When I was a junior in high school, our family spent spring break on a cruise through the Caribbean. This was back in the days when spring break was tied to Easter, and our itinerary had us spending a couple of days on the beautiful island of St. Kitts over Easter weekend. (Side note: do some places still tack spring break onto the Easter holiday? In our area, spring break is usually in early March–before the actual start of spring, and totally distanced from Easter. But I’m not sure if that’s a Texas thing or if all schools have gotten away from Easter-affiliated spring breaks. If you have any insights on this, please share!)
On the day following Easter, we had some time to wander the island’s colonial town and were surprised that nearly every shop, museum, restaurant, and other tourist attraction was closed. The reason? It was Easter Monday, which—unbeknownst to us until that very moment—is a public holiday in more than fifty (predominantly Christian) countries. The holiday closures required some adjustments to our itinerary, and we eventually found ourselves dining in the only available restaurant in town: Hooters. You read that right, and yes it was that Hooters; I spent an afternoon meal in 2001 at a Hooters bar with my parents and 10-year-old brother. We laugh about that to this day.
Isn’t it funny how altered plans can make for the greatest memories? If you are a Type A like me, you probably appreciate schedules, routine, predictability, and plans. Nothing turns my blood to ice like the prospect of a thoughtfully-crafted schedule gone awry. I loath surprises, detest spontaneity, abhor timelines that don’t go my way. And then, irony of all ironies, God blessed me with four children and called me to homeschool them.
Not a single aspect of our family timetable and child-spacing fits within the nicely constructed ideals I once set for myself, and little about our current lives resembles my oh-so-perfect image of what our family life would look like. Do I still strive for that elusive state of calm, order, and perfection? Absolutely! But it is a rare day when a fraction of my idealized plan translates to our lived reality. And as hard as it is for me to live in the chaos of it all, I am learning to find the beauty in our topsy-turvy home. Each day is a little like sitting in a Hooters bar on Easter Monday and laughing at the absurdity of it all.
Luke recently bought two bird feeders for our yard that sit just outside our dining room window. We spend a LOT of time at the dining table that doubles as our schoolroom, so for much of the day we are a captive audience to the parade of birds coming to dine in our garden. This has been an absolute delight, and one of my favorite things that has happened to our physical space in the last year. Who knew that a simple bird feeder could bring so much joy to our family? (Scratch that; literally everyone who has ever owned a bird feeder probably knew. But to me, it has been a revelation!) We haven’t yet gone so far down the bird-watching hole as to learn to identify the many feathered friends that grace us with their appearance, but I can tell you that we have been visited by several varieties of birds of all shapes, sizes, and personalities, and each one is lovely. Nico is a particularly big fan of these avian visitors and alerts us to the appearance of each one with squeals, pointing, and exclamations of “bird, bird, bird!”
Seeing my children’s joy over the simple pleasure of observing birds has been a balm for my wearied soul in a season when anxiety has been a constant companion. My anxiety spiral began in January when a routine dental checkup revealed a problem that would go on to require several more dental visits and painful procedures that have been a nightmare for me as someone for whom tooth-related issues are my cryptonite. What started with anxiety over my teeth has snowballed into greater anxieties about my children: their health (exacerbated by numerous doctor visits for Nico this season, without any resolution); their academic progress (one of my kiddos is not meeting expected milestones and that has me concerned); their social connections (there have been lots of tears and hurt feelings lately over friendship challenges and feelings of being left out); their future (the fact that Charleston is on the cusp of Middle School has me TERRIFIED); their spiritual wellness (lots of questions from them on that front lately); and I could go on. . .
Then there is anxiety over the state of the world that is in absolute turmoil. Nothing is stable or predictable, and it’s hard to even discern what is happening because the AI of it all makes it almost impossible to know what is real and concerning and what is just fake-news and clickbait. And speaking of AI, I am of course worried about what it will mean for the future of all of humanity but for my family in particular, when my husband currently earns a living as a software engineer—a position that could be replaced by the robots at any time. It is a lot to worry about, and some of these fears may be irrational, but many are (in my mind at least) pretty legitimate concerns.
But watching the birds in my yard, I am reminded of Jesus’ comforting words from the Sermon on the Mount: “Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they? Can any one of you by worrying add a single hour to your life?” (Matthew 6:26-27) The birds that find their way to the bird feeders in our yard are not worried about finding food; they know it will appear in time—sometimes with a little hunting effort on their part, and sometimes when a family fills the feeder with seed, making the feast an all-you-can-eat buffet on birds-eat-free day. God—sometimes by way of humans—has met their needs. And He asks us to trust Him to provide for us, too. “But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.” (Matthew 6:33-34)
It’s easy to find peace in that sentiment when things are going well, harder when life is off-kilter and potentially on the cusp of upheaval. But Jesus doesn’t say “do not worry about tomorrow unless it seems like tomorrow could be really tough.” His invitation is to trust Him in all seasons, including—maybe especially—the ones when trusting feels most difficult. He is asking us to set aside the planning and striving, the worries and anxieties, the fears and the overwhelm and the what-ifs and the addiction to plans. It’s not that the big and little things of our lives don’t matter to Him, I believe they do; it’s just that we don’t have to handle them on our own.
God’s provision may not always look like we want or expect it to. His ways are bigger than our ways, and His solutions rarely fit inside our Type-A, perfectly-planned, Instagrammable ideals. But the Lord has spent an eternity proving that He is trustworthy. He has earned our trust, and casting our anxieties on Him will inevitably lead to peace and expanded faith and unforgettable memories. Hooters and birdseed, anyone?
Can I let you in on a secret? When I sat down to write this post I had NO IDEA what it was going to be about. This is unlike me as I like to plan out my blog topics, and—while I rarely follow a strict outline—I almost always have an idea of where a specific post will go (see Paragraph 3 above). The fact that I was unsure what I would write about, but knew I needed to knock out a blog post today, left me feeling—you guessed it—anxious. But I prayed before opening my laptop, then pulled up a blank screen. . . and the words began pouring from me.
My writing often comes slowly, with ideas building for days before I ever sit down to write, then requiring long stretches at the keyboard as I craft those ideas into cohesive thoughts. Today, I have written 1500 words in thirty minutes from the passenger seat of my van as Nico sleeps in his carseat behind me. (Luke took the big kids to the air show today and I had planned to write at The Y while Nico was in childwatch; but he fell asleep on the commute and I decided to make the most of his spontaneous nap and my subsequent moment of quiet.) This thing that I was worried about came together easily and (hopefully) coherently, with very little effort on my part. A give-it-up-to-God, “birds-of-the-air” moment, played out in real time.
Thank you, Jesus, for yet another reminder that all my worries and anxiety are futile and that entrusting them to your care should always be my Plan A.
