The other day I had a very Charlie Brown sort of a day. I had to do a very hard thing. It wasn’t like mountain climbing or saving a planet from certain doom but it was still a hard thing. For several days I had been praying and preparing for the hard thing and when the fateful day dawned I prepared very carefully. I spent the morning seeking God for exactly how to do this hard thing and I was so concentrated on the hard thing that I absolutely, completely forgot to put on deodorant. Yep, forgot to put on deodorant which I didn’t notice until halfway through my work day! When I realized what I had done (or in this case hadn’t done) all of the apprehension about the pending hard thing fled. It was this little moment of absurdity that just caused all the tension to be washed clean by genuine silliness. I even, like my childhood friend Charlie Brown, found myself saying aloud the magically healing words…oh, good grief. Good and grief, these two words don’t seem to blend together very well but sometimes it is the very blending of these two words that God uses to pull us out of ourselves and inject a little life into a situation. If a little leven levens a whole lump than I think that a little levity can do the same. A sprinkle of grief or a minor frustration or inconvenience can work a relieving amount of good if we recognize it for the gift that it is. Later in the day, once again full of apprehension on my way to do the very hard thing, I spilled perfume all over my shoes. We’re talking a lot of perfume, a lot. It was so bad that when I stepped into my car after the spill it made me tear up and I had to open all the windows. So open the windows I did and laughed at the good grief. Once again, the stress and tension melted away and, although I had a bit of a perfume induced headache, my heart was much lighter because of the condition of my feet. I don’t have chapter and verse to back up my thoughts but I do think that if we would recognize our little mishaps and foibles as the opportunities for grace that they are we would find ourselves experiencing more of the good and less of the grief. If I had taken the lack of deodorant or the powerful floral aromatics of my shoes seriously it could have derailed all the work that God was doing in and through me that day. Accepting that sometimes a preoccupied mind forgets something sorta, kinda crucial or that bottles don’t always behave and keep their lids on perfectly allowed me to be available to what the day was really about. It was just the God kiss, the blessing, that I needed to be able to obey His will for my day and do it with a right spirit. Look for the levity in your life instead of the lumps. Breathe in the perfume heavy shoes that inhabit your world and remember that God has got it all under control and that even a little grief can work much good when He is in it.