Expectations

We had our first homestudy appointment yesterday at the Jewish Family Services offices. Let me just start by saying that I am a person who has A LOT of trouble recovering, attitude-wise, if something happens that causes my day to look different than I thought it would. The appointment was for 9:30 am because my son goes to Mother's Day Out from 9 - 2. So the thought was we could go to the meeting and not be distracted. That is NOT what happened. Sweet Caleb (though I was not calling him that yesterday) has had trouble being separated from me, for any amount of time, ever since we moved to our new house. When I tried to drop him off at school he lost it. Now I don't mean he threw a tantrum because that would be easy(-ish) to leave. Oh, no, he broke down and weeped. "Please, Mommy, I don't want you to go! I want to go with you! I want YOU, Mommy!" All sobbing with tears streaming down his face. Needless to say, he came with me. Not because I'm such a compassionate mom (as if), but because I was already late for our appointment and couldn't wait any longer to get him calmed down. I was not kind to Caleb about it, but just told him to come on and let's go. Luckily, he did not even notice my irritation. As far as he was concerned he was leaving with Mommy and that's all he'd wanted, anyway.

As I drove to meet my husband to go the appointment I was VERY frustrated and annoyed. Not only was my son NOT supposed to be with me (in my mind), but I was late and I HATE being late. Also, my husband HATES to be late, so I knew he would be annoyed with me, too. As I drove, I started to think about the lesson I had done in my bible study that morning. We are studying the Lord's Prayer and that morning had looked at the phrase "Give us this day our daily bread". I was struck by the thought that I had not taken this whole situation to Him. He could have calmed Caleb's heart so he could have stayed at school, but I did not ask Him to. So instead He began to change my view of what my day would look like and my heart to accept it.

A little later while my husband drove, I talked to a friend I had seen that morning leaving Caleb's school. I wanted to apologize to her in case I had been short or rude...like I said, my attitude suffers when my plans don't work. She told me I hadn't been (to her), but she had prayed for me that the Lord would put my day into perspective for me. I love it when you get to tell someone He's answered a prayer they prayed for you.

Nothing about my day looked like I'd planned for it to, but it was still a good day.