I hurried home to meet the salesman from All Good for our appointed “no obligation estimate” on windows. I’ve wanted a garden window in my kitchen for years, and my savings account and husband have converged with the go-ahead. A widened view over my back yard was so close I could almost touch it!
Before I could finish telling Mr. Sales Pitch what I needed he told me he could not give me a price because Hubby was not there. What? Are you kidding? This is not 1950. I am fully capable of writing a check without my husband looking over my shoulder. A rigorous discussion ensued over why this was the case, and in the end, I booted Mr. No Good off my property and out of my checkbook forever. His loss.
But was it really?
Furious, I started to dial up Hubby when I realized my pulse was rapid and my face was flushed. The high pressure salesman had not only left my driveway without my money, he had also stolen something from me ~ my joy.
It wasn’t really his fault, I let it happen.
I had let indignation chip away at my greatest commodity. In the same way, I have insidiously allowed people who don’t wave when I give them passage in traffic permission to pinch a little cheer out of my soul. Absent manners and incompetent cashiers are both unknowing thieves I’ve allowed to sneak into my most precious storehouse, the vault of peace within my mind. It’s subtle, but it happens every day, in some slight form or another, without fanfare or warning. My solace is dispersed to the universe.
Within a few days, I will lose a dear and precious friend to the enemy we call cancer. She is done with the days of dealing with sales pitches and road rage. She is young. It doesn’t seem fair that she would be done. I wish she had more time. It makes me think of my time, and what I am going to do with the rest of the days I have left here on earth until I see my friend in Heaven.
And I pick up the book I am reading “One Thousand Gifts” by Ann Voskamp, and the words hit me like a sales pitch to the heart: ”I gasp for more time, frantic for more time. But I have to wonder: more time for more what? The answer to that determines the road these so-short days take.”
So-short days. More time for what? A great question to greet each day with.
I am not always sure of the “what”, but I am sure of the “what not”. I am not going to spend the rest of my so-short days letting my joy be robbed, and my peace be stolen by those who unintentionally (or intentionally) try to. The road to the end is shorter than any of us realize, and the joy with which it is paved is up to me and no one else. Today I choose to take back the keys of my peace from the circumstances and people I have loaned them to over the years.
Yes, that is a sales pitch that is truly “all good.”
