Happy Last Tuesday of September, My Friend!
It’s been “a minute” since I’ve written to you! (To be more precise, it’s been more like 43,200 minutes, but who’s counting?) I hope this finds you well and that September has brought you some moments of joy amidst the busyness. I’ve missed our little exchanges—it always means a lot to hear from you and to share these thoughts with you. September is slipping away, as is the year. “As is your life,” sneers the little devil on my shoulder. Pardon me a sec while I stomp the little guy under my feet.
There. That oughtta keep him quiet—for now.
There aren’t too many times when I have a “Well, I’ll be a monkey’s uncle” moment anymore. When you get to be my ripe old age of ahem-cough-mumble, you think you’ve heard of just about everything. However, I read something lately that had me, indeed, comparing myself to a primate’s male relative. I read a devotional one morning about how God “repurposes” things to accomplish His purposes.
Here’s the “what on earth?” moment: It’s an actual job to sink ships “on purpose” to create an artificial reef. Maybe you already knew this, and you’re thinking, Duh, Patti, everyone knows that. I mean, I knew old ships can become reefs, but I never realized they can be prepared, carted out to a specific spot, and then purposely sunk to create one. That can be a person’s job—Sink Shipper Extraordinaire. Although I doubt they list it like that on their resumes.
For some reason, reading that made me feel good. Encouraged. Cheerful. I wasn’t quite sure why at the moment, only that it made me smile. Aside from quietly saying, “Well, I’ll be darned,” it made me ponder that day. And my ponderings led me to this.
I’m glad an old ship that can’t do what it used to do when it was “younger” isn’t just a big old pile of worthless metal. Someone still took it, cleaned it up, tweaked it a bit for its next job, and brought it to the right place to work.
In its heyday, a new ship stayed afloat because that was what it was supposed to do. It was all shiny and sparkly. It didn’t have scratches and dents and could bear the weight of much cargo without so much as a wince. It only “tooted” its horn when appropriate. It never leaked. You could smash a bottle of champagne on her exterior, and it wouldn’t bruise or bleed because her exterior was getting older and that outer layer of steel was getting thinner.
Now that she’s an old gal and can’t quite do all the things she used to, she doesn’t need to get “shipped” off to the scrapyard. She can still have a purpose! It’s not the same as her old one; in fact, it’s very different. Where she once stayed atop the water to do her job, now she’s on the ocean floor. It’s a whole new work environment. But work, all the same.
Maybe the reason I felt good after reading that was knowing that, as I am getting to be mumblemumble years old, and I’m not working at what was my main job anymore, I’m also not going to be sent off to the scrap heap. Not that I want to be hollowed out, carted out to sea and sunk, but I still believe God has more “purpose” for me. I’m still here. I’m still breathing, so there must still be something for me to do.
In elementary school, our cafeteria served “hot lunch” every day. I was usually a cold lunch kid, unless it was pigs-in-a-blanket day, and then everyone and their monkey’s uncle ate hot lunch. On occasion, the lunch ladies served something called “shipwreck.” I couldn’t tell you what was in it, just that it looked awful. That was back when I didn’t want the different foods on my plate to touch each other, because that was just gross. With shipwreck, it was a whole lot of unidentifiable items mixed all together. The braver kids with more mature palates than mine ate it up. It didn’t look that good, probably even smelled a bit, but, by gum—it served its purpose! It nourished some little bodies.
Maybe, like me, you have been sailing the seas for a while, and you’re not quite as robust as you once were. Do you feel a bit more barnacled than buoyant? More scarred than seaworthy? A tad more stiff-jointed than sound? More weathered than well-built? Sail on, my friend! God’s not through with you yet! If you’re still here, still breathing, there’s work to be done—and purpose still ahead!
Written with love – – Patti XOXO
“…being confident of this,
that He who began a good work in you
will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus.”
Philippians 1:6