Day off. It’s raining. I’ve been inside with tea and pillows and calls to family and friends. I also baked a 50¢ can of biscuits to have with cucumbers and little squares of cheese and am now working on the chocolate chip cookies Mom mailed.

Things are getting better. Todd and Matt transferred me to Island Trading and life feels a little less hectic. IT is a smaller store, a newer store, a brighter store… It comes with a little more responsibility and a lot more freedom… Mostly the hours there don’t feel as long and it’s simplified things.

But I’m not working today… it’s raining and things are quiet. I’ve been thinking about how little time I’ve had to think about God or to pray or to read anything good. Just little bits here and there, silent prayers for help or little thanks, maybe a few psalms one day or a short section in a book.

But I’m learning from God still working in spite of the busyness that the best relationships aren’t equal all the time. I’ve been busy, but he’s still been faithful. And I think it’s fair to say that there have also been times that it’s felt like God was busy and I’ve had to be faithful.

It gives me hope that it’s really a relationship, since a relationship is just two beings’ willingness to relate and give life back and forth to each other through resources and ideas and energy and love. When one is unable or unwilling to hold their end of the relationship open, the other waits until they are. And that holding open is the sacrifice that we all know about, that taking up of slack for someone else so that the relationship stays intact.

I haven’t thought it all through, but I suspect forgiveness has something to do with it. That forgiveness is staying open when the other closes off, maintaining the weight of the relationship alone and staying open to the other so that when they come back they can step back into the relating.

Anyway, I feel that right now, that God is working for me when I can’t work for him like I wanted. While I’m busy eating and sleeping to work and running from meeting to meeting he’s arranging things into something better and bringing people into my life to relate to while I’m at it.

Like the other night one of the guys from the old shop came in for two seconds, handed me an open package with one fancy peanut butter cup left in it and said, “I brought you a treat!” and then ran back out again. And another time one of the girls came in while out on an errand to say hi and catch me up on all the goings-on at the other store. A couple of friends and I are getting together after work tomorrow to support a local high school outdoor performance (there’s free pizza somehow involved) and then are having a painting night.

I don’t know if all that makes sense or not, but I had to write something. Maybe I can muddle through it later.

The point, though, is that God is always faithful.