I’ve thought a lot this week.  About this week. 

Trying to figure out what exactly it’s meant for me. 

I’ve had quite a hard time sorting it out.  Not because nothing felt meaningful.  On the contrary, because so much did.   

The more I’ve thought about it, though, when I try to see any common thread in all that I’ve experienced this week – I keep coming back to one word: 

Chances. 

I’ve had so many chances this week. 

I had the chance to reconnect in a relationship that means a lot to me. 

How often do we allow life and circumstances to get in the way and cause us, for no good reason, to unintentionally drift away from and lose touch with people?  Even people we really like?

This week, I was touched by a genuine and thoughtful move on the part of someone with whom that had become true for me. 

That led to…

Another chance, along with my husband, to just say yes to an opportunity. (As we have tried to embrace doing as often as possible this summer.) 

We said yes, on very little notice and with almost no planning, to a gracious invitation we received within this opportunity to reconnect.  It led us to some of the very best memories we have made in a long time. 

Doing so brought with it the chance for me to learn something about just accepting hospitality.  That sometimes it makes people happy to invite me to just enjoy what they have to offer; that just my presence matters enough.  I don’t have to hustle to earn anything. 

It gave me the chance to express genuine appreciation and sincere gratitude. 

It turned out to be one of several instances this week where I had…

The chance, with small gestures, to let others know that I’d thought of them.  In simple ways that only took a few minutes on my part, I got to make a few other people smile. 

I had the chance to see and experience beauty in which I could recognize the potential to do just that. 

My husband planted a field of sunflowers for me this year.  Over the past few weeks, it has grown, bloomed, and changed every single day.  It’s tucked just around the bend of the path we use to access it. 

I have thanked him for the time and thought he put into planting it.  I’ve told him that it not only makes me happy, but that it helps me make other people happy, too.  I have so enjoyed cutting fresh blooms; arranging them and gifting them to loved ones; seeing their delighted reactions to this very small thing. 

He told me that it makes him happy just to see my reaction every time I walk up to it. 

Before that makes you roll your eyes and think this all sounds too sickeningly sweet, don’t forget that this is Real Life: 

This week, around the dinner table with our family, I also complained about my frustration with the inadequacy of my iPhone storage.  Only to have my daughter remind everyone that I have the maximum available capacity.  He said, “Well maybe if you weren’t always like, ‘Look!  A bug!  Isn’t it beautiful??’ and then snapping a picture, we wouldn’t have this problem.” 

He does make a fair point. 

But I’d far rather free up iPhone storage by deleting e-mails, texts, and podcast downloads than to ever stop seeing, and caring enough to capture, the beauty I have the chance to recognize all around me. 

I had the chance, several times, to let people know I appreciate them. 

For kindness extended to me.  For jobs well done. 

I had the chance, when one of my children asked my opinion, to offer my thoughts. 

Followed by the reminder: “You are an adult.  I trust you to make what you feel is the best decision.”  Not as any sort of test.  But as a true surrender of any “control”.  Hopefully as encouragement that I really do believe in my children and the kind of people they have become. 

I had the chance, upon learning of that ultimate decision, to feel my heart warmed.  To sleep a little easier that night, appreciating that they still care enough to ask what I think, but have also grown wise and thoughtful enough to make it just fine on their own. 

I had the chance to recognize the ability to do that, and to carefully choose how to handle a few other things, as a glimpse of progress for me.  

I work on myself every day.  I feel so encouraged when those efforts, and mostly God’s grace, help me learn how it feels to live with fewer regrets:  In my actions, my reactions, and my interactions.  “Slow to speak and slow to anger” has never been my greatest strength – to say the least.  But I promise I really am working on it…  

As this week began, Psalm 23 appeared in my life four times in two days. 

Once in what felt like a dream, just as I woke up.  The second time, randomly, in the shower.  The next two times, unexpectedly in completely unrelated things I heard. 

I’ve heard that passage referred to as one of the best-known pieces of scripture, even among those of very little active faith. 

My first vivid memory of it is as the thing that carried my dear great aunt through the death, funeral, and mourning of her husband.  In fact, if I think about it, I usually see it or hear it in just those sorts of circumstances. 

When a thing like that continually shows up in my life, it makes me think and wonder why.  In trying to understand what it has for me right now, I have read and thought about it – line by line – over and over again this week. 

In my search for what it might mean to me right now, a line stood out.  One I haven’t normally considered foremost when thinking of Psalm 23: 

3     he refreshes my soul.
He guides me along the right paths
    for his name’s sake. 

I have had the chance to see some healing happening in my life. 

I have had the chance to forgive, just as God forgives me. 

I have had the chance to learn that forgiveness doesn’t excuse actions that hurt me, nor does it mean that I need ever subject myself to certain circumstances again.  It is also not something I do to make myself look better or as some sort of sacrificial behavior. 

Instead, it goes hand in hand with trying to choose the right path for His name’s sake.  With trying to honor the truth that Jesus loves us all, even when we hurt each other.  It helps free my own heart from anger, resentment, and hurt (all burdens I was never meant to carry). It gives me the chance to feel the refreshment that brings to my soul.  

I’ve had the chance to experience for sure that I have made peace in some areas of my life where I needed to.  To know that some things truly don’t hurt the way they used to. 

I had the chance to feel good about the way so many things went this week; but I also wish I’d done some things differently. 

I failed more than once – this week alone.  Recognizing that reminds me that I am nowhere near finished; that I still have so far to go. 

That I want to take every chance I get to choose the right path and to do better.  To continually refresh my soul.