"Please hold, your call is important to us. Your hold time is approximately one hour twenty-six minutes to two hours twenty-three minutes."

We got new siding on our house this week, after storm damage earlier this summer. One of the relics we need to address is the old telephone junction box that was on the side of the house. Obviously, we don't want to reinstall it on our new siding, but we also can't just cut the wires, as that would leave a live wire coming to the house and cause problems with our electrical supply. So... I am on hold...

Nobody warns you about the box. When we said yes to new siding, we said yes to the color, the cost, and the crew’s schedule. We did not say yes to an afternoon of negotiating with a phone company over a line from another era.

I think that’s how change goes. We plan for the big thing and get tripped by the small thing attached to it. The new job comes with a form nobody mentioned. The move comes with one drawer of keys that need to be figured out. The downsizing comes with difficult choices over what stays and what goes. The big thing was never what caught us. The loose end was.

And the loose end isn’t always foolish. That old line carried voices into this house for years. Who would have imagined, “back in the day,” that we would want it out?

It's easy to say "the devil's in the details" when the details are tripping us up. But isn't it also true that God is in the details? To be honest, the forces of death and life, of despair and joy, of difficulty and ease are with us everywhere. Whatever we're facing in the moment may illuminate one over the other, making it easy to lose hope for a time. But we need to remind ourselves that God is in that moment, too.

My wish for you this week, Reader, is that you’ll find something sacred in the small, stubborn details of your days, even the ones that trip you up. May you have the courage to stay on the line when hanging up would be easier, and may you remember that despair and joy are both close at hand, and that ultimately, eternally, in the biggest things and the smallest things, God gets the final word. That’s the fiLLLed life.

And if you happen to be on hold right now, I’m right there with you.

Live a fiLLLed life, Melissa