It's What You Make of It...

It's occured to me several times in the last few days or so that life just doesn't always turn out the way we want it. Even though I may have it all planned out in my head... (yes, I am a planner by nature, so it kills me when things go 'the opposite direction' of those plans) those plans often just kind of 'unravel' in every which direction. And do I have any control over it? Well, NO. Because if I DID... it wouldn't have happened so different in the first place, right? Yeah. My life. Welcome to it.

So, my little family takes off for the weekend to go to a family baby shower on my hubby's side. That was fun. Then, we check into our hotel (only because we thought it silly to pack up and go home and then travel another 80 some miles back in the same direction the very next morning...). The hotel chain we generally like to stay in is quite nice. The staff is wonderfully friendly and helpful. The rooms are extremely nice and comfortable. And the breakfast in the morning has always been very good. We've always felt like we were at home no matter what location we choose to stay at. This was waaaaaay different. The location we stayed at this time was dirty, dingy and to top things off... the room we reserved was quite different than what we were expecting.  To make a long story short, we were very disappointed with our stay there. In my head, I'm grumbling - a lot. What made it even harder was the fact that our 13 month old son didn't want to go to sleep and when he did go to sleep, he didn't want to STAY asleep. Yep. Not fun.

Needless to say, we wound up giving ourselves a 'pep talk'. Yes, you heard me. A pep talk. 'Cause if we didn't, we were going to walk around being frusterated and taking it out on our sleepless child - which that definately doesn't do any good. Life is not about us. The world doesn't revolve around us. And we certainly are not God's gift to earth. But here's what we ARE: children of God, vessels in His creation, His hands, His feet, and the list goes on and on. We are not here to hope that everything WE planned goes according to our little master plan because rightfully so.... His masterplan is the only one we should be worried about. Because His plan is far more perfect and complete than ours ever will be.  Just when you think you've got it all figured out..... just watch, Jesus will change it up on you. And the best part is - it will be even better than anything you would have conjured up.
So yes, our hotel stay was less than we imagined this time around. But, we went to our baseball game and had a great time. Our son did a pretty good job for being up three hours straight without an afternoon nap! Our ride home was relaxing and decided that it was so so good to be home back in our own beds and comfortable again.... yes, it is the simple pleasures in our home.  :)