Inconvenient {a writing prompt}

Since July 3, 2013, our family has made two large rooms in a preschool our home.  I have lost count of how many times I have been asked where something is.  All I know is that it is to the point of brain exhaustion.  I have nine people in my family with two feet each and in the summer it wasn't so bad because we only had the occasional lost flip flop or sandal.  But then it got colder and socks were introduced.  People sometimes complain about their socks getting gobbled up by the "dryer monster" but I have had monsters lurking in every corner of all the rooms I have lived in for the past few months.

Why our family has such an issue with retaining matching socks is beyond me.  After moving here and being told by my children umpteen times that they could not find ANY socks whatsoever, I decided to give up on frugality and buy very large packages of socks at Target.  For every. single. one. of them.  It was liberating...for a while.  Now we have moved into a house.  Actually, we are still in the process of moving.  It saddens me and it causes me to shake my head in disbelief...but we have not been able to find one single pair of matching socks for my boys.  On Saturday evening, as we made preparations for church the next morning, I actually had to dig into my trusty "sock bag" (a bag containing all the socks that have lost their matches over the years) and find them socks that were at least the same color.  They also needed to be able to stretch over their feet...so what if those crew socks are a few sizes too small...they just became ankle socks!  Sometimes you just have to improvise, right?

That evening, as I sat exhausted in a chair (eight months pregnant and moving into a house have been an interesting combination) I watched my daughter Joelle walk up and down the stairs and all around the house as she searched for every item of clothing and every shoe for every child.  It took about an hour.  Sure, we had put all of our shoes together in boxes.  But why was it that all we could find for Brienne was one gold flat and one black high heel?  Mental exhaustion set in as I watched her on the hunt.

A friend mentioned on Facebook this weekend that "Prayer is more effective than panic".  Not being able to find things might sound like a small thing to some but I have felt that frustrating, uncomfortable feeling more times than I care to count in the past few months.  It's one thing when it's something of your own that you have misplaced or that you put into a "convenient" place where you would be able to find it yet you forgot where that place is.  It's another thing when everyone in the family looks to you as the "all knowing" one who somehow knows precisely where every single needed item is located.  Talk about pressure. ;)

True, sometimes I am pretty good at knowing exactly where things are.

"Oh, you're looking for your Bible?  It's right over there on the top shelf."  Imagine my big grin because I was able to direct someone to the thing they needed at that moment.  But now imagine me on Sunday morning when at first all was going well as I thought that everyone had what they needed but then as the questions begin to come from my husband a sudden burst of reality hits.  In my exhaustion from a busy Saturday of cleaning, packing and moving, I had forgotten to make sure that he had all of his necessary items in place.

Where were his shoes?  I knew that they had been conveniently set on top of a box so they would not be hard to find but where was that box?!  Was it still in the van?  And his belt?  I had absolutely NO idea about that one.  Yet I'm supposed to know.  I usually take great pains to not experience this kind of thing on Sunday morning.  But each day has brought me to the point of needing to just not move, and sometimes, a day full of thinking too much wears me out too.  So much planning, coordinating, strategizing, and figuring out when to do what and where to put what...it takes a lot of brain power.  Sometimes I forget, it takes prayer too.

Instead, I let it all get to me.  I felt the frustration welling up.  I felt inconvenienced by all this need to find things.  I felt tired of it all.  Sure, there are harder trials to go through but this was mine in all of it's frustrating, agonizing glory.  I envisioned a future day when every shoe would be neatly stored in it's caddy in the closet.  I dreamed of the day when socks would go directly into their drawers...maybe even in a special shoe box on the side of the drawer so that they won't get lost in the drawer...but no, I wasn't there yet.  I was here, in a house full of boxes, trying to find something that was lost again.

Amazing how we just know we shouldn't say certain things yet it feels almost like a dam is going to break loose and sometimes we let it.

What I said was sarcastic, it was how I felt in that moment, and I should have resisted the temptation to say it and instead thanked God for how good he is to me.

"I just love my life right now."

It was spoken somewhat toward my husband as I left the room.  He heard it, God heard it and I felt the remorse immediately afterward.

So many good things are happening in my life right now!  I have so much to thank God for and I have been doing that here and there but that morning I brought a little bit of ruin into it all.  I had my focus ALL wrong.  I wanted it to be known that I was SO tired of being inconvenienced with having to stop what I am doing to find things for people or to help them find things.  I just felt like I had to make it known.  Well, I did.  And I only felt worse.

Praise God that he forgives and he helps and that my husband is a gracious man who understands what I am going through and he also forgives.  I also praise God that through it all he disciplines me as loving Father and gives me the gusto to want to be the most organized woman on the face of the earth.  I know I have a lot to learn, I know that circumstances right now would throw even the most organized of women into a tizzy but again, I am just me...with all of my personal lessons to learn.

I can't wait to have everything in it's place (at least for the most part!).  I know things will still get lost from time to time but I also know it will be less and less if I have anything to say about it.

I can't wait to share with you all of the good things that God has done in providing a home for our family but that is for another post.  For now, you can just picture me in the perfect mixture of happily unpacking more of my dishes and clothes and...more than likely, trying to find something that someone needs.  That's just the way it is right now.  God is good.  :)


Linking up for the writing prompt here: ellenstumbo.com