Holiday Prep
Tomorrow is Thanksgiving Day. Are you stressed yet?
We like to host relatives, and often friends, too, on the Sunday before Thanksgiving Day. We did that again this year, so my stressful days were this past Saturday and Sunday. Not only was I washing special dishes and cooking, I was also trying to get my house in more order following our many home improvement projects. My list was long.
I was up very, very late Saturday night, up briefly at 4:00 a.m. to put the turkey in the oven, and up at 6-ish to hit the ground running and bustle about until church time. As I walked across our ancient bedroom floor to the closet, I got a splinter in my foot. My feet were cold so I put one big fleece-lined clog on my unsplintered left foot, carried the heavy, bulky right clog, and hobbled very awkwardly down the stairs. It felt so weird. My left shoe put that foot a lot higher off the ground than my right foot. I was also trying to make sure that my right heel hit each stair just right so that I didn’t land on my arch and push the splinter farther in. I felt like someone who had forgotten how to walk!
You may recall that our home improvement projects gave me the impetus to decorate for Christmas early. As I walked down the stairs, I noticed that the garland on the staircase had come apart. I was glad that, though the glass ball attached to that piece was hanging precariously, it had not broken. I held onto the dangling garland, while standing on the stairs like Diddle Diddle Dumpling with one shoe off and one shoe on, explaining to Ray that I needed a green twist tie to repair the garland and telling him where he could find the tweezers to get the splinter.
Ray found the twist tie, while I kept holding on. I repaired the garland and hobbled to the bathroom where my sweet husband pulled out the splinter. I only thought I needed to hit the ground running. Sometimes we think we are going to run, not realizing that we need to hobble for a little while first.
The mind of man plans his way,
But the Lord directs his steps.
Proverbs 16:9, NASB