Limits

My Dad likes to quote Dirty Harry, reminding his daughters, "A man's got to know his limitations." This Sunday I discovered one of mine.

Let me just begin by explaining that I hate to be late. Anywhere. Or to anything. Growing up, I was late to just about everything and I grew to hate it. I was always that kid waiting in the parking lot for someone to come and pick me up and wondering how long I should wait before I found a payphone and called home to make sure someone was coming. But thanks to that, I am now almost always on time. I'm actually one of those people who has to plan to NOT show up at a party the second it starts. But even that took a lot of nagging from Craig to persuade me that that was just tacky. But it's hard for me to do. Recently I've been working on being lax about this rule for things where it doesn't actually matter, like playgroup. Or hanging out with my friends. (Yup, I once completely stressed out because I was ten minutes late to playgroup. And I'm pretty sure that when I showed up, no one else was even there yet. It's not easy being crazy.)

But church is not one of those things that you're supposed to be late for. So even though we live about five minutes from the church building, I always try to leave by half past. This way, even when I'm running behind, we're always on time.

This is certainly a challenge, and it isn't getting easier. All this year, we've had church at 9:00am, which is kind of on the early side. And Craig usually has meetings before church, so I'm usually handling everything by myself. And currently I've got these three kids to get ready and none of them are terribly helpful about the whole process: Bentley hates to wear church clothes and cannot get his church shoes on his feet; Kendra moves slower than molasses and has hair that no matter what I do to it, always looks like she's a homeless person about ten minutes later; and Ryder has this great need to climb the stairs the second I turn my back on him and also likes to blow baby food raspberries when I'm in a hurry. It's lovely.

I'm not trying to claim that no one has it harder than I do. In fact, I would love nothing more than to hear why you have it harder than I do-- it would make me happy to know I'm not the only one who struggles with this! I'm just saying that this isn't easy for me and it doesn't come naturally. But so far, I'm very proud of my track record. If I've ever been late, I've managed to completely block this incident from my memory.

But this Sunday I finally hit that wall. Choir met at 8:30 and since I'd missed practice the week before, I decided that we needed to be there. I got up even earlier than usual (despite a lousy night's rest which included going to bed too late (my fault), and then being woken up by Ryder at 3:00am and Kendra at 4:00am). And I tried. I tried so hard to get us all dressed, fed, and out the door. But somehow it just didn't work. And despite all the screaming I did trying to hurry everyone along, we ended up being fifteen minutes late to choir practice, which was only a half hour long to begin with.

I walked into that chapel, handed Ryder to Craig (who was already there singing, having finished his meetings), picked up my music, stood with the other sopranos... and burst into tears. When it was apparent that I wasn't going to be able to sing at all right then, I quietly walked right back out of the chapel and to the bathroom where I could sob for another minute and then try to do damage control to my mascara.

It really wasn't anything worth crying about. Even in the midst of my wailing I knew that. But I just couldn't help it somehow.

So that's one limit for me to remember from here on out: I can be on time to church. But I can't do more than that. Maybe when the kids are grown. Or can put on their own shoes at least...


How do you manage to get to church?