A Bad Day
Yesterday was an interesting and thought provoking day with a toddler. Our “toddler” is 36 so I’m assuming the wife and I may have forgotten a few things over the decades. They say that memory tends to focus more on the positive aspects than the negative ones. I tend to think this is true.
Anyway, back to the story. Early on in the day, around 10am (which for me, being an early morning person seems late but I can at least pretend was early), we started to talk about driving to the big city to see the sights (aka shopping which I’m not good at in any meaning of the word). To hook me in, my son found a specialty hot dog restaurant (who doesn’t like a good dog?). Then we needed a snack and after some more pleasantries, it got closer to noon.
Then they put our grandchild down for an approximate 3 hour nap where I was watching something called Mr. T’s Kitchen (believe it or not, a corporate chef of a company cafeteria operation in the UK creates videos of him doing his daily work creating breakfast and lunch). Mind you, I’m not recommending this and I’ll probably never look for him again but at the time I was entranced.
After the nap, we started the 40-minute drive to the big city. On the way, my wife got motion sick, a bad spell with a bad motion stopping need and where she preferred to remain in the car. We reconfigured our plans and decided to go to Sam’s for the hot dog. Another disaster (disaster is too strong of a word but Sam’s was understaffed and a lot of their food equipment wasn’t working). So, the 4 of us (myself, my son and daughter-in-law and my grandchild) tried to kill a little time so my wife could sleep in the car and recover from motion sickness.
Our plan was to leave there and go to the main stop Target (ironically, I never go into a Target except when we have travelled hundreds of miles to see our kids). Before we got there, my wife’s motion sickness returned with a vengeance. We started trying to convince her into going to a doctor or getting a close by hotel room to sleep the motion sickness off to no avail. So, again, the 4 of us went into the store with my wife sleeping in the car. I bought her some nausea OTC medicine and then went back in. After we had shopped for a while and were ready to leave, our grandchild who had been mostly good natured about the whole process, needed to be rescued from her own mishap. Comments started to occur about Murphys law.
My wife was able to make the return trip without a reoccurrence of symptoms and promptly went to bed. Our grandchild, after her mishap was righted, was happy at first but then a subsequent need griped her that made her uncomfortable until it resolved itself. By now, it was after 9pm and I believe the three adults who hadn’t already gone to bed, were ready to. Our grandchild had clearly reached her level of tolerance was was taken to bed. The day of unfortunate circumstances, had ended.
Am I sharing this with you to get some kind of sympathy? No. Am I sharing this with you to get you to feel better about your day or feel guilty about your day? No. I’m sharing this with you to empathize that during the whole day I felt a calm that is indescribable without God.
“Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. Not as the world gives do I give to you. Let not your hearts be troubled, neither let them be afraid.” - John 14:27 ESV
“Not that I am speaking of being in need, for I have learned in whatever situation I am to be content.” - Philippians 4:11 ESV
The day reminded me that there are seasons to life. What seems usual to one person seems unusual to another. The best we can do is to try to empathize with the other person’s season.
