Canceled Again

 

Do you ever feel like you are missing out on life's best? This was my feeling over the weekend. I had planned on pushing my son in a local 5K on Sunday. It's a free one, and we've done it for several years. It's a nice outdoor activity and a very social, healthy atmosphere. Because he'd experienced asthma-related issues Friday and Saturday, I chose to cancel our fun outing. He may have been fine, but I didn't want to take a chance at him not being okay on Monday when he goes to the 34 Project for his active fitness sessions. It's more important, so I canceled. Again.

It can seem like we make a lot of plans only to cancel them over and over. It is frustrating for us as caregivers and easy for us to feel like we are missing out. Also, others don't always understand our dilemma, so they often just stop inviting us. It can be easy to settle into those raw emotions and difficult to harness our thoughts. Canceled again. And again. And again. It can become a vicious emotional circus for us. 

My son might have been fine on Monday even if we'd done the race on Sunday. But it wasn't worth the chance. It's tempting to just stop making plans at all, isn't it? That helps alleviate our disappointment to a degree. But I say it's still better to plan even with the possibility of canceling looming over our heads. Some plans go through! And those are usually very much worth the effort.

So, with canceling being on my mind this morning and looking at a few events coming up that I will pencil into my calendar, I took time to reflect on the emotions that tend to circle cancelations. A lot comes to mind:

• disappointment
• social isolation
• fear of being alone forever
• fear of making more plans that will just get canceled
• loneliness

As I tried to sort through the emotions and find some solid emotional ground, I realized it was easy to harness those crazy thoughts by thinking of things that were not canceled. I also thought of a few things that will never be canceled. The shortlist looks like this:

• God's grace
• God's love
• God's mercy
• God's eye, which is always on me
• God's compassion

You get the idea, I'm sure. Unlike people who get frustrated with our canceled plans, God has the grace for us. He has grace for each moment. He won't get frustrated with us. Instead, He just pours in more grace and compassion. He gets us. When some people are "counting us out" because we are caregivers and they so easily think that "life doesn't apply" to us due to our circumstances - God's still got us as the apple of His eye. Not one iota from His word is canceled because of circumstances beyond our control - ie, caregiving.

Today, I will harness my thoughts and emotions and shift them to gratefulness. I'll be thankful that God is still walking this pathway through time with me. My meditations will be on how His mercy, grace, and peace are never canceled, and instead, He pours in more as needed each and every day. I'll remind myself that every promise in His word still stands for me, and it wasn't canceled when I became a caregiver. I'll put my thoughts on things like: He gets me. He is with me. He's not scared off by my circumstances. He's not canceling me. So, I will trust Him for one more day - will you join me?

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