I think we have a cat.

A neighbor had to relocate for a year for work, and when others moved into his house, they had a dog. So the cat, which was sometimes an indoor, but mostly an outdoor cat, didn't have anyone to feed him. Being a very friendly and loving cat, many on our block set food out for him.

However, he chose us to be his primary staff. Each morning he waits patiently outside the door for my husband to leave for work and feed him breakfast. In the afternoons, he waits for him to return and feed him again. Slowly, he started coming inside for a few minutes here and there... or longer... but he's an outdoor cat at heart and when his love meter is full he likes to be outside.

I have errands to run and a sermon to finish this morning, and I found myself thinking about the structure of the day around when the cat usually comes inside for love and attention. I realize that he's slowly trained us to be good and responsible staff (dogs have owners, cats have staff). It happened little by little, beginning with setting the food out, progressing to sitting on the deck and petting him, to inviting him inside during inclement weather, and finally developing a routine. So, I'm pretty sure we have a cat...

Is that how callings come about? Little by little you tend to a small task until one day you stop and realize that you are making plans around it and couldn't be happier?

I cannot point to the moment we said yes to any of this. It didn't happen that way. It happened in stages, each one small enough to still be nothing.

...setting food out to be compassionate.

...sitting on the deck while he sashayed through our legs and paused for scratches behind his ears... still deniable.

...letting him in out of the oppressive heat and the chaos of loud roofers... an exception, surely, not a policy.

And then, without noticing the hinge it turned on, a routine. Two visits a day. A structure to our mornings and afternoons that we can't imagine living without.

This dawned on me as I was mentally mapping the day around when he'd want in for love and attention. Not in a quiet, meditative moment where you'd expect to notice something like this about yourself, but in a distracted one, already living like I'd said yes, with no memory of having said it.

I keep wondering if that's closer to how most of what claims us actually arrives, as an invitation renewed in pieces small enough to always walk away from and somehow never do. The recognition shows up as a scheduling fact before it ever shows up as a spiritual one. You don't hear a call, but you look at your schedule and realize you've already been answering one.

My wish for you this week, Reader, is that you'd go looking for the routine you built without ever quite deciding to, the door you now show up to without remembering when it started mattering. That's not an accident. Whatever led you there was patient enough to ask in pieces small enough to refuse, and you kept saying yes, one unremarkable morning at a time. Sometimes the Spirit may ask something big and bold of us; most times I believe it seeps into our being, perhaps one little meow at a time, until you can't imagine your life without it. That's the fiLLLed life.

Live a fiLLLed life, Melissa