The Plan

       Yesterday I went to put Isaac down for his nap just like every other day.  Since we moved into our house about a month ago, Isaac has gotten promoted to a “big boy bed”.  In part this promotion was due to his age and readiness, but in part it was due to the fact that somehow in the midst of moving we lost some crucial pieces to Lily’s crib.  Since Lily is younger it only made sense that she would get Isaac’s crib, and Isaac would sleep in a big bed. 

         For the most part this plan has been going pretty seamlessly.  Seamlessly… until yesterday.  I had already laid down Lily for her nap earlier and I took Isaac up to his bed.  And right as I laid him down he said, “I want to sleep in E’s bed”.  He calls Lily, E.  I said, “no you cannot sleep in lily’s bed, because lily is sleeping in Lily’s bed.”  Well, for some reason that didn’t matter to Isaac because for the next 45 minutes straight  he wailed and hollered and screamed himself hoarse that he wanted to sleep in E’s bed. 

          On most days I would have simply said, “no, end of story, you cannot and will not sleep in E’s bed” and then I would have walked out of the room and cry as he may that would have been the end of it.  I would have sat downstairs feeling angry and frustrated and wondering why he couldn’t just understand that he is supposed to sleep in his bed, and Lily is supposed to sleep in Lily’s bed.

           But yesterday, something just hit me. As I looked at Isaac's tear soaked cheeks and his tear soaked shirt and watched his chest heave up and down with horrible sobs, I had this very deep sense of compassion and love towards him .  To me this seemed like a simple situation with a simple answer, but to Isaac, for whatever reason, this was a very deeply upsetting scenario.  And as I tried to pat his back, and wipe away his tears, and eventually just lay on the bed next to him as he sobbed, I saw myself and everyone else in Isaac. 

            In life we so often get these ideas of how we want things to go, or how we think things should go, or what our future will look like.  As long as our life neatly follows the plan, we are happy as clams.  But when we find out that our precious plans have gone awry, we find ourselves in Isaac’s shoes. 

Because I am an adult, I know that it is not appropriate to scream and sob the way he does, even though it might do me some good, so I scream and kick in a much more subtle way.  I do it through manipulation, or competition, or judgementalism.  In the adult world, when things don’t go our way, we make a plan of how to get things back the way we want.  And before we know it, we are bowing down to that plan; aligning all areas of our life to get the plan back on track. 

Maybe it’s not about the plan.  Maybe what I want, or the way that I think things should go, isn’t even good for me or for the ones that I love.  Maybe I am too short sighted to be able to make good plans.  Maybe there is Someone who is really in charge making a wonderful and beautiful plan that I need to trust and submit to. 

Isaac couldn’t really see that he is too big for that crib. A bed will be more comfortable and well suited for him, and ultimately it will allow him the freedom that a crib will not.  All he could think was that his crib was comfortable and it was part of his plan, and whatever he knew, he couldn’t let go of the plan.  He ended up sleeping on the floor, because I guess in some way, the hard cold uncomfortable floor represented getting his way more than a cozy bed.