The New Horizons band concert tonight took longer than I expected. It's nearly 11:00 pm, and I just got home, so I've decided to offer a post I wrote back in September, but didn't use. Here it is:
Just because a day doesn't go quite as planned doesn't mean it isn't a good day. When I checked my calendar for today, it didn't appear too full. Being Tuesday, I had breakfast with friend Willie, then headed to the dr's office to get blood drawn for a semi-annual visit next week. I headed home to gather together the papers I needed for an afternoon health benefits seminar sponsored by our conference board of pensions. When we got home, I did a bit of work on the sermon I'll be preaching for my vacationing friend Cameron on Sunday, followed by dinner with my daughter and her family prior to going to the grandkids' school open house.
I hadn't figured on open house being quite the affair it turned out to be. The original plan called for getting home early to work on the bathroom tiling project; who knew elementary school open houses could last so long? It was fun being with the kids, especially giving Ian a ride in the sidecar on the way to the school, and Eliza on the way home. We are blessed having our kids and grandkids nearby, but these blessings have their own set of challenges, tonight's being that Linda headed to Panama for Alex and Abi's swim meet while I stayed closer to home. I missed seeing Alex qualify for diving sectionals, but got to spend the evening with Ian, Eliza, and Gemma.
The more I write, the more aware I am of how ordinary my life is. These are not the things of which stories are written, but it is where I live my life and exercise whatever influence I have. Before going to this afternoon's seminar, I was clearing out some old emails and came across one written by my son Matthew after my retirement celebration. I had thanked him for his words and he wrote to tell me that it should be the other way around. He told of seeing a swim meet on TV, and decided to watch it. "It was so boring, I turned it off," he said, adding that it made him think of all the swim meets his mother and I sat through over the years, and of how we were always there for him.
Open houses, swim meets, dinners eaten together, working side by side fixing stuff that was broken, shooting our pistols together; it's all pretty ordinary stuff. No secret codes, no clandestine drops of classified information, no intrigue, and precious little danger, but it's the life I've been privileged to build, and I'm grateful to have lived when and where I did, and to see the fruit of our labors in the lives of our children and grandchildren, and in others who have by God's grace, crossed our path or walked beside us.
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