Oops Happen

Share Now

Oops happen to everyone. Sometimes an oops is our own fault (Yikes! I left the water running and flooded the basement!). Sometimes an oops is the fault of someone else (Yikes! My husband forgot to pick up the ice and company’s coming in ten minutes!). And sometimes there is no one we can find to blame (Yikes! The power went out for four hours and my crock pot meal isn’t done!).

We had two oops yesterday. When I did my encouragement webinar at 2:00, we had software issues. Then, when I tried to talk about Uncle Sam and You at 3:00, my audio, which had worked fine at 2:00, wouldn’t work at all. Our son John, who was managing the techie side of things and who had audio on his computer hundreds of miles away, had to step in and do the webinar for me. Oops. Of course,  John and I both feel bad for the kind folks who tried to tune in. At the bottom of this post is a link to both of yesterday’s webinars, in case you missed them altogether — or tried and gave up altogether!

This reminds me of another oops we had recently in The Woodlands. Very, very early on the Sunday morning after we finished the THSC homeschool convention, Ray and I were snoozing in our hotel room at 1:22 a.m. when the room phone rang. The room phone. Not Ray’s phone, not my phone. The room phone. As we both lay there dazed, I said, “I think that was the room phone.” Ray said he thought so, too.

Ray is the action guy when we travel: “Would you like me to pack up your computer?” “I’ll go get the luggage cart.” “I’ll go get the car.” Things like that. But I guess he was in a deep sleep when the phone rang because he just lay there. Drowsily I said, “I guess I ought to see what that’s about.”

When the desk clerk answered my call, she informed me: “A Suburban has been broken into in the parking lot.” Then, she proceeded to tell me that some folks coming in late that night had noticed it and that we needed to come down and talk to the policeman.

One of my first thoughts was this: “I have to get dressed and go downstairs?”

On our way down, Ray called Donna, our convention helper; and I wondered, “Why are you bothering Donna in the middle night?” Turns out the front desk had called Donna when we didn’t answer and Donna had texted Ray.

When we got into the parking lot, we found a smashed back side window (with glass on the parking lot and inside the car), an empty box, and an empty space where other equipment had been when we pulled into the parking lot at 9:00 p.m. We filled out the report for the sheriff’s deputy and headed to the lobby to call insurance and glass repair folks and to make a cardboard, plastic, and tape patch where the window used to be. Two and a half hours later, we three we were back in our rooms, trying to get back to sleep.

The next morning Ray and I went to church with a couple of families we had met at the convention. The passage for the day was:

He says, “Be still, and know that I am God;
I will be exalted among the nations,
I will be exalted in the earth.”
Psalm 46:10 NIV

When the minister began, Ray leaned over to me and whispered, “This is for us.”

We were going to leave Houston that afternoon, but we had a lazy quiet afternoon and evening instead, while we waited for the glass repairs on Monday.

God has every oops covered — yours, mine, the ones with no one to blame, and those that happen at your house today. As He says:

. . . “Be still, and know that I am God;
I will be exalted among the nations,
I will be exalted in the earth.”
Psalm 46:10 NIV

Let’s Do This Webinar

Uncle Sam and You Webinar

Share Now