When creatures of habit take detours

Generally, the daily life of Amanda Gayle Wheeler is pretty predictable.

I wake up around 6:30am,

Get to work at 830am

Come home around 7pm

Go to bed around 10pm

Repeat.

However, these past couple of weeks I have been making friendships a greater priority and adventure has naturally sprung from that.

Last Sunday after the Oscars, someone suggested that we go to Beverly Hills and find Banksy artwork.

Banksy is a British graffiti artist who tags places all over the U.S. and Europe. No one knows what he looks like and his art tends to be political, so he makes for an intriguing topic of discussion. Anyway, he had made a documentary, Exit through the Gift Shop, which was up for an Oscar, so he was in LA last week.

One thing led to another and I didn't get home until 2am and as a result slept in until 930am. By the time I rolled into work around 11am, I had 3 text messages, 2 missed calls and someone looking up traffic reports in search of a potental accident as the reason my delay in arrival.

As I mentioned earlier, I go to bed early and my roommates are basically nocturnal, so they stay up super late. They are used to fully locking up the apartment. I have almost gotten locked out several times...

Their insomnia also means that they know when I don't come home until the middle of night...

This weekend I went out with some friends on Saturday night and on the drive home, the conversation was so good, that I ended up talking with my friend until, oh, say 530am...this unusual behavior caused concern among the roommates of whether to try and call me or decide I stayed at someone else's house for the night...Either way, I got a mini interrogation the next morning.

I am usually so predictable, so now that I am changing up my routine, its causing a bit of a ripple.

But the good news is that people notice when I'm missing :)

So that they may know...

I have a pretty awesome memory. I can remember things mentioned in a side comment or an off topic conversation. I can remember names and faces. I can remember random facts, trivia, movie lines and song lyrics. I busted through half of an N'sync song last night and I haven't listened to them in years!...ok, maybe I took a trip down 90's boy band memory lane last June...

But I also have a really terrible memory. In the past two months I have nearly run out of gas 4 or 5 times because I just can't seem to remember to turn right instead of left out of my apartment to go to the gas station as opposed to heading towards the freeway. I have also wandered around the parking garage at work because I can't remember which floor I parked on.

But where my selective memory really become detrimental is in remembering how God has been faithful in my life.

For example, a few weeks ago I took the 3rd part of my CPA license exam. Despite the fact that I have done very well on the first 2 parts, I spend every day working with the material that was going to be on the test (taxes), and I have usually always been a good test taker, my anxiety was through the roof...again.

In almost every situation, I count my past success as worthless. This is not coming from a Pauline-like humility; it is straight up doubt.

Doubt in God's faithfulness.

Doubt in his gifting to me of an ability to understand and retain information.

Doubt in God's plan for me.

I need some serious Joshua 4 action in my life.

In Joshua 4, the nation of Israel has just passed over a dry Jordan River. God commands Joshua to send one man from each tribe to get a stone from the dry river bed. These stones were to serve as a catalyst for remembering what God had done; from bringing the people out of Egypt to his recent Jordan River escapade.

He said that the purpose of the stones were so that the people of the surrounding nations and the next generation of Israel may know what God is capable of and that He is faithful to his people.

So since I apparently lack the capacity to look at a situation and remember God's faithfulness, I need some stones of remembrance to keep his work in my life in the forefront of my mind as opposed to the back recesses.

Diamonds are a girl's best friend...