Rut

“My foot has held fast to His path; I have kept His way and not turned aside.” (Job 23:11)

English is filled with interesting words, and one of those interesting words is “rut.” Tonight as I was taking out the trash, I suddenly thought of this word “rut.”

According to Webster, the word “rut,” as used in the phrase “in a rut,” means “a track worn by a wheel or by habitual passage.” In other words, it’s like you’re feeling you’re walking the same road again and again and feel stuck in doing the same thing over and over again.

It’s something I kind of didn’t expect to happen. With a kid and a job at a startup company, I thought my life would be anything but routine. Interestingly, structure and routine is what I’m finding I need more and more these days. Kids actually learn discipline better and can grow better when we set structure and routine and boundaries around them. And my job actually is more effective if I follow the right protocols and processes to write software programs.

Strangely, I’m finding all this routine actually helps me mature better as a person. I’m realizing that, in times past, when I hadn’t had routine in my life, it was easy to be lazy and lose focus. Now it’s easier for me to get more efficient and effective. At least the structure allows me to do better.

But tonight around 8:15pm, as I was taking out the trash, I felt a little “in a rut” feeling that I was bored by the routine. I felt constrained. I wanted something different.

Then God played a joke on me. At 8:40pm, Wendy and I felt an earthquake. Just a little jolt. It was reported on the news as a 4.2 earthquake. But it was just a reminder that although my life seems routine, God can pull surprises.