Stop, Drop & Roll

Stop, Drop and Roll

No one ever told me; “Don’t have kids unless you want to know what you’re really like.”  No one ever said this to me because really, I never asked.  So here I’m telling you; if no one has ever done the favor of pointing out your weak spots, your offspring surely will.   

My children possess some of my more quirky tendencies, things you may have already detected in me, others which may be a bright, shiny, new revelation, but...probably not. Some of the tendencies I see illustrated with my kids are:

Grandmotherliness: the act of being militant about ones’ person; to be overtly self actualized.

Party planning Panther: an individual who may or may not be adaptable to unexpected changes to an agenda, consequently plans for any given party are obsessed over, even pounced upon.

Bee-in-bonnet syndrome: (also known as, one-track-mindedness) this generally lends itself to tunnel vision and can quickly become the angst of other agendas.

Most of the time, I laugh and cringe at the vivid display of quirks in my own children.  However, when I walk away from “their issues” and not 12 hours later display this same type behavior, I now shudder in disbelief.

I realize my deep need to allow God to inspect and move about the cobwebby-corners of my heart and speak about what lies beneath the surface. And in doing so, my own neurosis is brought to light.

Not long ago, I was wading through a lot of emotions, some surfaced from my stage of life (aka motherhood) and some produced by what a friend of mine refers to as the “Inner Critic”.  The Inner Critic will push us to evaluate the reality of the situation and at times, we allow the Inner Critic to push too far feeding our emotions with statements like: Things are not how I envisioned they would be, or,  I should have done a better job at this, or What do I do now?

Sometimes it’s not easy to adapt when your plan doesn’t come to fruition like you wish it would have.  

We are all taught from an early age what to do in case of unwanted flames on your person; stop, drop and roll.  I am reminded of this every year as my kids come home from school with fire safety coloring books.  A simple plan for unexpected danger.

In Numbers 13 we read about some people who had a game plan.  God had promised a  certain land to his people, but it wasn’t as easy as signing a deed and moving in.  God gave instructions to Moses about how to proceed with the plan but did not shed light on every single detail of the plan.  And, there were several problems the people of Israel encountered, one of them being that the land was occupied, the second being that the people occupying the land were giant intimidators - quite literally.  The Israelites had already accepted their defeat and actually cried out in chapter 14: 1-4

“That night all the people of the community raised their voices and wept aloud. All the Israelites grumbled against Moses and Aaron, and the whole assembly said to them, ‘If only we had died in Egypt!  Or in this desert! Why is the Lord bringing us to this land only to let us fall by the sword?  Our wives and children will be taken as plunder. Wouldn’t it be better for us to go back to Egypt?  And they said to each other, ‘We should choose another leader and go back to Egypt.’”

This is such a typical response from a pack of disappointed humans.  How many times have I been disillusioned about what my next step should be after a setback - I feel as though I should turn away and start at the beginning.  Sometimes those early beginnings are places of pain just as the Israelites encountered in Egypt.  We gravitate back towards our pain in moments of blind bliss; remembering the sweetness forgetting the bitterness because it is a familiar place, because we would know what to expect.  Numbers 11; verses 4-6  “The rabble with them began to crave other food, and again the Israelites started wailing and said, “If only we had meat to eat! We remember the fish  we ate in Egypt at no cost - also the cucumbers, melons, leeks, onions and garlic, But now we have lost our appetite; we never see anything but manna!”

Sometimes moving forward is scary, so unknown and unfamiliar that we doubt every single step we’ve already taken.

I have a natural tendency towards order; it’s my security blanket. Some days I praise God that those tendencies help keep my family organized and fed and bathed and delivered to their appropriate responsibilities.  But I recognize that failed game plans are a pit in the middle of my narrow road that are absolutely unavoidable.  I want to see what God has in mind before trust him, and that isn’t always possible.

My kids are small now.  My prayer for them is that they will be ready for anything.  That they would be prepared for life and ready to move forward no matter what comes their way.  That they could stop when there is an obstacle, drop whatever plans they were clinging to, and roll with it 

God knew when I married Phil I needed someone who was already had this one down.  Happily, for the sake of our children, they’re Father thrives off spontaneity.  You’d think I’d learned my lesson by now.  But if it took the Israelites 40 years to get their stuff together, you know it’s gonna take me a lifetime, and I’m praying that I keep rolling.