God Goggles

 

Life is full of people and stories. My absolute favorite aspect of working at Starbucks is when I actually take time out of my day to connect and see what is going on in our customers’ day to day lives.  It’s so easy to take for granted the fact that I see them all on a day to day basis and sometimes I forget that they have things that happen and go on in their lives just like I do.  Sometimes it is so easy to take for granted that people are always sweet, nice and happy everyday. The fact remains that no matter how hard we try we are so far from being perfect. In all truth I don’t think that being perfect is actually something that I would want.  The  proverbial pedestal that one can so easily fall off of is scary and not something that I ever aspire to crawl atop of. Yet the ever nagging want and desire to be perfect remains and I want to make sure that I have done the right thing. That when all is said and done all that could have been done to make something right will have been done and there was nothing left to do make the situation any better.

 

Being a person that always says that I am going to do such and such means that I will do it.  Life, however, sometimes gets in the way and I will inevitably fail the ones that mean the most to me as well as perfect strangers.  The humbling moment found in these failures is that when I lose sight of the simple fact that people will fail me just as much as I fail them regardless of their intent. To assume positive intent when it comes to the ever challenging customer service side is at times the most challenging part of my day. It is so much easier to assume that an individual meant to be unkind or rude on purpose. Although that is hardly ever the actual case. There have been countless times where I have been taken back completely when I’ve taken the time to find out just what it is that is going on in someone’s life. Someone going through the loss of a loved one, some horrific illness, or loss of employment does not have an actual sign that says they are going through such a tough time.  Being open and real when the time is right, to be there for people when they need it the most, is what I feel we are called to do, even when it is the absolute last thing that we want to do.  

 

The walls that people build are real and full of moments where other people have failed them.  I know for a fact that I have many layers of walls that I so carefully construct when meeting new people. Sometimes my walls are even worse when I am learning to trust someone again. It is so much easier for me to stay reserved or perhaps laugh it off, keep it simple and just not say anything rather than to actually confront the walls before me. Its the ever encompassing fear that people will leave me and never return that seems to make certain points in my life harder to manage than others.  What if they leave me and fail me and never come back?  The saying: “Don’t be afraid of losing people in your life. Be more afraid of losing yourself in the process.”  made me realize that deep down I knew people never really set out to hurt me. That at times it was simply their wants and desires that took precedence and never truly had anything to do with me in particular.  Human nature makes moments like these more self serving than giving. Some people have the gift of giving more than others. As my mom would say some people are the givers.

 

The process of breaking down these walls comes with the trust that God has bigger and better plans than the ones that we may found that failed us. We make plans all of the time but sometimes our plans are not that of what God really and truly has planned for us.  It is in the moments that things don’t always go as we would like that we are stretched the most. It has been in my weakest moments that I have had to seek God above all else. I always like to think that I have everything under control as life always does though my plans don’t always go as planned. The truth of finding where our true strength lies when we need strength beyond this world is beyond our own understanding at times. There have been countless times that I have had to trust in His plan above my own. These instances have always grown me and helped me to seek more of God and all of His glory when we don’t always have the eyes to them. As I was told once, one must “keep the God goggles on.”  These goggles allow us to see the good when it’s the absolute last thing we want to see, they help us see hope when all we see is destruction and can help bring us peace when all we feel is turmoil…if we let them.  So here is to a week of keeping “The God Goggles” on, seeking more of His love, connecting with others,  and being the change in the world that we live in.   #bethechange #lovealways #makeadifference

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