I'm not very good with "extra" time.
There's always so much to be done that I don't like wasting time on things like showing up early.
Which means I'm usually five minutes late.
I probably should work on that.
However, I will say that most of my scheduled meetings with other organizations have women just like me and they, too, don't like to leave a single unproductive minute on the clock, so they're usually five minutes behind as well.
The street people have learned me well. They tell the newbies, "Look, dude...she'll get here when she gets here." Which makes me feel a little bad because I should be more careful with my time.
But then they add, "But if she said she was coming, she WILL be here." Which makes me feel good because I know that they trust me to honor my word.
My husband is not so understanding.
In fact, it drives him crazy that I will go find a 15-minute task if I have ten minutes to kill.
Like yesterday.
We were going to meet at the flea market owned by some of our friends to pick up some dishes and furniture for the three new families we moved into apartments last week. They were coming from the woods or shelters and had very little.
So this was important.
But he was in Mobile, an hour away, and I had to go to the UPS store.
Finishing my errands in 15 minutes, I certainly couldn't give up 45 whole minutes waiting for him to arrive.
I needed to pick up a few groceries, including the items to make Sunday lunches for the homeless coming to church Sunday.
So I went to Wal-Mart.
Now, a bit of miscommunication occurred because I thought my husband was going to call me when he neared Pascagoula. He thought, erroneously, that I was going to already be there since I had finished all of my errands.
And we both got tied up with ministry.
He was on the phone with two of our ailing church members, struggling under the weight of extensive health burdens.
I ran into Mickey, an older gentleman who basically lives on the bench right inside Wal-Mart.
I've known him for about a year and a half now, learning his story when we did the homeless census in 2015.
He's been in and out of the hospital for the last few months, dividing his time between the doctors' offices and Wal-Mart, sleeping on a couch at a friend's house at night.
Like many couch surfers, he is required to leave during the day.
I'd gone up to the hospital to sit with him a couple of weeks while he had surgery, but his surgery date had been moved when I arrived. He doesn't have a phone so I wasn't able to get the new date.
So there he was when I walked in and we caught up.
And I discovered that he was trying to get on disability, but had been denied.
Because he owns land.
He also once had a home on said land but it burned down and he's been homeless ever since.
He had no insurance.
So he borrowed my phone to call an attorney that someone had recommended.
Giving her all the information, she took my number down and told me she'd call me back. I assured her I'd get the message to Mickey.
I was in the dog food aisle when she called.
"He needs to put up a tent on his land and claim it as his permanent residence," she told me. "That way it won't count against him."
She then told me he would need someone to help him go through the process because he seemed to have limited understanding.
I offered to bring him to her office for an appointment.
"Oh no. He doesn't need to pay attorney fees for something so simple. We don't want to decrease his benefits."
Shock and awe, dear readers. Shock and awe.
As I moved on to get the rest of my groceries, my husband called.
"Where are you?"
"At Wal-Mart."
(Insert the typical, I thought..but you said...conversation that occurs between spouses...)
"I'm hurrying," I said as I quickly went to get a canister of sugar for the Coffee Room at church.
Scanning up and down the sugar aisle, I couldn't find it anywhere. I was right next to the shelf and frantically searching.
Remembering a previous search for the sugar on the coffee aisle, I was pretty sure it had ended with me realizing coffee and creamer were on one aisle, the sugar was on another.
But it wasn't there.
Did they move it?
I was getting frustrated.
I needed to hurry.
I looked again.
Where is it?
I played out a potential argument of my time management skills.
I imagined our friends thinking I didn't care or wasn't grateful for the items they were donating because it was taking me so long to get there.
And then He spoke.
TAKE A DEEP BREATH. TAKE A STEP BACK AND LOOK.
I did just that.
As soon as I stepped back and calmed down, I got a whole new perspective.
And there it was.
Right on the edge of the sugar display, unable to see even in my peripheral vision at such a close proximity.
I had been just too close to see it.
The message was obvious.
We get so wrapped up in a problem or situation that we can no longer see the whole picture.
It may be our own struggle, or a struggle we are trying to help a loved one through.
20/20 vision isn't attainable with your nose pressed against the screen.
Literally or figuratively.
Take a deep breath. Step back and look....
We should learn to do that with EVERYTHING.
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