Joe and I took the kids on a last-minute weekend getaway up north. I love it up there. I have been going to the same area every summer since I was 10 and Joe started coming up with my family when we were in high school. He absolutely loves it there too. Our boys definitely love going and Ayla is following in their footsteps. We enjoyed a couple of days at different beaches, exploring and looking for beloved Petoskey stones. Joe enjoys rock collecting almost more than the boys, I think. We ate good food and took in glorious sunsets. It was a much needed little trip.
On the car ride home, Joe and I started talking about how our life together has not turned out at all as we had anticipated it would. Not that it has turned out too shabby, just not what we expected. A lot of our plans that we had for ourselves and our children have pretty much crumbled to the ground. We always thought that we would have a cottage and take the kids up almost every weekend in the summer, spending our days exploring God's creation and our evenings singing songs around the campfire and roasting marshmallows. We wanted our kids to have a passion for music and the outdoors. We wanted to spend good quality time together, taking it easy and relaxing with each other as a family. We never wanted to run the rat-race of dragging our kids from one activity to another. We always wanted to sit down and eat dinner, all of us together, not scarfing down Happy Meals in the van with a DVD playing. I always said that I would NEVER be one of those crazy hockey moms!!
And here I am, not only a hockey mom, but a baseball mom and golf mom (is there even such a thing?). Joe and I definitely have a hectic, chaotic life together which is totally the opposite picture that we had in our minds before we had kids. And we are to blame. We are the ones who have signed up for this. Part of it is what feels comfortable. Joe grew up playing sports, that's what he knows. As a young married couple, we wanted to break the mold a little bit. Almost rebel, if you will, against the typical household in our city. But here we are running in our little wheel, trying to balance it all and by gosh, we aren't going to break a sweat, at least not enough for anyone else to notice. So we just keep trying to juggle it all, work, activities, commitments, obligations, sports, etc.
The question is, "Is this God's plan for our lives, or is it our plan?" Where does divine intervention intervene into our free will? Is this God's pre-chosen, pre-determined plan for my life and my family's lives or is it my doing? How did we end up here? I find myself reverting back to the Calvinistic doctrine that seems to have been taught to me most of my life and have to admit that I do think that our lives have been predestined to be where they are. If not, I am given way too much credit for choices and in that much more weight than I can bear. And I don't think that we are little pawns either, I'm not saying that. I just think that God's plan is much bigger than all of my little plans and He is going to do what He wants to, whether I'm on board or not. So maybe I should just stop questioning and jump on, even if it's not what I envisioned or much more chaotic than I would like!
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