The Garbage Truck Outside My Window

If you've been reading this blog long enough you know the struggles of the neighborhood I live in. The way my house is situated my back yard looks out over an arterial. Its not a main road, but it is a road with a broken yellow stripe down the middle. During the summer you can hear kids peeling out with their cars, or emergency vehicles driving past. It can create a bit of noise now and then.

Our trash day is Thursday mornings and for some reason, on Thursday mornings, the trash truck parks directly behind our house. Actually, the truck parks directly behind my bedroom window, which my head is right next to. Every Thursday morning. For the past 6 years I've lived in the house. The big diesel trash truck parks idling about 40 feet from sleeping head on Thursday mornings.

Sometimes he shows up at 6am. Sometimes its 650am. I assume that he has a commercial portion of his route that he completes earlier in the day, and then takes a break before starting his residential route at 7am. Its like clockwork that he leaves at 7am. I hear the air brake depress and him drive away at 7, that's how I know.

When this happens, and I get woke up early on Thursdays (I usually rise at 7). I must tell you. I get quite upset. Maybe upset is not the word. Maybe angry is better. Depending on what time I get to bed on Wednesday, it sometimes borderlines on furious. I absolutely despise getting woken up before I want to get up.

Do you know what I've done to rectify this problem of 6 years? Ab-so-lute-ly nothing. OK, one time I wrote an anonymous email to Allied Waste, but short of that, nothing.

As I was sitting here this morning writing the blog, and thinking about why I haven't done anything about it came to me. The days that I get up and get upset about the truck, my anger only lasts for a short period of time. For some reason, the anger at 620 isn't the same later in the day or the next day. Maybe the 40 mins less of sleep isn't that big of a deal. Perhaps I'm making a big deal out of nothing and the problem is me and not the trash truck. The guy is not being malicious, he's just doing his job.

I'm not sure if you ever get upset about dumb stuff, but I find that in my life the stuff that I get most upset about is stuff that I can't control. Traffic, people, circumstance, whatever. The times that I learn to frame those instances correctly in light of the grand plan of everything, I get less angry.

I believe in God. I believe as I have given my life to Jesus that I have asked him to make me a better person so that I can become more like Him. That means that He can use whatever he wants to teach me whatever I need to learn. Painfully, that may even include a trash truck outside my window every Thursday for the rest of my life.

Is there something that you have that is annoying in your life? Maybe God is using it to teach you something about you. Perhaps you can learn how to be less impatient, more loving, more forgiving.

Usually the stuff that annoys us most is really not that big of a deal.

Blessings
matt