Oh What A Morning

I need a moment's peace and in that moment's peace I need to get my everlovin' mind focused on the Lord. It's only 9:05 but the last hour was crazy. It involved yelling. And being late. Two things I don't really enjoy.

A dear friend of ours from church is nearing the end. He will very likely be walking with the Lord soon. Last night, my husband and our associate pastor stayed very late at the hospital. Troy got home around 3:30. Our associate pastor's wife is out of town so he brought his daughter to spend the night while he camped out at the hospital.

She needed to be at school--about ten minutes away--at 8:25.

So I got up at 7:00.

I got all three kids ready. I fed them. I curled Madi's hair. Three sets of teeth got brushed. I started a load of laundry. I cleaned out the litter box. I was doing good. We were ahead of schedule so I let them play for a few minutes. Apparently I needed a good humbling because I was starting to think I had this motherhood thing down pat.

When it was time to go it took forever to get Madi buckled in between Garrett and Matthew's car seats. So we left a couple minutes late.

I took the shortest route to the school. This involved passing two other elementary schools and the traffic was terrible. I grew up in an area that had one elementary school until I was in the sixth grade and they opened a second. I'm not used to school traffic.

Then, despite looking up the directions to the school last night, I assumed that I'd be able to see it from the main road. Well, we all know what happens when we assume. People are late to third grade. That's what! So I ended up in road construction--that I would have missed altogether if I'd turned at the right place--and I'm sitting there, not moving. At this point my boys get loud and I yell at them to pipe down immediately so that I can think. It's been a long time since I've been in elementary school. Was I supposed to walk her to class? Walk her to the office. I needed to process what I was supposed to do with her now that she was late. I was acutely aware that I hadn't yet put make up on.

The road sign changed from STOP to SLOW and the line of cars in front of me continued on their merry way. But just as I was about to go through, the angry red STOP sign showed its face to me and I had to cease moving once again.

Once I was finally allowed to go I went straight, since, you know, I hadn't yet seen the school from the road. "Why didn't you turn?" Madi asked me?

"I was supposed to turn back there?" I questioned.

"Yes," she replied. I flipped the car around. Now I was stuck on the other side of the road construction. Neat.

"Okay, Madi, do you know where to turn after that?" She agreed that she did. So I turned onto the road that I previously didn't know I was supposed to turn on. I continued driving. "Make sure you tell me where to turn." I drove for a few more seconds.

"You should have turned back there," she said, suddenly.

Oy vey!

So I flipped the car around again. Within seconds I had pulled up in front of the school. "I'm afraid we're late," Madi sighed. I explained that, yes, we were late but I would walk her in. Exercise clothes, no make up, and all.

Of course Matthew had taken off his shoes and thrown them about the car. Of course I had to find them and put them on him before we walked in. Of course he didn't want them on and he screamed and kicked his feet in an effort to accomplish his goal.

We walked in and got stuck in line behind some kids who were having some sort of rental instrument crisis. Once that was all figured out I simply said, "We're family friends of hers. She spent the night last night. I didn't figure in the road construction on my way here. Does she need a pass or something?" They smiled at me.

"She's okay, just go straight to class."

So the moral of this story is that, apparently, I don't have this motherhood thing figured out. Or, at least, I don't have road construction figured out.