Day Thirty-Nine: Surrender to Surprise

            That little saying, surrender to surprise, comes from a wonderful book by Christina Baldwin titled, The Seven Whispers.  I found this little gem six or seven years ago and it’s stuck with me every day since then.  In her book, Baldwin discusses seven whispers that she says each morning.  I use them to help me be open and prepare for my day.  Surrender to surprise is the whisper I have the most trouble with, I’m not big on surprise.  It’s back to the act or react situation and as I’ve said before I tend to react.  It has gotten better over the years, but I still need a lot of practice.  Like last night for instance.

            My mother in-law, sister in-law and her four kids stopped at our house on my sister in-laws way back to her home.  They were driving down from Wisconsin and needed to stop for a rest and dinner.  No problem, I thought.  I am slightly uncomfortable around kids, but that is a whole other blog.  My mother in-law would be spending the night and then driving back to Wisconsin in the morning, again no problem.  The first surprise came at dinner.  The waitress put all our meals on one ticket and my husband volunteered to pay for it.  It wasn’t a bad thing and with my new job we had the money, I just hadn’t been prepared for it so it took me a moment to adjust, surprise.  My mother in-law was trying to convince her daughter to spend the night at our house because she was already tired and still had a four to five hour drive ahead of her.  My sister in-law declined, she was ready to go home.  My husband and I talked on the way home and we both agreed that we would rather have his sister stay with us than drive tired; we just weren’t sure where we would put everyone had she decided to stay.  I felt completely unprepared to have four kids in my house even if it was just overnight. 

            I bet you can see where this is going.  We got home and Ben’s sister decided that she was too tired to drive and I went into reaction (read worry) mode.  I felt bad that Ben’s sister had to sleep on the couch with her baby and the other three kids would have to sleep on the floor.  As worried as I was about that, I was more concerned about morning.  Today was my husband’s first day back at work and I would be heading to work in the morning as well.  It was not the quiet morning I had envisioned.  Add to that I had nothing in the way of breakfast food for kids (I guess I forgot that kids can eat eggs and toast, I was focused on cereal), and no coffee pot to make coffee for Ben’s mother.  I felt like a heel and said as much to Ben.  I told him that I was happy that his sister was staying, but how terribly unprepared I felt.  He gave me a hug and helped me gather up some blankets, and then I went in the basement and found my pillow collection and brought that upstairs for the kids.  I thought things would be chaos this morning, but they were quite calm.  I realized that much of the anxiety I was feeling was caused by my own worries and fears that things would not be good enough for them.  My mother in-law told me she was taking all of them out to breakfast and told me not to worry about it.  My sister in-law thanked me for letting them stay the night and waved away my apologizes for not having better accommodations for them.  She laughed and said it was better than sleeping in the car and I had to agree with that.  All in all it was a nice time, even though it was a complete surprise.