“‘For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways,’ declares the Lord. ‘For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts higher than your thoughts.’” -- Isaiah 55:8
I took my kids swimming in Hurricane Ida yesterday. Sort of.
What I actually did was take my kids swimming in my brother’s pool—in the rainstorm that we experienced in Pennsylvania—as the after effects of Hurricane Ida. (But I figure that’s close enough for them to make the claim for the remainder of their lives.)
We went for the sheer joy of it. Splashing through puddles and flooded parking lots and gathering up cousins along the way. Soaked to the bone, I couldn’t think of a good reason why they shouldn’t jump into my brother’s pool fully clothed. So they did.
And to think that I could have very easily missed the moment. I have often told people that I would never have quit my job for my kids. I left teaching because I had lofty plans for doing some kind of important work for God. I never in my life thought that that important work would turn out to be mothering. But it has. And turns out, it’s important and beautiful work. Frustrating, yes. Long-suffering, you bet. Often void of any tangible progress, can I get an amen?
But still beautiful.
And for me, it’s evidence of God’s mysterious ways. My path has meandered in an unexpected direction. And in the end, I guess it doesn’t really matter how I got here. Only that I did.
