It looked fantastic, was exactly what I had been hoping to get for the family room, but we were in a hurry and so we left it there. However I got home and could not stop thinking about it so a few hours later I headed back there to see if it was for sale. After talking to the store manager and getting her to let me see it (it was headed out to the warehouse) she told me she would let me have it for the whopping price of $49.99! It was meant to be! This thing was beautiful and EXACTLY what I was looking for! At least I thought it was...
We loaded it up, brought it home and after hauling our old furniture out to the garage and this baby in we settled down to enjoy the new luxury. And all was well until we got up off the couch--covered in dog hair. Yikes. "No big deal," I thought, "I'll just get a lint roller and run it over this couch and all will be well." After all, you couldn't see the hair at all on the couch, how much could there be? Well, as it turns out, a whole lot.
But it got me thinking. Aren't our lives like that? On the outside we may look polished and clean and pretty much perfect. We come into church in our Sunday best or post happy family pictures in front of the Disneyland castle, or our children making the honor roll. And those are all true--those are all great things. But what others don't see are the anxieties, concerns, frustrations and trials that life brings. Because they are there, just under the surface and if we took a lint roller (so to speak) to any of our lives they would be apparent.
Sometimes I think that if we all were a little more transparent about the hidden "dog hair" of our lives, we wouldn't feel so surprised when the trials come. We wouldn't waste time comparing ourselves to our neighbors but instead we would recognize it for what it is--real life. And maybe, we'd all feel a little better.
