Burnt Toast Moments

Have you ever heard of the Burnt Toast Theory?

It basically says that when things happen to you that cause a delay, there's a reason for it.

Like the morning you burn your toast or lose your keys there may have been a bad accident on your route to work that you could have gotten mixed up in had you been on time.

Or that wrong turn you took made you drive past something spectacular that you never knew existed just a few miles from home.

Or that delay caused your timeline to be off just the right amount of time to make space for something extra special.

That happened to us last weekend.

Jacob is starting his second year at UW-Madison and we were moving him into the house where he would be living, hopefully for the rest of his college career.

He had a lot of stuff to move, so we needed three vehicles to make it in one trip.

Brian borrowed a truck from work, Tom brought his car and Jacob filled my SUV to the brim.

We had everything loaded up and were ready to go.

Then Jacob turned to me and asked me for the keys to my SUV.

As I went to go grab my purse, I realized...

My purse wasn't in the house.

I had forgotten it in Brian's car after our walk around the lake a couple nights before.

And guess where his car was?

In Germantown, at his work, where he had left it when he borrowed the truck!

Gemantown is 40 minutes from my house. Each way.

To make matters worse, I couldn't find my spare car key anywhere.

So, after kicking myself a few times, I sighed as Brian drove out of the driveway in Jacob's car to go get my purse.

We were almost 2 hours later getting to the house in Madison than we had planned.

After multiple trips up and down the stairs, we finished unloading and were sorting through boxes and bins.

My phone buzzed as a text came in.

Ryder and his girlfriend were driving home from Iowa that day, and they were almost to Madison.

Could they stop by and see Jacob's new place?

I had to laugh.

Ryder had gotten out of helping move due to his trip. But we'd still get to see him anyway.

Had I not forgotten my purse and made us late, we would probably have been home already and not been there to see him.

What began as a bit of a stressful morning, turned into a smooth move-in and a fun evening.

We took a lovely walk from the house to State Street, enjoyed dinner and a little shopping, and lots of laughs.

And that's the thing about the Burnt Toast Theory.

I used to sweat the small stuff a lot more. I'd get upset when I burned the toast or lost my keys.

I'd see the inconvenience and immediately focus on how it had messed up my plans.

But now?

It might frustrate me for a moment.

Of course it will. I'm still me.

But then I think back to all of the "burnt toast" moments I've had and wonder what special surprise might be waiting on the other side of the inconvenience.

Maybe the delay isn't the problem.

Maybe it's the reason.

Maybe the missed turn, the forgotten keys, the burnt toast, or the plan that didn't go quite right is simply life creating a little space for something we didn't know we needed.

Last weekend, it was an evening with my boys.

And I'll take that kind of detour any day.

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