When your life is a little different from your list…

The chatting and the chicken dying weren’t on my list. Early that morning I’d numbered it neatly in my planner:

1. Baking
2. Homeschool
3. Finish Romans study
4. Blog Post
5. Work on book

I was still in my jammies when I began the baking, following my familiar weekly ritual of letting the yeast foam for the first loaf of bread, chopping onions for roasted veggies, pulling up Pinterest for the cake recipe. We watch 2-year-old Grace on Tuesdays, so she woke up shortly thereafter and I gathered her sleepy-eyed sweetness in my arms and finished making breakfast, sipping a second cup of coffee, savoring the thought of a domestic day at home.

For the most part, all was well. Chores were done without argument, school began without tears. Then I could feel the tension begin just a bit as math frustrations arose, focus slipped, mishaps happened. By lunch time I had yet to brush my teeth but school was done and baking was done and no one was injured — win!

“Let’s go outside!” I announced cheerfully, figuring once I got them out and happily occupied, I could sit on the porch and get the rest of my work done–studying and writing. But I soon discovered a toddler had tossed something into the chicken coop and it needed immediate retrieval, so I donned my mud boots and headed out to the rescue.

I looked for that one little feathered friend, Checkers, the sickly one, and there she was: Standing sadly right inside the gate. I saved the tossed-in toy, fed the girls, fetched the eggs, and was heading out when the kids gathered ‘round: “Mommy, let’s let Checkers out in the yard for awhile.”

So I nudged Checkers gently with the gate, to urge her out of the coop, but she took one slow step to the side, keeled over into the mud, and as three poor wide-eyed children watched, died.

Oh no. 

“Guys, go play over there!” I try to say it cheerfully but Grace points and begins repeating, “Chick’n dead! Chick’n dead!” Heidi’s eyes spring up with tears and Dutch runs to the other corner of the yard and stares into the sky.

And just like that, I watch everything unravel. Thankfully, Jeff zips home to dispose of the dead chicken, but now the oven timer is chiming, Grace is peeing her pants, Dutch is protesting our impending Nature Walk, and Heidi’s sad that Daddy has to go back to work and isn’t here to play. I plate up a big lunch for Jeff, with fresh-made bread and roasted veggies, a special feast to thank him, then set it on the porch railing for him, and within moments it’s bumped over by a certain small person and it splats on the ground.

I can’t help but think it: None of this was on my list.

Right? Of course it wasn’t, because lists are helpful but ridiculously tidy. Life isn’t anything like that.

LIFE looks like this: Tears and peed pants and chickens dying and attitudes needing adjusting and timers chiming and if we have the idea that victory is a day without mishaps, we’re sunk before we start.

Right? Repeat after me: Lists are tidy. Life isn’t.

So when I finally sit down to write in my impossibly narrow window of time and there’s a knock on the door, and it’s someone who just swung by to chat (can you believe it?!), I smile to myself and choose to embrace this moment because this person is more important than my page-count and this life is more important than my list.

By the time she leaves, I can see so much clearer. And so my kitchen’s still a mess but I’ve scratched out these thoughts and will choose my children now instead of the last list-item and we’ll curl up together and I’ll listen and love and hold and smile and ask the Father for grace afresh to live well this impossibly untidy life. I’ll pray that same grace for you too, because I’m guessing your life is also a little different from your list. Thanks for reading.