If you were to walk into our house right now, you would find boxes full of stuff everywhere. It is insanity. We do not ordinarily live this way but circumstances have resulted in it. We recently purchased a house that we were supposed to close on last week so we boxed up for the move. It is now a week later and we still have not closed on the house. If something does not happen today, it will be next week before we do.

Navigating my way through the dark this morning, my big toe found one of the twenty five thousand boxes sitting around the house. It is common to hear questions like, “What box did you put it in?” or “Did you box that up?” The answer is, “Who Knows!”

My regular routine of the morning is to sit in the kitchen chair and put on my shoes. I walked into the kitchen with my shoes and realized my routine was, busted. I could see the kitchen chairs but there was no way of getting to one of them because fortyleven boxes were in the way. I decided to sit on one of the boxes to put my shoes on. That was a bad idea. When I sat down on it, it caved in, sending me to the floor on my back-end. A glass clanking noise came from the box and I thought, “That didn’t sound good.” When I got up out of the floor, I noticed that my wife had written “Fragile” on the box. Not good!

I have not told her yet and I trust you will not either. I am figuring that by the time she sees whatever is broken in the box; it will have been moved to the truck, hauled to the new house, and carried in. This should give me several people to blame.

The lesson to take from this story is that some things in life are fragile and if we are careless, we could break something. Take time to notice the people and relationships in your life right now that might be fragile. Give a little extra attention and care. It is much easier to do that than to fix it once it is broken.

The lesson not to take from the story is blaming someone else for what you broke. Especially the people who are kind enough to help you move. I guess I will “Man Up.”