Leaving Room for the Unexpected

I am still not in the swing of things - obviously. Last year I often wrote after I put the older boys on the bus and before Little One and I headed out for the day. We had nice quiet mornings, he watching PBS Kids (someone has to teach him his letters) and me drinking coffee and spending time reading and writing blogs. It was a nice time of day. This year our schedule has changed. Little One has school two mornings a week, I have to be at Bible Study earlier to help with set up, Little One's speech class is on another morning and the first month of school seems to have a lot of activities that are interrupting our one quiet morning. I am sure I will get a rhythm to my days once everything is up and running and we have a few weeks under our belts.

But then that is what I keep telling myself. I will catch up on my Bible Reading - tomorrow. I will get back to blogging - someday. I will get myself back on a workout schedule - soon. I will have time for "this" after "that". Tomorrow. Someday. Soon. Never?

That is without the unexpected things that shake your schedule up. The cast that has to come off requiring a trip to the pediatrician's office. Love our pediatrician but there goes an entire afternoon. The meeting that has to happen as a result of a very emotional and heartfelt confrontation. The husband has to work late when you are scheduled to teach and a babysitter has to be found. I am thankful that for the most part I have created a life that has margins for the unexpected and loving babysitters for when we are double booked or actually want to spend a few minutes together without the little kids hanging on. For the most part I can roll with the punches.

Then there are times when I lose it a bit. This week we had major stress and drama when Little One and Middle Man's hockey times got changed. They had been at a difficult time before overlapping with Hockey Boy's practice at a different hockey rink in a different city. But the new time was on the same night as the children's midweek program at church. And it was also ending really late for my early to bed, early to rise little boys. There was a moment of panic when I saw the email. Text messaging ensued with my husband. We were frantically trying to figure it all out. I was trying to solve the problem, trying to remove the stress myself.

And in that moment of stress, I remembered what I had read in Paul E. Miller's book "A Praying Life." "We become anxious when we take a godlike stance, occupying ourselves with things too great for us. We return to sanity by become like his little children, resting on our mothers." He goes on to write, "Anxiety is unable to relax in the face of chaos; continuous prayer clings to the Father in the face of chaos." In that moment, I stopped my racing mind to pray. I had a problem. I could not solve it. I needed my Father to figure it out in a way that keeps my kids close to Him. And then I raced off to an evening meeting forgetting the stress, the anxiety, the chaos that was in my head.

By the time I got home that night, we had received another email, informing us that the practice was being moved, yet again, to Sunday mornings at 7 am. No midweek practices for the little boys. I was overjoyed. Our conflict was solved. Without me. I never knew I could be so happy for a 7 am ice time but I am thrilled.