Learning to sweat the small stuff

There are so many strategies (and a very popular book) that exists to help us learn how to not sweat the small stuff, how to keep all the mundane details of life from overwhelming us, how to de-stress and focus on what’s really important. And it’s true, sometimes the insignificant things in our daily lives weigh us down, frustrate us, and seem to be completely frustrating.

I had one of those kind of days yesterday. I walk in the door to our office suite after the long Thanksgiving holiday only to discover a fuse had shorted out, cutting off the power to the refrigerator, shutting down the computer network across campus, and to make matters worse, disabling the coffee pot for the morning. After my boss cleaned out the freezer, and the IT people restored connectivity… I discovered the day was just beginning. The network outage screwed up the links in our newly implemented online course evaluations and all the links had to be re-done manually; my classroom door was locked; my co-instructor didn’t show up; the computer didn’t work in class… and before I knew it, the day was just mildly chaotic (and that’s an understatement). Go ahead, laugh... I know you want to!

As the day’s events started to pile on, I lamented the lack of an office door to shut the world out and recover in peace and solitude. Students came by all happy about the impending end of the semester, all excited to share about their breaks, all peppy wanting to hear about mine. One by one, I blew them off and ignored them. One by one I tried to explain that it was a bad time, that I needed to focus and to re-group, that I would catch up with them later.

Then, it happened. Two of my co-workers were out shopping for a project they were working on and they returned with peppermint milkshakes from Chick-Fil-A. Wow, those are good shakes! And words cannot express how much that small act made a difference in my day. It was a small and unexpected act of kindness that quickly became the bright spot in my day, for sure. It didn’t even phase me when I went on to spill some of said milkshake on my dry clean only, nice dress pants. Maybe I even just smiled at that point.

Yes, sometimes it is easy to be overwhelmed by all the small stuff of life. But as I was thinking about my day later, I also began to wonder if sometimes life isn’t in the small stuff. Maybe life is not always about the big picture and the big tasks that God gives us to do. Maybe sometimes it is more about the little stuff, how we handle (or don’t handle) all the little mishaps along the way; maybe it is about the little celebrations and acts of kindness that we do for others that truly demonstrate our faithfulness and our heart.

I look back at the chaotic events of yesterday, and I realize how quickly I became caught up in everything that happened to me, how quickly I abandoned the conversations and joys that I have with students. And then I also realized how much of a difference the small but thoughtful act by my coworkers made in my day. And I wonder who made the most difference. That’s an easy answer.

I want to learn to sweat the small stuff… to be faithful in the small stuff, to be thoughtful and compassionate, to show God’s love in small ways, just as much as in the larger positions and service that I do.

“Whoever can be trusted with very little can also be trusted with very much, and whoever is dishonest with very little, will also be dishonest with very much.” – Luke 16:10 NIV