If you love "The Car Wash" daily meditation from March 7 in Finding the Gift as much as everyone else, I hope you'll enjoy the second life lesson from this most unexpected place. If you don't have my book yet, visit my Facebook author page and scroll down a few posts to read the original car wash entry.

 

 

I decided to pull through the car wash this afternoon. I knew the outside of my car was dirty and overdue for a good cleaning, but I didn’t plan to vacuum the interior. I hadn’t noted that the inside needed cleaning prior to coming to the car wash, so I assumed it must be okay.

 

The truth is, I hadn’t even looked but I figured if my car needed vacuuming, I would have already noticed. I finished wiping down my wheels and decided to take a peek in the backseat to make sure before leaving. Turns out there was debris in the seat and in the floor that had somehow been invisible up to that moment.

 

Then I opened the front door to look around the driver’s seat (yes, the one I get in and out of all the time). In the seat and in the floor, I found the following: crumbs from granola bars eaten on the run, clumps of dirt and pebbles, a business card, a quarter, two pens, a napkin and a few other things that shouldn’t be there. 

 

Yikes! It was much worse than any other area inside the car and yet, the very place I was most likely to notice, if I had only taken the time to look. How could I have not seen these things? Day in and day out, I stayed so caught up in my thoughts or in hauling stuff to and from the car that I missed the mess that was accumulating right in front of me (and beside me, and under me). 

 

Just because we’re not noticing something doesn't mean it's fine. We can go through life with blinders on and choose to assume that everything is okay. But how okay is it really? How much joy are we really experiencing in our marriages or in our relationships with our kids, our extended families and our friends? Could they be better? Are we missing the signs that things are slipping a little, or a lot? When is the last time we actually checked?

 

What about our own self-care? Do we end the majority of our days with a sense of fulfillment or are we staying too busy to feel anything? There will always be plenty of activities to distract us and fool us into believing everything is fine. But our relationships, including the ones with ourselves, and other things in daily life need our attention on a regular basis to remain in great condition. 

 

My car is thoroughly vacuumed out now and is as clean on the inside as it is the outside. Does your interior match your exterior? Are you noticing and maintaining the less visible aspects of your life and not just polishing the outside to keep up the illusion of being okay? 

 

Today I'm going to take a closer look at my life to see who and what may need some of my attention. I hope you will too. More gifts are waiting!