According to Plan

I love planning, preparing, scheduling, and ordering my day.  Having an idea of what I'd like to accomplish greatly aids me in getting through my day.  Imagine my dismay when, last week, I came accross James 4:15 in the kids' daily devotional:  "If the Lord will, we shall live, and do this, or that."  Later on that same day, my Bible reading assignment took me to the same passage where James admonishes us to follow the Lord's plans, not ours.

"Okay, Lord," I wondered, "what do you have in store for us tomorrow?"  I sincerely hoped that He wasn't planning on one of the kids waking up sick or needing to go to Urgent Care for something!

Since I'd read the same passage twice in one day and since I was pretty sure that the authors of the devotional hadn't conspired with my daily Bible reading coordinators, I tried to be prepared for whatever was coming down the pike.

I was looking forward to the next day's school assignments - it was supposed to be a catch-up day since we'd not completed a few things in the previous weeks and I felt that some of our missed assignments needed to be finished.  After breakfast the following morning, though, I realized that I'd left our binder of curriculum in the car and that Jon had the car at work.

Oops.

This normally would have completely derailed my day's productivity, but since I had just read about following the Lord's will and not necessarily my own, I was able to switch gears.  We pulled out our core curriculum that wasn't in the car and had a good day of Bible, math, reading, and spelling.

I then got the brilliant idea to have the kids help me make laundry soap.  Not only were we on the dregs of the last batch I had made, but it would be very sciency and would make up for my leaving the science activities in the car.  I ran to the laundry room (grateful once again to have such a room in my house!) to get the needed ingredients.

And then I discovered that I only had the Fels Naptha and not the Borax or Washing Soda,  Really?  I thought.  How on earth do I have the one ingredient that is most difficult to obtain and not have the simple ingredients?

Once again, I was reminded of the verse.  Suddenly I got the brilliant idea to walk to the store to get the Borax and the Washing Soda.  We'd walked there many times, and we could all use the exercise.

Of course, though, I'd left the stroller in the car along with the school work, and carrying home heavy boxes of laundry fillers while dragging along a tired toddler didn't appeal.

All that to say, my day definitely did NOT go as planned, but the Lord had prepared my heart earlier so that none of these little setbacks irritated me much at all.  This in itself was a miracle since I like to be on top of things.

We ended up cleaning house and calling it a day.  I don't know why the Lord planned our day the way He did, but the lesson I learned was very needed.  We can always make soap another day (look for a laundry soap post soon!); we got some good work done on our core subjects; and I got a clean house, too.  There's not much to complain about when I think of all the blessings!  (Photo Credit)