I'd like a pause button ...

It has been that kind of day.

The kind where you get up in the morning and have just enough time between commitments to travel from one to the next, but nothing more.

On second thought, it's been that kind of week.

The kind where you can sense at any moment one of your beautiful, spinning, plates will come crashing to the ground, followed by the entire carefully balanced act.

And then, in a moment, a plate falls.

And another.

And another.

And you stare, frozen in disbelief, at the small SUV you just backed your very large van into ...

while trying to watch for oncoming traffic in two directions ...

while comforting your three-year-old son whose brother just got to go to a rec program that he is not old enough to attend ...

while running through the timing of getting home, feeding kids a snack, showering, (What to do with the kids during shower? TV show for one, the other should be safe enough with a snack in your bedroom with the bathroom door open) and getting back to the rec center to pick up big brother, then pick up lunch, then pick up the sitter, then drop them all off, then go to the chiropractor to have your back - that has just in the last 24 hours stopped feeling like someone is wringing your nerve out like a wet towel every time you turn the wrong way - adjusted, back to the house to put the kids down for naps and gobble down your salad and to the church for a meeting, then home, then take the sitter home, then home, then prepare dinner, then leave for an impromptu small group meeting, then home to catch up on all the correspondence you've had no time all day to attend to then ....

***CRUNCH****

And as the minutes race forward, you stare in disbelief at the now dented driver's side door of a cranberry Kia Sportage, so enveloped in the race against time you delude yourself into thinking you could possibly think yourself back to the second before you heard that fateful sound.

And it seems the entire day has just crumbled around you. Plates loosing their speed, crashing to pieces at your feet, and you just want to hit pause.

Stop time and breathe.

Gather your thoughts.

Make a plan.

Reorganize the troops.

But as you see the world continuing around you, all you can do is put one foot in front of the other and start moving forward, foreboding, sunken, heavy-chest feeling and all.

 Because as a wise friend told me today,

"It's not really about you.

You are the instrument.

You are called.

But you do not have the power to do what it takes.

The only thing left is to trust."

For if God can overcome the power of death and the grave,

He can certainly hold me through the embarrassment and inconvenience of a fender-bender and the frenzy of a crazy, hectic day.

His grace is sufficient.

I just have to put my trust in Him.