The other day I was in a drive-thru early in the morning. I wanted to surprise my daughter with one of her favorite biscuits. This eating establishment makes them every morning – golden brown on the top and bottom, fluffy in the middle, and good and buttered all around.
It’s the kind of thing one can enjoy in the teen years. I’m at the age where I must avoid said items. It’s sad but true.
What’s also sad but true is the reason I had to get her biscuit at the drive-thru restaurant instead of just making biscuits at home. The ones I sometimes make from popped-open cans shame the country cooking roots from which my people come. The women in my lineage handled a rolling pin as if it were a third arm. I don’t even own a rolling pin. I don’t think. So my girl would be absolutely thrilled at this restaurant-bought, real biscuit.
I ordered it and grabbed my wallet for the necessary two dollars. Two dollars isn’t a big deal until you need it and don’t have it. I scrambled through my purse, then the middle console of my car, and then in all the places change might have fallen. Nothing. I then decided I’d just use a credit card. Which would have been an amazing plan if only my credit card had been where it was supposed to be in my wallet.
That’s when I got completely desperate and started praying for the person in front of me to please feel some sort of divine nudge to pay for my order. Maybe? Please?
But at the very last minute there was no need for that nudge. As I pulled up to the window I found my credit card wrapped in a receipt at the bottom of my purse. Biscuit saved.
And I handed my credit card through the window I had the strongest notion to use that desperate feeling in an act of obedience. Don’t waste it. Let it make you aware. Be an extension of God’s love right now.
So I paid for the breakfast of the guy behind me. That’s nothing new, right? But don’t miss the point here. I don’t want to focus on the act of paying for food. It’s the revelation of paying attention.
Paying attention to what’s in front of us will help us see our “Best Yes.” Not that every responsibility is our responsibility. I mean I didn’t walk into the restaurant and buy everyone’s breakfast. I just simply and quietly gave to the guy behind me.
I think this is the way “Best Yes” things often unfold. We want big directional signs from God. God just wants us to pay attention.
The other day my friend Meredith was trying to make a simple decision. Should she stay home to spend time with her husband or go to her weekly get-together with friends? She was feeling torn between two good choices. Which was her “Best Yes?”
I challenged Meredith to simply pay attention to what was right in front of her. Has she seen indications that she and her husband might need a night together? Or has she seen that she needs to have some girl time and the invigorating conversation with friends? What has she seen as the strongest indication right in front of her lately?
Pay attention to that.
Her husband had been out of town. She sensed she needed to be home with him. She paid attention and invested in her marriage. She became an extension of God’s love to her husband.
That was a “Best Yes.” And we will see our “Best Yes” answers most clearly when we are present, paying attention, seeing what we need to see, and being willing to extend God’s love in the moment.
Lysa TerKeurst appears this Thursday on LIFE TODAY. Reprinted by permission. The Best Yes: Making Wise Decisions in the Midst of Endless Demands by Lysa TerKeurst. Copyright ©2014 by Lysa TerKeurst. Thomas Nelson Inc. Nashville, Tennessee. All rights reserved.
