Dropping the Ball

Do you sometimes feel like you've "dropped the ball" in the midst of the daily demands of mommyhood? 

Whether it's your husband opening up his underwear drawer, only to find it empty...OOPS!  Or you signed up to take a family a meal, only to remember the very moment they're waiting for you to show up at their door! Or forgetting that dentist appointment that you've waited three long months for!  You get the picture.  Sometimes as moms, even we organized moms, occasionally drop the ball.

Recently, I dropped the ball with my one of my older girls.  Our oldest daughter participated in two years of Dual Credit.  If you're not familiar with this program, it allows your high school student to take college courses for free, earning both college and high school credit. 

Well, it was time to begin the enrollment process for our next daughter.  She had already taken the SAT and we were just waiting on scores.  Life had been busy during that time with a difficult pregnancy and then new baby, so I hadn't been paying much attention to dates and deadlines.  While at Bible study one night, a friend mentions something about the Dual Credit enrollment deadline passing.

WHA!?!  "Did you say the deadline has PASSED?"

"Oh, yes, it was last week.", said my friend!

At that moment, I really felt like I had dropped the proverbial ball.  How could this be?  School doesn't start until August and it was only March.  Surely I can still get her signed up.  But, after lots of calls and emails, hope was lost.  Not only did I miss the deadline, but the enrollment process was for the entire year....not just one semester.  My daughter will miss an entire year of Dual Credit.  Not only would Dual Credit have eased some of my teaching responsibility, but my daughter was looking forward to trying her hand at a couple of college courses.  I felt absolutely terrible and I beat myself up for days over this.

Until.....

I was reminded that God is sovereign.  That God directs our steps.  That if I truly believe that "all things work together for good" (Rom 8:28), then I should trust that there was reason I dropped this ball.  Perhaps it just wasn't God's plan for Celeste to attend college this year.  Maybe she wasn't ready.  Maybe she was being protected in some way.  I don't know, and perhaps I'll never know.  What I do know, is that if it was His plan for her to be there, we wouldn't have missed the deadline. 

My point to this story is not to use life as an excuse to ignore our responsibilities, or miss important deadlines, but as a reminder to not beat ourselves up when we occasionally drop the ball.  If we understand that God is at work in all circumstances, we can rest in this knowledge, learn from our experiences, and move on to other tasks....like those "whites" so my husband will have clean underwear for Pete's sake!

As for my daughter, well, she was very understanding...and we'll just shoot for next year.  Will someone please email me in OCTOBER to remind me?  ;-)

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