I spent 2 decades pouring over charts and planning meals and choosing curriculum and new starts and new systems and tiny budgets and to spank or not to spank and far too much fussing loudly. I still go to church and clean the house and fuss and homeschool and organize and go to therapy. I travel more and worry about new things. The next big thing is no longer just around the corner because I learned for this season that all of it mattered. The big moments, the laundry folding plans, the dishwashing schedule, the curriculum choices, the grocery budgets, and weird meal plans all mattered. It was no one big thing. It never has been. It is all a real good story. All of those moments and lists and hopes and routines are what meant survival and beating the odds and crossing finish lines to only face the next shotgun start. I have spent the last 24 years with one shotgun start after another while eeeking over the last finish line and every line in the sand has been washed away just as I was expecting my ribbons. The ribbon is that it is a real good story. A story where the bigs are making it and making their way and finding love and themselves and Jesus all in their own relationship to the world. I am in a new season of watching my own prize ceremony while they start their own races. I see that I didn’t mess it all up. Most of the choices were ok. We are still a mess. We are still safe. We have actually beat some odds while I was looking for the perfect system of beating the odds. Most of it came in the next best thing next. So many finish lines to go in the race. More unknowns than ever and sweating it out with less fear and more wondering and wandering because that isn’t so scary. This season I think that teaching them it is ok not to know and we really never knew what we were going to do and it wasn’t awful is the best lesson. It is possible to be as shattered and broken as a box of mismatched china that has been rattled through decades of racing with no direction and fear and still do the next best thing next and love well and serve strong and tuck littles in without shattering them. Shattered isn’t contagious and it is a real good story.
Could it be Day 8 of 31 Days. I’ll think about that tomorrow.
More than the sun and the stars and the moon on every leg of the race……
This is part of an ongoing series 31 Days of Being Present
Next Best Thing Next 