How to Find Meaning in the Mundane – Part 2
© Jennifer Slattery, JenniferSlatteryLivesOutLoud, printed with permission
Pause to consider the successful individuals you know. Look past their actions to their character. Perhaps some rode on family wealth or landed a lucky break, but most inched forward because of hard work, perseverance, patience, and dependability. In fact, I’ve heard coaches say they prefer a hard worker over a natural star any day because ability has a limit. They’ve learned success without struggle is momentary, faltering the moment the first storm hits.
Real success—the kind that sustains a marriage, enables a parent to persevere through teen rebellion, and worker to withstand company upheaval—is birthed in 
everyday decisions. In those quiet moments where the choice to persevere overrides the desire to run. With each difficult encounter, we have a choice: to seek out the easy, safe, self-protecting path wrought with temporary pleasures, or to stand firm in faith and character, regardless of what God allows to come our way. Because strength grows in the struggle, and God is sovereign in our joys and trials. This means, when we encounter a hostile boss or coworker, a demotion or a financial set-back, it is because God allowed it. If God allowed it, he intends to bring good from it. His good might look different than we expected, but regardless of our ability to see or comprehend it, we can rest in the knowledge that He always has our best in mind. And being the all-knowing, all powerful, all-loving God he is, He has a glorious way of working out our best while using us to bring about the best in others. God’s ultimate best for mankind is that each of us would turn from a life of sin and self-destruction to one centered on Him.
Our role is not to question the when, where, and how and to start living in—making the most of—the now (Ephesians 5:16). In other words, God has a purpose in every encounter and every stage of our journey, whether we’re standing in line at the grocery or folding towels at home. His purpose, and our calling, is quite simple: to know Him and make Him known.
For Certified Registered Nurse Anesthetist Kim Zweygardt, God brought this truth home during a middle of the night encounter with an irate patient. “One night I was on call, and a drunk, nasty man was brought into surgery. He’d gotten into a fight at a bar. I put him to sleep with him spitting in my face and screaming that he was going to sue. Everyone was relieved when the drugs took effect, and the room went quiet. The surgeon said, ‘What he doesn’t know is that we’ll do our best for him just like anyone else.’
“The nurse complained about being up at three in the morning for such a jerk. Though I hadn’t spoken aloud, I agreed. And then I heard in my heart, clearly, the voice of the Lord, ‘I died for him, too, Kim.’ It changed the way I saw my work. I realized I was the hands and feet of Christ in each anesthetic.”
God used an emergency and an angry man to center Kim’s heart and mind in eternity. Tragedy and trial have a way of doing that. A job loss can free us from the cancer of materialism, an illness can free us from self-reliance, and relational struggle can free us from apathy—if we surrender our difficulties, perceptions, and responses to Christ. In fact, if left on our own, abundance and blessing can blind us to true and lasting joy found only in the eternal. Once she recognized the eternal impact of her role as an anesthetist, her job took on greater value and she was able to find joy even in the most frustrating situations.
To be continued…