Oops!

I have been trying really hard this week to be on top of things.  I've printed off fancy weekly schedules, prepared a monthly menu, and made an all-encompassing grocery list.  My laundry is almost caught up and put away, not just piled atop the dressers.  I have even rearranged the junk drawer...which by definition is supposed to be a hideous hole of assorted crap!

Yet, despite my best efforts, I am no further ahead.  In fact, I'm still a mile behind yelling, "hold on, life...just lemme catch up"!  All my hard work would be well rewarded if I just didn't screw anything else up.  But apparently for every two steps forward, I take one step back.  For example...

Today I went shopping armed with a ginormous grocery list and six WIC checks.  (For those of you who don't know, WIC checks are like manna from heaven.  But, just like manna, there are certain restrictions and regulations that one must strictly abide by or... no soup for you!)  
Now, I don't like grocery shopping.  I usually do it at 10:00 at night so that I don't have to deal with long lines, pushy people, and fussy kids.  But today I was brave and ambitious.  I went with the mindset that this would be an extraordinary event.  I would buy all that we need for the next three weeks and I wouldn't have to think about groceries again till mid October!

I find that far too often my life
resembles a cartoon.

It took hours and my cart runneth over.  Lunch time was rapidly approaching, yet to my surprise, Piper and Isaac still had a fairly firm grasp on their sanity.  I wondered how much longer that would last, surely I was pushing the limits of their patience.  
At the checkout line we waited for twenty minutes.  (Apparently the other seventeen registers are just for decoration.  It would be foolish to actually expect them to open those.)  I finally loaded the belt with our bounty just to discover that my WIC checks, which amount to about $150 worth of "manna", were invalid.  They could not be accepted until after the first of the month.  I had totally overlooked the dates written prominently across each check.  Oops! 

As I trudged through the store restocking the shelves from our own cart, Isaac asked me a thousand times to explain what was going on.  Giving groceries back to the grocery store struck him as a rather odd practice!  Between explanations I kept repeating, "I can do all things through Christ who gives me strength."  At first I chanted it to myself but the more frustrated I got the louder I got.  It must have been a bit scary for the people around me .  I was not using my sweet Sunday School voice...it was more like a growl, the words being forced out from behind clenched teeth.  But sure enough, after the overwhelming urge to cry had passed and I returned the WIC items to their proper places, I looked down to see that Piper had fallen asleep, Isaac was happily dancing in the aisle.  We were okay.  I was okay!  God did give me the strength I needed for that situation.  He even heaped on a helping of grace as well.  

My mother has often said to me, "Sarah, for such a smart girl, you do some stupid things."  My mom is right...and she doesn't even know about half the stupid things I've done!!  Thankfully, God is also aware of my inclination to fail.  He knows that I'm a total flop on my own, so he's always close by to answer my tortured cries for help.  At the very least, I'm smart enough to know when I need to ask for his assistance!  That's gotta be a step in the right direction.