There are many nights during the week where I am, by far, the last one at work. I work at a 43,000 square foot facility that has two separate buildings, and so as the last one there, it’s my responsibility to make sure everything is shut down and turned off and locked up tight for the evening. As I walk through our warehouses, which are big and echo-y and creepy, there are quite a few different thoughts that run through my head. Listed in no particular order:
1) Gosh, it’s amazing what I can get done when no one else is here! (Anyone in that office can verify that my work doesn’t get done during normal business hours, just because of the random requests I get all day).
2) I hope someone locked the front door so no crazies can get in. (You should see some of the people that walk by our building some days.)
3) What would I do if a crazy actually did get in? (Probably cry and hide in the racks. This is why my receptionist keeps a scalpel in her pen holder.)
4) I hope that the one lone biotech guy in the other building doesn’t decide to go postal and kill me while we’re the only two people in this giant building. (It happens a lot that we’re the last two left. Sometimes I worry.)
5) I hope the ghost doesn’t show herself to me tonight. (Some of my coworkers have seen an old woman wandering our building. I respectfully decline to comment.)
6) Why do I hear footsteps? (Oh wait, that’s just my footsteps echoing on the concrete. That freaks me out more often than it should.)
So after I psych myself out a little bit (or a lot, depending on the day), I really start to look at our warehouse. I mean, our main warehouse is 20-some odd square feet of pure warehouse. I walk through this building ten times a day, easily, but I’m usually preoccupied with trying to find someone, or thinking about what I’m working on, or just trying not to get run over by a forklift! Currently, our warehouse is bursting at the seams with medical supplies, equipment, and other things that I probably don’t even know about. Our warehouse manager has run out of room on the racks.
Yet it continually amazes me that we have all these things just sitting here, waiting to send it somewhere in the world. Somewhere where it is needed more than it is here. But it sits here in our warehouse. Waiting.
Sometimes I feel like those pallets of supplies in our warehouse. I feel like I’m just sitting here in this room, this city, this life, waiting to be sent somewhere to be used. The thing that I’ve learned in this job is that nothing ever happens in our timing. It happens in God’s timing, hands down. We have our timeline set, and He just pulls it out from under us and replaces it with His own. Those pallets go where they’re needed and when they’re needed, not a moment sooner or later. And I know the same applies to me – He clothed the birds of the air and the flowers of the field, how much more does He care for me?
This is inspiring to me, and a necessary reminder at the end of a long few weeks. I need to be reminded of the limitless potential that our tiny, understaffed, overworked, exhausted organization has to make a difference in our world. I need to be reminded that God has put me in this position so that I can make a difference in this world. So many times I get caught up in the mundane things – the people I have to talk to, the tasks I have to accomplish, the grievances I have to address – and I forget why I love my job so much.
How can you not be inspired by the ability to help change someone’s life? They may never know my name or the organization’s name, and I will probably never know theirs. That’s ok with me – the point is that their life was changed for the better because of the organization I work for. It is an incredible reminder, and one that I hope I carry with me every day as I charge through the warehouse, on my next mission. I hope I remember to take a minute to stop and think and pray for that product and the people it is going to as it leaves our warehouse to make a difference somewhere else in the world. I hope I remember.
