Plans

Yesterday, I had a lot of things on my To Do list for after church.
I was going to get the oil changed in my car.
I was going to wash my car.
I was going to clean out my car.
I was going to clean my apartment.
I was going to go to the grocery store and get groceries for the week.
I was going to do laundry.
I was going to take a nap.
(and, yes, I’m aware that I live in some sort of time/space continuum in which I would think all of this was possible in the five hours I had budgeted for it, including the nap).

But.

One of “my girls” needs a dress that is appropriate both for homecoming, and a member of a house party in a wedding.
And her friend that was going shopping with her was sick.
And she has no car.
And she got in a fight with her mom, who happens to be on a cruise, and couldn’t take her anyway.
And she didn’t know how she was going to get it taken care of.
And she asked me to take her.

So, I scrapped most of the plans and we went dress shopping. When you live the life I’ve chosen for myself, sometimes you just have to have a dirty car and a dirty house and know you’re going to be wearing a back-up outfit, and be a little tired because an opportunity has been placed in front of you and you know it is from God Himself, and you just say of course you’ll do it!

And typically, He rewards you with just enough time to take a little nap before you have to go to His house for meeting after meeting and a little gospel choir gathering thrown in for good measure.

And we didn’t find the dress, but we did talk about her divorced parents and her fight with her mom and how she doesn’t know what she wants to do when she graduates or where she wants to go to college, and when it all comes down to it, hanging out with teenagers is better than a clean car any day of the week.

Oh, and another fourth grade lesson. You can’t teach conjunctions, such as “but”, without fits of giggles. No matter how you say the word or how many times.