Interruptions

I wanted to get up early, but C.J. encouraged me to stay in bed a little longer. I had been up quite late the night before. He thought I needed a little more sleep.

By the time I arose, the demands of the day came rushing at me in rapid succession. There was breakfast to fix. Conversations to have. The unexpected phone call. Family members to shuttle from point A to point B. One interruption after another.

It was 10:00 a.m. and I still hadn’t taken a shower, much less made progress on my to-do list. I was struggling. This wasn’t the way my morning was supposed to go. I wasn’t completing the tasks I thought were most important. Peace and joy had vanished.

Then I recalled this perspective-altering thought from C.S. Lewis:

“The great thing, if one can, is to stop regarding all the unpleasant things as interruptions of one’s ‘own,’ or ‘real’ life.  The truth is of course that what one calls the interruptions are precisely one’s real life—the life God is sending one day by day; what one calls one’s ‘real life’ is a phantom of one’s own imagination.  This at least is what I see at moments of insight: but it’s hard to remember it all the time.”

—The Letters of C. S. Lewis to Arthur Greeves (20 December 1943), para. 5, p. 499; quoted in The Quotable Lewis, (Wheaton, Ill.: Tyndale House Publishers, 1989), 335.

It is hard to remember. But what a difference it made when I called to mind this biblical truth.

All these interruptions—they weren’t interruptions after all. They were “sovereign deliveries.”  These “unpleasant things” were God’s perfect plan for my day.

Contemplating this bit of wisdom brought a smile to my face. And from that moment on, I met each subsequent “interruption” with joy. The shower could wait.

My prayer is that, next time, God will help me to remember this truth. Because Mr. Lewis was right. It’s easy to forget.

“This is the day that the Lord has made; let us rejoice and be glad in it.” Psalm 118:24