Unplanned events

August 29, 2013

Have you ever had days that didn't go as you planned?  Dumb question.  Of course.  We all have days like that.  Most of mine don't go as planned....at least not plans made by me.  Proverbs 16:9 comes to mind saying, "The heart of a man plans his way, but the LORD establishes his steps."  I'm not a bible scholar, but at the very least, I think that verse indicates that my plans and the LORD's plans for my life might not be the same.  Hmmm.  Wonder who is off in her planning....not the LORD.  Today was our forth day of homeschooling.  Yesterday was a colossal train wreck, but I'm as stubborn as any of my kids and far more determined when it comes to things of eternal value (like their little hearts).  So, we tried again today.  We still don't have all the cogs running smoothly, but today was much smoother than yesterday.

I had planned for my brother to come over to help one of them with math for an hour.  The plan was he would stay and watch the younger ones while the oldest helped me run errands.  The plan was Quest Lab, Walmart, Sam's Club, and a stop by Goodwill.  Then we would swing by the house to drop everything off before I had to run to a homeschool kick-off meeting.  Well, I went to empty everything out of the back of the Yukon to make room for all the groceries (did I mention my kids can plow through the food?).  Anyways, in the chaos of trying to head out, I grabbed the tail-gate of the Yukon to close it and gave it a hard pull, bringing the corner of it down into my head!  Oh yes!  I punctured my own head!  I knew it had gone deep and my sister encouraged me to go in.  "We'll see," I thought.  I'm not sure what I was waiting to see about, but I blotted up the blood, through some frozen peas under a baseball cap and went off to do my errands.  What was the alternative?  Take all seven kids to run errands tomorrow when I didn't have a sitter.  NO WAY!

Well, 3 out of the 4 errands later, the frozen peas in my hat were now cooked peas thanks to my internal body temperature and the 99 degree weather and beating sun outside.  My head was throbbing and my husband was urging me to get it checked out.  Ok.

You have to love it when you are sitting on a table in urgent care and the doctor walks in and asks you how you are.  "Well... I'm here," was my reply.  A couple of stitches and a tetanus shot later, I was headed off to my meeting, one Sam's club run short of my well-planned day.  No one noticed the hat covering my stitches and bloody, iodine-soaked, ointment laden hair.  I laughed with some other moms about the dramas of homeschooling, vented to one about my crazy afternoon and headed to the car to find a tire very low.  Once upon I time I carried a tire gauge in my car, like before children.  I'm sure they ran off with it to use as a weapon, thermometer, or nose picker.  So, I'm in the gas station and the term tire gauge is totally escaping me.  So, I pitifully ask where i can find "one of those tire-pressure-checker-things".  No I'm not blond.  No, I'm not really a dumb woman.  Yes I did suffer a severe blow to the head.  Yes, I am helping to educated the next generation.  I actually started laughing because I knew how silly I sounded.

I filled the tires, enjoyed a late dinner of nachos and an orange cream slushy and pondered my day as I drove home.  It wasn't really what I had planned, but my heart was actually pretty okay about it.  My head still hurt, and I still had to figure out a way to get to Sam's club without seven children, but my world was still spinning pretty beautifully.  A thousand gifts for which to be thankful started flooding my mind as I drove.  Quiet and peace in the car.  Money for dinner.  No allergies that keep me from enjoying nachos and a slushy.  Modern medicine.  Air conditioning.  Friends that understand the craziness of life and laugh with you.  The fact that I smashed my own head and not one of the children's. A husband who loves me, and tells me to see the doctor when I'm being stubborn (even if he did laugh when he first learned how it happened). Ibuprofen for headaches.  An awesome bed to crawl into.  Shampoo that will get the yuck out of my hair.  A brother that helps care for my kids.  A sister that digs for frozen peas in my freezer while I mutter under my breath about how much my head hurts.  Living in a country where you can still (for now) the medical care you need.  Freedom that allows the medical assistant at urgent care to wear a WWJD bracelet and have forgiven tattooed on his arm.  This wasn't one of the mental exercises striving to get my heart into a good place, although I do that too sometimes.  It was just a giant measure of grace the LORD granted me tonight.  Thankfulness, what a gift!  Then I recalled what I had read this morning.  Six things that are true of those who are in Christ.

I am:
1. given grace before the world was created
2. chosen by God before Creation
3.  loved by God with an inseparable love
4. redeemed and forgiven for all my sins
5.  justified before God and the righteousness of God in Christ is imputed to me
6. a new creation and a son of God.  

None of those things were part of "my" plan, but they were God's plan for me and beyond what I would have know or been able to ask for. So, when it comes to plans, His are infinitely better than mine, even if His include head injuries or whiny children, or late night stops to put air in tires.  His blessings are better than I could ask for too.  I specifically asked the LORD this morning to help me understand what I was reading as I groggily tried to digest the deep, rich devotional app on my phone.  I was thinking that would look like instant understanding, but it rather took the shape of sweet, meaningful reflections late at night after a day of unplanned events.