The Time is Now-ish


Last weekend my wife and I went out for dinner. As we finished our meal, we were coincidentally discussing how we wanted to improve our family’s diet, make better meals, get our kids to enjoy vegetables, all that.

“The time [to make these changes] is now”, my wife stated.

“After dessert.”

And in the perfect juxtaposition of competing desires, we requested the dessert menu. And we proceeded to order, then enjoy, a dessert pizza smothered in Nutella.

So how are your New Year’s resolutions going? 😉

Humans, we’re such a mystery, aren’t we? We shoot for the stars, with all our aspirations for healthy living, but land somewhere between 2nd and 3rd helpings of dessert. We boldly declare our desire to change the world, then 30 minutes later pick our heads up to find ourselves mindlessly thumbing an Instagram feed.

As Brennan Manning put it, “Aristotle said I am a rational animal; I say I am an angel with an incredible capacity for beer.”

As a natural-born perfectionist, I’ve had to learn how to be ok with this paradox, to accept clutter, to be patient with process. I don’t like the “work in progress” stage, but I think I’m starting to realize that that’s the reality of it. I’ve appreciated Anne Lamott’s perspective, “Perfectionism means that you try desperately not to leave so much mess to clean up. But clutter and mess show us that life is being lived.”

Here’s to the broken resolutions, the mess and clutter, the extra dessert, and the grace and life that sustain us in the midst of it all.