Company's Coming

Company’s coming tomorrow. When the invitation was extended, I felt—while not anything close to perfect—“almost in control.”

I started planning early. The house was clean on Wednesday.

“I can keep it this way ‘til Sunday,” I thought.

I planned the menu. “No big deal,” I said.

Then a baby food jar shattered on the clean kitchen floor.

Cheerios exploded everywhere in our bedroom.

Laundry piled up after a very long week.

My son suddenly decided to deem sleep extinct like the dinosaurs—for us and him.

What felt “almost in control” on Wednesday has become like a car on the world’s fastest roller coaster, no strings attached.

Call it resignation. Call it relaxation. Call it beaten into submission.

Thanks to a gentle exhaustion from swimming against the current for far too long and the great honor of being a parent, I am now shifting into a general acceptance that things don’t always go as planned. That’s just the way it is. The only way to live is the way we truly are in each moment.

Who knows what way I (and our home) will be tomorrow when the doorbell rings, but that is just the way we will be.

And that will not only be good enough, it will be perfect.