Routine amnesia

But Martha was distracted by all the preparations that had to be made. She came to him and asked, “Lord, don’t you care that my sister has left me to do the work by myself? Tell her to help me!”  Luke 10:40 (NIV)

Routine Amnesia...this is one of those conditions I've just made up in my mind, but it's something I suffer from on occasion.  One morning last week, I got up to get ready for work and hopped in the shower.  My normal routine is to wash my hair once, run conditioner through it, then wash my face and body.  I didn't wash my hair yesterday (thank God for long straight hair that doesn't need styled when I'm sleepy) so I figured I would need to wash my hair twice, to make sure I got out all the gunk. 

As I was drying off, I started to think, did I wash my face?  I touched my face.  Hmm, can't tell.  And did I put conditioner in my hair?  Touched my hair.  Hmm, can't tell that either.  I get out of the shower and decide to wash my face at the sink just to be sure.  I still don't know whether my hair got conditioner, although I don't think it's really a big deal.  I dried it.  I left the house.  I think it looked okay, and no one fainted at my sight.

It made me stop and think about how we get into a routine and totally forget about what we're really doing and how we miss out on things.  When I was driving to Shelbyville everyday for court reporting school, I can remember getting to a certain point in my commute and not being able to remember going through this town or turning on that road.  It was a crazy experience.  Had I been sleeping?  Hmm, I hope not.  I was, after all, driving a car.

It brought me to the story of Mary and Martha.  Oh, how I can relate to Martha.  I get so busy and caught up in the details that I sometimes can't see the forest for the trees, you know.  I get where Martha was coming from.  Who doesn't want to be a good hostess?  If I know guests are coming, I will clean the house to perfection and get out the 'good stuff.'  Maybe Martha wasn't necessarily stuck in the trance of daily routine, but she was completely distracted by everything being just so and about all the stuff Mary wasn't doing to help, that she was completely missing the joy of having Jesus as a guest in her own home. 

I don't think routines are necessarily a bad thing.  Sometimes a routine is what gets me through the day, especially when it's a crappy day or I don't feel so hot.  But sometimes, if I let myself get caught up in the routine motions of the day, I miss out on the good stuff.  I wonder, did I miss an opportunity to reach out to someone because I wasn't paying close attention and ignored their cry for help?  Did I lose out on experiencing joy with my one of my kids when they expressed excitement over something they accomplished at school because I was trying to figure out the next step in the evening:  what I was going to throw together for supper?  Did I forget to thank Jaydog for loading the dishwasher (even if it wasn't loaded to my specifications) because it was bedtime and I was too busy trying to get Lane ready for bed?

Sometimes I must step out of my routine and think about what is going on around me.  If not, I suffer from routine amnesia and miss out on some good stuff.  I need to be a little more Mary and a little less Martha.