Patching the Holes: Redefining Wonder
When the Lord began to show me the holes in my bucket, He challenged many of my unspoken misconceptions about abundant life. Quickly, I realized that if I wanted a life brimming with wonder, I would need to redefine what wonder really is.
I used to believe that wonder would come like a monsoon to fill my bucket. It would be a big moment that I would forever reference as the gift that filled my soul. Monsoons don’t happen every day, so I certainly didn’t expect my life to be showered with wonder on frequent basis. I assumed that the Lord had a few big downpours set aside just for me. I dreamed of some divinely rationed torrents of joy that would infuse my every-day monotony with a touch of the marvelous. A romantic proposal from the man of my dreams, the birth of babies, a Hawaiian vacation, a job promotion, a book contract, a new house– surely these were the monsoons of wonder that would fill my empty soul.
Interestingly, over the course of time, I’ve received many of those coveted monsoons. And without a doubt, each big gift has come with a Wow! But even the wonder spilled into my life from those big moments didn’t last forever. Mounting bills to pay and morning breath slowly drained my newlywed wonder. Sleep deprivation and 2 A.M. diaper duty slyly zapped my new–mommy delight. Even the thrill of an unexpected trip to Hawaii this fall evaporated when I returned to a houseful of puking children and stacks of unopened mail. If God meant for us to live in a constant state of wonder, why don’t the miraculous monsoons permanently fill our souls?
Could it be that abundant life does not always come in torrents, but in dew drops? Could it be that our buckets were made to be filled daily rather than dramatically?
When God set his children free and placed their feet on a path bound for the promised land, He didn’t send a monsoon of provisions for the entire journey. He fed them morning by morning with the drops of dew.
“Then the LORD said to Moses, “I will rain down bread from heaven for you. The people are to go out each day and gather enough for that day…., and in the morning there was a layer of dew around the camp. When the dew was gone, thin flakes like frost on the ground appeared on the desert floor.”(Exodus 16:13-14)
If we’re going to savor a life brimming with wonder, we need to fix our fallacy about what fills the bucket. Wonder may not come as a monsoon, but as dew drops. Thousands and thousands of dew drops. In her debut book Cold Tangerines, Author Shauna Niequest writes:
Life is a collection of a million, billion, moments, tiny little moments and choices, like a handful of luminous glowing pearls. And strung together, built upon one another, lined up through the days and the years, they make a life, a person. IT takes so much time, and so much work, and those beads and moments are so small, and so much less fabulous and dramatic than the movies.
But this is what I’m finding, in glimpses and flashes: this is it. This is it, in the best possible way. That thing I’m waiting for, that adventure, that movie–score–worthy experience unfolding gracefully. This is it. Normal, (brown) daily life ticking by on our streets and sidewalks, in our houses and apartments, in our beds and at our dinner tables, in our dreams and prayers and fights and secrets– this pedestrian life is the most precious thing any of us will ever experience. I choose to believe that there is nothing more sacred or profound than this day. I choose to believe that there may be a thousand big moments embedded in this day, waiting to be discovered like tiny shards of gold. (Or like sparkling drops of dew?)
If we want lives overflowing with wonder, perhaps we need to patch our monsoon hole with the manna mindset. Then, as we open our eyes to the dew drops of grace sent lavishly from Heaven’s hand, we may find that our buckets are already filled to the brim!
The Overflow: “When the dew settled on the camp at night, the manna also came down.” -Numbers 11:9
