shifty shifts

Chris and I have a plan to run together once a week. We look at our schedules, pick a time when we are both off, and plan to meet. We usually try to do it in the morning, but last week we didn’t have any mornings available, so we planned to do it after one of my afternoon shifts.

The shift was a little overwhelming. I was the shift on duty, and there were too many partners there asking me questions at the same time while I was in the process of training one of our new partners on the bar. This consisted of me trying to explain to Patrick, our brand new high school graduate, that there is one less pump of syrup in a caramel macchiato than there is in a caramel latte, and that it is actually vanilla syrup in a caramel macchiato instead of caramel syrup, and how many shots are in a latte and that there is an extra pump and shot in the venti iced but that’s the only one…all this in the midst of making these drinks for the seven people in line and funneling questions as they come…from every where…while standing on my feet for a full eight hours. I am not complaining (in case that’s what it sounds like). It was actually kind of fun. It’s just that when I sat down in Chris’ car after having changed my clothes to work-out appropriate attire, I let out a big sigh, and she detected from my sigh and the look on my face that the last thing I wanted to do was run. It was also sickeningly sticky muggy hot. She didn’t want to run either. So she suggested we go get ice cream. I didn’t contest. The next thirty or so minutes consisted of us driving around looking at beautiful old homes, Chris in the drivers seat enjoying her mint chocolate chip on a cake cone, me gobbling down my cookies and cream in a cup. Thank you Braum’s for a surprisingly sweetly cool afternoon.

Speaking of overwhelming shifts, I picked one up at a store today in Bixby. They needed a shift manager and I was off and I needed the hours. The only problem is that it is a drive thru store, and I was the shift on duty, and I have absolutely no drive thru experience. I work at a café store. We have no headsets. We have one of everything…one frappuccino station, one bar, one ice bin…we don’t have seven of everything. We do not talk to people unless we are standing in front of their face…and I like it that way. It’s simple and inviting and cozy and personal. We are convenient, don’t get me wrong. For better or worse, that is a key component of Starbucks. But convenience isn’t the only reason people come to our store. Our customers are willing to give a little more. They are willing to park their car and actually walk in, even if it’s raining outside. They have not given up on personal service, in the same way that I refuse to use the self check out lane at Albertsons. I would rather have a crabby check-out girl ring me up for something twice than listen to a computer tell me what to do. And then tell me to undo whatever I did that it just finished telling me to do. It’s infuriating, and I would take being furious at a human over a machine any day. The drive-thru was chaotic and confusing, and I am glad that when I open our store tomorrow morning, there will be no sliding windows to open, no headset waiting to adorn my head upon arrival.

patchiness

I am sitting here thinking about the orange I was eating. It was very robust…strong, even. I peeled it and started to dig in. At first glance I saw some dryness. A fraction of the slice ends were a little juiceless. But the rest was actually very good. I was sitting here staring at the remnants of peel on my leg, and the inedible part of the orange lying on top of the peelings, and thinking that if I was telling someone about my orange, I had sufficient evidence to say it really was a bit of a disappointment. One of the very first pieces I bit into was flavorless. I could have just trashed the rest of the orange after that first bite, assuming it was all the same. But I realized that my interpretation of the orange didn’t have to be like that. I could instead focus on the good of mr. navel…the pieces I had that were so cold and sweet and juicy, and let those pieces determine the outline of my morning orange experience. And it made me think of life and the way I interpret events that happen…how so often I want to look up and say to God, “why.” And so often I do look up and ask him why a good chunk of my orange was bad…why could it have all been cold and sweet and juicy…why did my first bite have to be bitter…Instead of thanking him for the fantastic orange, for the parts that that were pretty delicious, and also for the parts that weren’t, because they helped me appreciate the delicious parts that much more. Now my hands smell of orange citrus fruit and I am thankful.

I have been thinking a lot lately about the idea if purposeful things happening in our lives that prepare us for something else. There was a period of time where questioned God’s care, and whether or not he led us to places He intended us to be, or if that’s something we just tell ourselves so that we have some kind of security in the decisions we make. I have since came to the conclusion that He does lead us, and gives us situations to handle for a reason, because He knows our hearts and our strengths and our weaknesses and what we can handle. A few examples:

Pam’s sister is pregnant. She is due in two weeks. I saw her this weekend and asked if she was able to sleep at night. She said no. It makes sense, knowing that there is a child curled up in a fetal position pushing around all of her vital organs, namely the bladder. I would think that a pregnant woman feels ugh enough during the day that a good nights rest is pretty essential. But God knows that in a few weeks she will have this little person screaming at her in the middle of the night, and that it will be a while before she sleeps well again. Most of the women I have talked to that have had children say that was nearly impossible for them to sleep during the last month plus of their pregnancy. It makes me wonder if that was God’s way of preparing them for the sleepless nights that they are about to face.

Turtles. I have passed so many turtles on the country roads around where I live. I am sorry to say that the other day I actually ran over one. I wish his shell was indestructible. Is wasn’t. But…it got me thinking about what God was thinking about when he made turtles, and my theory is that in the beginning, he was having some fun with how they would walk. He could have given them legs like a dog, so that they could run fast, or like a cat, so they could climb trees. But he didn’t. He gave them legs that would enable them to get from point A to point B…but very very slowly. After He made the legs, I envision him laughing some, and thinking to Himself how cool they look. And then reality sets in and He realizes how slow they will have to go, and that this puts them in harms way more than other animals. He probably thought for a while about how to change the turtle’s legs without messing with the essence of their coolness. And then it hit Him! A shell! And so I like to think that God meant for them to have shells because they couldn’t run fast or climb up trees and He wanted to protect them.

Me. I am learning to silence my inner critic, so let me know if I am out of my mind. But I have been thinking lately about how blessed I am with friendships. I truly believe that there are people that go through their life without experiencing what true friendship is about, and I am blessed to have experienced it many times over, to be experiencing many times over. The other thing is that many of these friends came into my life through no real effort of my own. I didn’t take out an ad in a newspaper, or sit on a bench that I knew a lot of people would walk by. I was just making decisions and living life, and they were there. For some reason, God decided to bless me in this way. And the doom and gloom in me has just been thinking a tiny little bit that in His infinite wisdom, he knows that I will never find a life long love, and that I more than other people will need wonderful friendships to help sustain my soul, kind of like my own little turtle shell or sleepless pregnant nights.

The upside of this is that most times when I start to jump ahead of God and plan what He is thinking, and kind of try to conjure up my own version of infinite wisdom, I am wrong. It’s just something I have been thinking.

Ideally, I will someday marry and will also maintain these friendships and there won’t be a trade off. Ideally. But either way, I see how He is taking care of me, even when I don’t feel it, and that riding His wave is much more fun than making my own. I feel all yucky when I start to manipulate my life. That doesn’t mean some things aren’t in my hands. If I don’t eat, for example, I will starve. But His ideas are usually much better than mine, and when I intentionally ignore them for what I think would probably be better, it ends up being worse, and my soul feels all shaken up.

I don’t really know how to end this post because is feels a little patchy, so I will end it by saying it feels a little patchy.