not really praying for a finishing school. It was only a random thought drifting by like another butterfly. Just let me exercise the free will You’ve given me and end up pleasing You. And me too. Thanks! You’re great and You’re good. And You see good everywhere. I’d like that too. Now that’s a task worth pursuing! Or no, I think it’s a gift worth accepting! Like a butterfly in a flower garden.

1 comment:

  1. Thanks Joyce for another lovely post...never fails to put a big smile on my face!

    ReplyDelete