What is your wake?

I recently retired my leg warmers. Yes, no more leotards and side-ponytails, I’ve officially ended my days with Jazzercise. 😉 Of course I’m kidding about the 80s apparel, but I did transition into different exercise options since we’re moving to the country, and recently I’ve just been taking walks and calling it good.

Some of you know about my unfortunate trash conviction. I’ve shared about it here. It began six years ago, when the Holy Spirit told me to pick up poop off the ground and I routinely avoided it until He taught me clearly that Grace Picks Up the Poop.

You can’t unlearn a lesson like that, so I still find myself gathering up trash whenever I’m out walking. I’ve memorized the various drop-points along my regular route, those places where people are negligent in bringing their emptied trash bins back in from the street, providing me the perfect opportunity to unload my handfuls of garbage without walking onto their property.

Every single time I walk there’s trash. I understand the logic that says, “What difference does it make? There will always be trash.” But the starfish story applies to more than just souls, and our mundane is where we practice making a difference in bigger ways.

If I’m willing to stoop for a smashed soda can I’ll probably be willing to stoop for a soul.[bctt tweet=”If I’m willing to stoop for a smashed soda can I’ll probably be willing to stoop for a soul.”]

So I do. And since I always take the same route, I’ve thought about the significance of taking ownership for our spheres of influence, or more simply put: Being purposeful about what wake we leave behind.

When I graduated from high school, my pastor’s wife (one of the wisest women I’ve ever met) looked me in the eye and said these words with great seriousness:

“You follow hard after Jesus and others will be caught up in your wake.”

I’ve thought of these words hundreds of times since and wondered to myself: What is my wake?

That is, everywhere you go, you leave a wake. Do you leave a wake of drama? Do you leave a wake of peace?

The question I ask myself is: Do I always leave a space better than when I found it? 

We can ask this question on so many different levels. It’s true of physical spaces and spiritual spaces, it’s true of relationships and jobs. I ask it every time I go for a walk, and seek to make “my route” cleaner that it was before I moved through its space.

Well, today was a bit different. It was drizzling, so I did my normal route but beelined for the track where I figured I could run stairs (under cover) for a little higher-intensity workout. When I stepped up into the stadium, I sighed:

Trash everywhere. Seriously people, really?! Dozens of bottles, soda cans, wrappers, paper plates. So. Much. Trash. I reasoned that this wasn’t “my route”–so I could just ignore it this one time and run my stairs. But the question came back to me: What is my wake? If I move through this space, can I leave it better than I found it?

I pushed up my sleeves.

Still running stairs, I started grabbing up items. Up and down the stairs, through the aisles, working up a sweat, I found myself having loads of fun, even if I probably looked like a crazy lady, doing high-knees with armfuls of garbage.

Eleven minutes later I had a fabulous workout and there was not a speck of trash in that stadium.

I smiled over that trash bin, thinking how simple things can bring us joy, how the mundane draws us to Jesus, how even garbage can display the glory of God.

So for you today: What is your wake?

Let’s commit today to leave every space better than we found it–physically and spiritually–for the glory of God.

{Thanks for reading!}