Joyce Meyer - Any Minute

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the authors imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.

Copyright 2009 by Joyce Meyer and Deborah Bedford

All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

Unless otherwise indicated, Scriptures are taken from the HOLY BIBLE: NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION. Copyright 1973, 1978, 1984 by International Bible Society. Used by permission of Zondervan Publishing House. All rights reserved.

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First eBook Edition: June 2009

ISBN: 978-0-446-55211-0

Contents

In everything I did, I showed you that by this kind of hard work we must help the weak, remembering the words the Lord Jesus himself said: It is more blessed to give than to receive.

ACTS 20:35

Happiness often sneaks in through a door you didnt know you left open.

JOHN BARRYMORE

A woman is like a tea bagyou never know how strong she is until she gets in hot water.

ELEANOR ROOSEVELT

To the ones who yearn to be happy;

to those who live with hidden shame.

To those who keep trying to find a way home.

E ach morning as Sarah maneuvered her crme brle Lincoln MKX up the ramp into Smart Park Tower, the experienced drivers knew theyd best keep out of her way. She scanned her monthly access card and waited, her fingers tapping the steering wheel, for the robotic arm to lift. She made a tire-squealing beeline for the C-level spaces, which gave her direct access to the elevator and the walkway to her office building.

The experienced drivers had learned to practice the list of AAA defensive-driving tips whenever they encountered Sarah Harper. When she was behind the wheel, they put their pride in the backseat and didnt provoke her. They didnt speed up to try to pass or try to hold their own in the climbing lane. Above all else, they fastened their seat belts. Because they all knew Sarah believed life was there for the taking. To say that Sarah was aggressive would have been an understatement.

Sarah wanted the best of everything in life, including the best parking spot.

Newcomers would find themselves whipping around pylons, darting around blind corners, trying to find a way to cut through; it was impossible to get ahead of her. No matter how hard anyone tried, Sarah would take you in that new crossover SUV. Shed downshift the Lincoln going uphill, zip into the spot she wanted, and switch off the engine without even glancing in your direction. Shed check her lipstick in the sun-visor mirror without giving a second glance. If she found a smudge on her lips, shed touch it up with something called Garnet Burst, blot in a ladylike manner, and tuck the tube inside her purse.

Most annoying of all, the whole time you tested your driving skill against her, shed be talking nineteen to the dozen, conferring with clients on her cell phone. Shed be setting up the schedule for her day, conversing with colleagues, instructing her assistant, Leo, to send out price memos to everyone on her e-mail list. Shed be mentally comparing currency rates and futures prices and trading strategies, trying to predict a market that had run amok, prices shooting up or tumbling down, terrifying clients who depended on her.

She liked to arrive early.

She liked to stay until the bitter end of the day. You could bet money shed be the last to turn off the lights in her office at night. Shed be the last to leave the parking lot. She wouldnt depart her office until she had dotted every i and crossed every t, no matter how late it made her assistant.

This morning, ready to leave the comfort of her vehicle and stroll inside, she would speak one simple command to the SYNC feature in her Lincoln and, just like that, the music would shut off.

Shed tuck her cell phone away, keeping it close enough to hear in case it rang, and remove the keys from the ignition, depositing them inside her Gucci purse. Shed step from the SUV, adjust her blazer, fling her computer case over her shoulder, and lock the doors. Thats when you could see for the first time that shed done all that perilous driving, all that squealing around concrete pillars and speeding up the multistory ramps, in a pair of pretty Prada heels. Name brands and labels were very important to Sarah, and she displayed them any time she had a chance.

Each time Sarah entered her offices in the financial district, you could see someone teasing her about her performance in the Smart Park; they loved to laugh about it on the trading floor. They joked about it as she entered the pit; they pestered her as she hooked up her nest of cables and wires and speakerphones and screens. How did she manage to snag the space with her name engraved on the gold plaque on the curb? Did she ever think of signing up to drive for NASCAR? Who did she think she was, Mario Andretti? And Sarah would shrug all this attention off with a puzzled smile, not understanding exactly why everyone made it such a big deal. She lived life in overdrive, but to her it was normal.

Sarah liked to have everything in her life just so, from the progression of the music selection in her iPod (from the latest pop on the charts to light jazz) to the lineup of roller-ball pens, three black ink and three blue, in the little trough built into her desk drawer. From the baby-soap samples and finger snacks she stored inside the diaper bag (so Kate could be dropped off at the babysitters at a moments notice) to the entryway of her house, where she kept Mitchells shoes, knapsack, galoshes, jacket, and Cubs cap all within easy reach for a little boy darting out the door. From the color-coded Tupperware suppers in the refrigerator (a few of which she prepared ahead on the weekends, others she bought from the grocery or the caterers) to Joes shirts, ironed and arranged where he could find them by sleeve length in the closet.

Sarah felt that having everything organized was a matter of survival for her, a necessary habit. She felt driven to be a super-mom, as efficient in her home as she was successful at her job. She needed to squeeze everything she could out of her days.

Life was there for the taking, and Sarah Harper was focused on taking all of it she could.

And when you were as busy as Sarah and you had all those plans, things must never be taken out of order. Sarah liked to keep her to-do list as finely tuned as the engine in the Lincoln she drove. This, she had decided, was the way to happiness. Sarah had similar expectations of other people. As a matter of fact, she strongly believed that to live any other way would equate to a wasted life.

This morning as Sarah tossed her dark hair over her shoulder and entered the Roscoe Futures Group offices, an alarm sounded on her personal data assistant, reminding her of an upcoming meeting with one of the firms senior brokers. At the same time, she was exchanging shoptalk with a client, her cell-phone ear-piece barely jutting from her head: If you want to do this, well have to do it later in the week. Youll have to set up an appointment with Leo. Anyone who didnt realize she had a phone in her ear would have thought she was talking to herself. Added to that, she was thumbing through a report, searching the latest market forecast for any commodity prices that looked like they might rise.