In my Lilla Rose business, we have what’s called a ‘Back Office’ on our website, where we do our ordering, party information, and the like.  And even beyond that is the corporate office where the company is managed and decisions are made.

Well, this post has me seeing life and lessons from the ‘Back Office’ of time and space, a place I couldn’t see just a few days ago.  And isn’t that the way life is?

Our family has been organizing and preparing for a Holiday Gift Fair for the last few months.  We’ve spent time getting the word out, finding other interested families, designing and creating the many projects and gifts to sell at the fair, and preparing the store for our event.

We’ve anticipated the event; we worked until the wee hours of the night; we cut, sewed, planed, glued, cropped, created, and more!  We cleaned and scrubbed, organized and decorated the store that was graciously given to us to use for the day.  All with the knowledge that we just might not sell a thing!  I knew we might just do ‘okay’, but, we never guessed that it would go ‘not okay’!  And that’s just what happened!  We each sold a few things, but for the time and energy, it was definitely not worth it – from our human perspective.

At first glance it’s easy to call this a waste, individually and as a family, for the amount of time spent to put on such an event.  But something I learned many years ago when we began homeschooling, was how to look at a ‘flop’ of a day, or a project-gone-bad with new eyes.  Through God’s eyes.  We need to enter into life’s ‘Back Office’ to see what’s really going on.

And as we look at our experience with the holiday fair, we need to enter into our ‘Back Office’, searching for what God is teaching and revealing to us about His plans and our life’s many lessons.

Lessons learned from the ‘Back Office’:

–     How well we work together as a family.

–     How gifted each of our family members are, and being able to see one another’s talents.

–     How important location, location, location is!

–     To advertise early and a lot.

–     How good it is to work hard, to prove ourselves.

–     That character is built in the face of discouragement.

–     Our daughter added some great insight – “Even if we don’t sell a thing, it at least got each of us to get our businesses going!”

–     How fun it is to get out and meet new people.

We will never be able to enter into “the Corporate Office” – that’s for God alone – but if we will quiet and humble ourselves long enough, we certainly will find new perspective in our own “Back Office”!