Photo by Malkav

By Wendy Choy-Chan

A small incident happened a few days ago, so small that in the grand scheme of things, it was like finding one weed out of a whole football field of green grass. But you know how it goes sometimes — you start to wonder if there are more weeds sprouting around, if you have not been taking good care of things, or even, if you are losing control over life. And the dominos start to fall down one by one.

So the next day, I frantically set up my dominos again, careful not to topple any. The irony was that by mid-day, everything was back to normal: I was once again on top of my schedule. Of course, I didn’t know when the next rough ride would come, but at that moment, I could calmly look back and say, “It was but one small weed in the whole field.”

As I am sitting down to write this post, I am thinking, God is here with me and for me. So, He will always help me set up my dominos, right?  Well, another voice in me says, What if it takes more than one day to get things back to normal next time? What if the dominos keep falling and falling, and I am not fast enough to rebuild them?

Ravi Zachariah once said, “God does not promise us a trouble-free journey but a safe arrival. There is a time for everything. Time to tear down and a time to build” — including my dominos too!

My daughter was playing with dominos the other day, and when did she ask me to look at her set up?  She asked me to watch them fall, and then I saw the beautiful pattern that she had intended to create after they fall.  There is a time for everything. Who knows, the weeds in the field may actually form a beautiful pattern.

Wendy Choy-Chan came to North America from Hong Kong when she was 15.  She is now a full-time mom and part-time student at Fuller Northwest studying for her MA in Theology.  She lives with her husband and two daughters in Seattle, WA.