So one of my sisters is pregnant, and she is pregnant with my first nephew that I will refer to on here as Peanut! Anyways, this will be the very first baby shower that I will have ever thrown for anyone, and I have been excited about it! I have been so excited to plan it; however, the first bit of planning didn't quite go as planned, and then I realized how I needed to redirect things in my heart.
When I heard of my sister's pregnancy, right away I thought about her baby shower. My other sisters wanted to chip in with the planning too; but for various reasons, it was sort of agreed upon and/or understood that I would do the majority of the planning, well at least in the beginning anyways. With my sister's guest list, I realized my little house just wasn't going to do for such an event. I knew I was going to have to plan to find a location to use and rent.
I had Big Mac's baptism to plan and coordinate, as well as I had a few other things going on, so I do have to admit that I perhaps didn't start the hunt for a location, during the height of wedding season, for which I had completely forgotten about, as early as may be I should have. However, I still started the hunt relatively early. Well, after two weeks of calling and emailing various places, I realized that my hunt for a location was not going so well. Every place, rec center, winery, reception hall, restaurant that I called were booked. I did find one location available, but lets just say it wasn't in the best area of town and it did not seem suitable for a baby shower. Felt horrible at the fact that I may have screwed up. I started to worry about how this baby shower was going to come together. Sadly, I began to stress out about what I thought would be so much fun to plan. Luckily, God had plans and I had to trust that the perfect location would pop up, and as soon as another location informed me that they were booked, my church called to let me know that our Fellowship Hall was available, for which I totally jumped on!
So with the location chosen it, was time to work on invites. Let's just say that shopping around for baby invitations was a little frustrating as I found many of the baby shower themes out there tacky, or I felt that they were totally not my sister! But finally, I found an invitation that I loved for which inspired the theme and decor!
Phew! Now it was time to work on the invitations and mail them out. Little did I know what a task that would become for me. The week that I needed to get the invitations out was the week poor Big Mac came down with a nasty cold virus and was more needy and whiny than usual. He also slept very poorly that week. And when I type poorly, I mean poorly! I mean bad! For example, one night the poor guy was awake crying, coughing and being all kinds of congested from 10:30 PM to 5:15 AM. No joke! So I was very sleep deprived to say the least, which also made working on invitations difficult. I could only work on a little bit here and there when Big Mac and life would let me! Also, when I sat down to write out the invites, the pens I had planned to use didn't work! Not even the new one! I had to make a dash to the store to get new ones, which ended up to be a good thing because in the end, I liked the new ink color better! Then there was a problem with the stamps. Scot had ordered me nice, pretty stamps from the post office to use. They were only supposed to take 2 business days to arrive from the post office delivered by the post office. They didn't arrive in a timely fashion. After a few days went by, I was forced to go to a local branch to get new stamps and I had to put stamps on about 26 or so invitations in the van with all four of my kiddos waiting so that I could mail them all at the post office since they were not being mailed in what I believed, was a timely manner.
I had found myself becoming more and more frustrated about how everything was going as I was trying to plan the baby shower. I got irritated with things, such as the post office who finally delivered the stamps 3 days late! Anyways, I started to make the shower about me and my problems by thinking things like Will everyone like the location? Will they wish I sent the invites out earlier? Will S like her shower? Will I disappoint anyone? Is this how the whole planning will go?
Finally, something popped in my head as I felt discouraged and worried about the shower. And I am not even sure that it would have even popped into my head if it wasn't for the fact that just a week or two prior God reminded me how I needed to find the positives and to thank Him in everything. Yep, I stopped and did something I hadn't done yet, and it changed my whole perspective, for which joy and excitement returned. I started to thank God for my sister, her baby and her husband. I prayed for the pregnancy. I thanked Him for the opportunity that I had to plan a shower for such special people and for such a precious reason. And with that my whole perspective changed. The baby shower planning wasn't about me anymore; but it was back where it was supposed to have been the whole time--my sister, Peanut, and her husband. God is good ya'll!
This is merely a place of self-reflection for me. After recent events in my life, I have learned that although some doors of life open that we may prefer stay closed nice and tight while others close that we prefer stay wide open, God is there every step of the way and He can use anything for His glory and blessing!
