Misty Fitch | Fearfully Made

This is the day ~ this is the day ~ this is the day that the Lord has made.
I will rejoice ~ I will rejoice ~ I will rejoice and be glad in it.

Have you ever had one of THOSE days?  You know the day I’m talking about.  The one that makes you want to say anything except the words to this song.  It’s difficult to praise Him when you have a day straight out of a Cheaper by the Dozen-type movie.  Let me share a little about my day today.

My husband is on a business trip, and for some reason I felt it the moment he left.  I’m used to being home during the day, but there’s just something about knowing he won’t be returning at the end of it that makes me frazzled.  So I planned a day of errands with my kids.  I’m big into staying on schedule, and they both have a set nap time, but I was keeping them up today so they would be sleepy by the time I put them in bed since I had girls coming over for small group.  That was the plan.

We were out visiting the preschool our youngest will begin attending in a few weeks when she waited too late to tell me she had to go potty.  It wasn’t just a little late.  It was very late and very gross.  I’ll spare you the details.  Let’s just say it took a while to get everything cleaned up.  Luckily the director brought in some underwear for her to change in to.  Now, normally I would be completely grossed out by sharing what I can only hope are clean underwear, but I didn’t really have an option at this point.  I put them on her and apologized profusely for that embarrassing moment.

Then, the director asked for a ride down the street to pick up her car that was left for inspection.  I had no problem with this because I felt like I had known her forever, and there was no reason not to help her out.  I inadvertantly went into the wrong parking lot to drop her off, but it was close enough that she was willing to walk.  As I backed up in this parking lot that appeared to be parking for nothing, I realized it was already after 1, and we hadn’t had lunch yet!  I mentioned it to the kids who both were telling me how much they were starving when BOOM! I was interrupted by a crash between the back of my car and . . . wait, what was the other thing?  I looked out of all of my mirrors and turned around to look behind me and saw absolutely nothing.  I saw a truck to the side of me and then noticed a trailer attached to the hitch.  I hit a trailer and immediately went to check everything out when the owner of the trailer got out too.  I hadn’t been in a situation like that, so I had no idea what to do, and for some reason it seemed even worse knowing my husband wasn’t around.

We got that taken care of and had to make a quick stop at the grocery store before going home to have the lunch we still haven’t had.  Walking out of the grocery store, I had three bags in my hands and each hand was holding the hand of one of my kids.  We almost got run over by some boys riding their bikes, then I heard my son going “Uh . . .uh . . . uh”  I looked down and see that my sweet girl’s shorts and underwear both were around her ankles, and she was trying her best to keep up with my quick stride!  Poor baby.  The underwear was about 2 sizes too big, and her shorts had already been falling down all morning.  I noticed the boys on the bikes got a good laugh out of it.  I can’t lie.  We got a pretty good laugh ourselves.

I got in the car and read that the temperature on my car says 122 degrees.  That’s not even right.  Oh no!  That’s also when I realized that I forgot to put deoderant on this morning.  🙂

I don’t know how people make it through the day if their children don’t nap or at least go to their rooms for a quiet time because today seemed like it was at least 8 days long.  I finally got the kids bathed and in bed in time to prepare dinner for my small group girls.  They did perfectly well going to sleep.  Well, the youngest did anyway.

During dinner we heard footsteps.  The oldest woke the youngest up.  That happened 2 more times during small group, so I just brought the youngest down with me, which worked for a while.  Then she wanted to play.  Needless to say I wasn’t too involved in small group tonight.

Icing on the cake:  I am the “go to” person for our football team that begins next week, so I was getting information out to parents using a sample email sent by our head coach.  It was a sample of what another mom sent out to his older boy’s team last week.  There it was in the beginning of her email – the name of the head coach for that age group.  I immediately recognized that name as the name of the man whose trailer I hit earlier in the day!  So he is a dad at our small school, which is so small that everyone is considered to be “family”, and what a way to meet for the first time!  So now I’ve come full circle, and the events of this day are the culprit for why I’m writing so late.  This is the first chance I’ve had to sit down by myself.

Why did I feel the need to tell you all the details of my day?  Well, friend.  First, I couldn’t NOT tell that story.  I really do think they’ve made movies about this kind of thing.  As I’m writing it, I can’t help but to laugh at every detail.  Sure I could have cried, pouted, whined, complained or thrown my hands up in defeat.  There are so many ways I could have reacted to any one of these incidents, but why not just laugh?  What does whining, pouting, shouting, crying, or giving up accomplish?  Not a thing.

The truth is ~ this IS the day the Lord has made.  Why not rejoice in what we can look back and laugh at!  It’s so much more productive and healing to do that than remain in each of those circumstances.  I’m okay not having another day like this (please hear me, Jesus), but I know that today was his day.  Were there reasons for these things happening?  I have no idea.  Maybe God needed a laugh today, or maybe he will allow me to use this fun day for his glory (hmmm really?)  Who knows, but I do know that this day is almost over for me, and tomorrow is a new day.  All the things that went wrong today are gone, and I have no reason to dwell on any of them.