The Road We Were Forced Onto

It was one of the top ten interviewing questions you were supposed to be ready for when you got out of high school.

“Where do you see yourself in ten years?”

You were supposed to present a picture in which you were a valued employee of their company, or had used your degree from their college to change the world.

But many students were taught to believe that they had to know where they were going in ten years, or twenty, or thirty.

How many of us are living the dream we had whipped up when we were teenagers?

How many of us wish things had gone our way, or. . .

How many of us are glad that they had not?

A nice middle-aged couple in my neighborhood was pushed into early retirement this year. They felt the “signs” were saying it was time to go. They put up a “for sale” sign and drove off to the south to find a new dream home.

Something told me that, in spite of the terrible market, things would go well for them.

Today they arrived home, declaring they had found a beautiful house and their present one had sold. I said, “It could not have happened to better people.”

I believed things would go well for them because they had a great attitude. I do not know these people very well and so do not know their religious inclinations, but their actions showed they were putting themselves in God’s hands. They lost their jobs and did not panic. They stayed home for a few months, making their house and yard beautiful, and came to a decision.

Some people call this “going with the flow”. But it takes a special person to really do that, especially when they have been taught all their lives to plan, plan, plan for the future.

When you feel God is taking your life into a different direction, you have to believe He knows what he is doing. “Where God closes a door, he opens a window,” my parents used to say.

When I get sick or injured, I usually wind up reading a good book. “Boy, if I hadn’t gotten sick (or hurt my leg, etc.), I would never have taken the time to read that,” I say to myself.

When I was unable to find a job in the field of Psychology, I took one in teaching. That opened up a whole new vista to me, and within a year I had become a stay-at-home mother on her way to homeschooling. Who knows what would have happened if I had landed a hot job on the fast track. I probably would not be sitting here writing about The Divine Gift of Motherhood.

Whenever people ask me about my plans for the future, I reply that I do not know what God has in store for me. Will I ever go back to school? Will I ever get a salaried position? Will I ever publish my (at present) unfinished books? Will I ever have another child? Only God knows. He has a plan for me, and He has a plan for you.

When you try to force your will on His plan, only unhappiness can follow. Your road will be filled with potholes and traffic jams. If you learn to listen to His voice, you will know if you are on the path he has chosen for you.

“And this will we do, if God permit.”
Hebrews 6:3

Painting “The Angelus” by Jean-Francois Millet

Not According to Plan

Yesterday was one of those days composed of things not going quite right, yet ending up well.

Sunday morning I had a terrible time with the baby in church. No sooner had we seated ourselves than she ripped off my glasses, scratching the side of my nose in the process. She thought that was great fun, and I had to get my son to hold my glasses. She then proceeded to attempt to remove my earrings.

After I had carefully pried her strong little fingers off my earring, she decided she wanted to have every one of the pew’s hymnals in her possession. This entire scene had been intolerable for me from the beginning. But I knew it was going to be considered an annoyance to others as her “eh? EH?” insistence on the hymnals grew in crescendo.

I motioned to my husband my intention and removed the baby and myself from the church. I have not had to do this since she was a newborn. (Although I have come close many times.) We went outside and sat under a huge old oak tree. She happily and peacefully played with a pile of acorns for the remainder of the mass.

After church, a friend came over to help me secure the baby seat properly to my bicycle. Just as I was putting on her helmet, another friend called. We had been playing “telephone tag” for several days now. My husband handed me the telephone and I explained I was about to go for a bicycle ride.

She loved the bicycle ride but was irritated by the helmet. My six-year-old son ran himself into a curb, close enough to home that my husband was able to run out of the house and bring him home. My eight-year-old daughter was having a problem with her bicycle. Halfway around the mile-long circle that our street runs in, I had two crying girls in tow. My ten-year-old was very helpful in calming them down so we did not disturb the peace in our neighborhood.

I called back my friend. “That was quick,” she said.

“Well, it didn’t go as well as I had planned…”

Have you ever heard of “beef chuck deckle”? I never have, yet I bought a cut of it and made it for dinner. I could not find the word “deckle” in my cookbook, and Webster’s definition had nothing to do with meat. I decided “chuck” meant I should sear and then slow-roast, and it came out delicious.

“Just as you know not how the breath of life fashions the human frame in the mother’s womb,
So you know not the work of God which he is accomplishing in the universe.
In the morning sow your seed,
And at evening let not your hand be idle:
For you know not which of the two will be successful,
Or whether both alike will turn out well.”
Ecclesiastes 11:5-6

Photo Taliah Lempert

Last Minute’s Notice

The phone rang at 8:20 on Monday morning.

I looked at the caller ID and my heart jumped a beat. When the children’s school is calling, the text might as well read, “EMERGENCY: YOUR CHILD”. I don’t know if this happens to other mothers. Being used to having my children ever in my care during my homeschooling years, I am still not completely at ease with entrusting them to others for an entire school day.

I picked up the phone. It was my daughter. “I have cross-country practice after school today,” she informed me. “The teacher said there was an email.”

“Okay honey,” I said, “I’ll be there after school. Have a nice day.”

I hung up the phone and sighed. I had looked for a notice from the team on Friday afternoon and, there being none, assumed I had another week before the season started.

Sundays during track season are very busy, and I often take a day off from the computer. We wake up early for a big pancake breakfast, go to church, drop Baby and Daddy home, and then head to the track for a four-hour meet. We end the afternoon with a backyard barbecue and the usual bedtime routine.

Nothing drives me crazier than last-minute schedule changes. I try not to schedule too much in one day, and then I work my way backwards from the day’s big event to sort out the rest of the day. Now my day’s plans had to be completely rearranged.

In order to be at the school at dismissal, I would have to put the baby down for a nap an hour earlier. That meant she would have to get some outdoor activity and a good breakfast in order to be tired-out enough to sleep. We also would have to fit in a morning trip to the drug store to pick up shock-absorbing athletic inserts for my long-distance runner’s sneakers.

For me, naptime would be taken up by getting together things needed for the other children: a change of clothes, snacks, and pencils to complete their homework. I also had to fetch the cross-country email from my computer, download the attached athletic permission form, and fax it to the school.

I always used to think that things like this only happened to mothers who failed to plan ahead. Mothers had to be on top of things. Those school notices buried on the bottom of the child’s school bag would never happen to me; or so I thought. No sooner than they walk in the door than I am looking in their folders. I even messed that up once this year.

Two Fridays ago, I neglected to look in my son’s folder when he walked in the door. I was on the telephone, and he had a headache. I hung up to tend to his headache, and completely forgot to check for homework. I would discover it at exactly 8:00 Sunday evening, as he kissed me goodnight and I looked in his backpack for his lunch bag. There were some other unpleasantries awaiting me there, including an apple core and empty juice box.

Most of our days our filled with little mundane details such as these. Whenever a wrench is thrown in the works, I have to offer it up to God. Although it is important to plan ahead, the unforeseeables still have to be dealt with. Every time this happens, I have to remember that He is in control.

“The sum of a man’s days is great
If it reaches a hundred years:
Like a drop of sea water,
Like a grain of sand,
So are these few years
Among the days of eternity.
That is why the Lord is patient with men
And showers upon them his mercy.”

Sirach 18:7-9

Pictured above: Haystacks at Giverny, Claude Monet, 1891
This painting is supposedly an impressionistic view of Time.