Saturday, October 26, 2019

Weekends

In the past few months, I have realized just how much stock I put into our weekends. Because we both work, like many other families, we try to fit in some extras in the time between 5 pm on Friday and 7pm on Sunday to round out our weeks.  Carving a little time and purposefully planning family togetherness is worth the effort.  It can be draining, though. Especially when our daughter is just two, and can’t quite hang as long as the rest of us. It can also be unnerving when any event doesn’t turn out to be life-changing like I somehow always dream it up to be.

Do you do this??? I can’t be alone, right? Those hashtags of #makingmemories and #blessed along with the idea that each of my family members is going to appreciate the event just as much as I will sets me up for failure almost every time. 

Not that we are not making memories or are not blessed, by any means.... I simply am trying to relay that many things do not live up to the preset standards I have already in mind. Somehow, I have “lived up” the event before it begins, and then nothing can really compare to what I have imagined.

 Like, going out to dinner (that is NOT Wendy’s or Subway) sounds delightful until you get there and your son chokes on some chicken and your daughter wants nothing to do with the high chair.   You leave the restaurant sweaty and still hungry.  At that point, it would have been safer to make grilled cheese at home. ðŸ˜‚We will get there, I know...it may take a couple more years.

We are set to go to a Jurassic World Live show tomorrow in Pittsburgh, but the truth is, I am waiting for the other shoe to drop here at home.... we had 2 bouts of stomach flu here this week, and I am so nervous that my son and hubby are going to contract it before we hit the road tomorrow. And you know what? There is not a darn thing that worrying about it will do. Yes, it has been planned for a couple months. Yes, it would be some quality time for us and just Colby (Hope is headed to grandma’s).  Yes, it was a nice chunk of change.  If, by chance, we don’t go— I need to make amends with that and move on. That one event will not make or break us. It will be okay. (By the way, my husband cannot identify with this “emotional value” I put into everything.)

For the time we do have our babies at home, I so want them to feel invested in, valued, and even occasionally pleasantly surprised by what mom and dad have planned for them.  But more importantly, I want this “mom commander” in me to let life play out without needing to plan and control it all to fit my expectations because it is a maddening and impossible task. Perhaps this goes further and deeper than weekend planning...

In the end...

my God is God of my weekends, my Tuesdays, my late nights with a sick child. 

My God is God of all celebrations, heartaches, and mishaps. 

In Him, we make it through all circumstances (Phil. 4:13). 

I say it loud and clear here, and I hope to feel it just as clearly within my self. Weekends are wonderful, and can be a time of rest and fun...but in the event they might be riddled with some illness, disappointments, or the like, my God holds us. He loves and delights in us.  Our imperfection does not put boundaries on His goodness. And chances are, as disappointed or disillusioned we may feel sometimes, life has a way of allowing us to look back and blur a bit of today’s reality. We move on, forget, and mature. Praising God for reigning in all our moments.