A Hundred Small Annoyances

From Heather King, who blogs over at Shirt of Flame, a useful quote for a Tuesday morning that feels too much like a Monday morning because yesterday was a holiday:

There is no one who does not experience a hundred small annoyances every day, caused either by our own carelessness or inattention, or by the inconsideration or spite of other people, or by pure accident. Our whole lives are made up on incidents of this kind, occurring ceaselessly from one minute to another, and producing a host of involuntary feelings of dislike and aversion, envy, fear, and impatience to trouble the serenity of our minds … If we were careful to offer all these petty annoyances to God and accept them as being ordered by his providence, we would soon be in a position to support the greatest misfortunes that can happen to us, besides at the same time insensibly drawing close to intimate union with God.

St. Claude de la Colombière, 17th-century priest and confessor.

Read the rest of her piece here.

I just finished Heather's first book -- Parched, a searing, graphic description of addiction and redemption, a book I am sending to a friend who is right now fighting his way out of the living Hell Heather depicts.

Parched is not a light read. 

I am left with a few thoughts:

I don't know from true suffering.

I can count my blessings.

I can offer up my "hundred small annoyances" to God.

I can go hold my feverish son and spend a few minutes reading Charlotte's Web.