Trash Day

It was a rotten feeling sitting there in the quiet dark of the morning, listening to the distant grind of the garbage truck making its rounds through our neighborhood. Yes, I had forgotten to put out the trash last night. And this morning, I sat at the kitchen table in the hard glow of the stove light helpless to do anything, hopelessly alone, just me and the approaching sound of the garbage truck as it neared the curb in front of my house. The empty curb, garbagecanless.

The problem was that the bulky, green garbage can supplied by the city sat in the corner of our garage, pinned in by my car. Somehow I had lost my own car keys in the midst of running errands last night in Jess' car. For no good reason, I had instinctly brought them along. I remembered absently pulling them out of my flimsy jacket pocket at one point in the evening in the Target parking lot, thinking, I better not lose these. I must admit, that was very good advice to myself, but that was as far as it went, because I did just that: I lost them.

So as I sat there listening to the creaturely sounds of the garbage truck's mechanical arm reaching down for my neighbor's trashcan, I did my best to tune out the thoughts that my trashcan could have been next, if I wasn't so stupid. Instead, I concentrated on that which lay in front of me: The Book of Ecclesiastes. Suddenly, for some reason, all the torture and trouble I was presently experiencing over my car keys felt so meaningless. It didn't matter if I found my car keys and got my trash out on time or not. I was still ultimately destined for the grave, just the same as the guy who had his car keys and was on top of trashday.

When it was time for Jess to wake up, I reported to her that I had made the executive decision to leave the materials in our trashcan to mature an extra week. Then I told her the truth. "Well, won't that pose a problem for getting to work this morning?" she asked about my car keys.

After reviewing all the facts (Until then, I hadn't got much further than being upset over not getting the trash out), I said, "Well, actually, yes. Yes it will pose a problem." So I made one last ditch effort to scan the house. After almost giving up in utter despair, I decided to include God on this, even though I felt it was such a trivial thing to pray about misplaced car keys. But, as I'm slowly learning, God does care about little things like these. Funny, I was just placing the period at the end of my prayer request when, lo and behold, my car keys were staring me right in the face. They were in the seat crack in Jess' car, right where I'd been sitting.