Moment of Truth Monday: I am a planner. I love calendars and will agonize over selecting the “right” one each year. It gives me great joy to fill in the squares with coffee dates, double dates, and all manner of things between! If you happen to plan anything in my honor, you are stuck with me forever because plans speak love so loudly to this type A heart.

Here’s a strange side note: I love plans, but I am not a detail-oriented person. I will leave you to unravel that mystery because it feels too incongruent to be true, but it is. My sisters used to ask me easy questions about my children’s height and weight at birth and I could only shrug my shoulders and smile. I knew the date they were born. Doesn’t that count for anything?

It would bring me great delight to have a family vacation mapped out a year in advance. When I pencil in speaking engagements that reach into the year ahead, I am deeply grateful. You see, I feel like I am a better version of myself when I have a slight idea of what to expect. A skeleton, if you will, of what might happen.

I just dropped my first child off at college. As the impending date drew closer, I amped up my planning game. I mapped out what would be on our blessing breakfast menu, what time we would eat, what time we would begin packing the car, what time we would arrive on campus, and approximately what time we would return home.

This planning truly helped the day run smoothly, and helped me keep my head above water. I had to execute the plan, therefore there was no time to meltdown, breakdown, or shutdown. Sometimes plans are exactly what I need.

Let me tell you what I didn’t plan. I didn’t consider how long our child would want us to stick around, or the details of our exit strategy. I didn’t factor in friend plans setting into motion before my mama heart was satisfied and ready to let go. I didn’t account for the constant stream of thoughts that accompanied the ride home and well into the sleeping hours. I failed to calculate the new level of quiet in the house, and the longing to hear about every detail in the new life of my college student.

I love routines and plans. Plans are good if I remember to remain flexible and leave room for a little spontaneity. Plans change, after all. People get sick, flights get canceled, friends forget your birthday, and those realities can wreck me if I hold plans too tightly.

Since there’s no way to know the exact details of what today or tomorrow brings, it’s wise to remember this truth…hold your plans loosely.

#MomentofTruthMonday #RoutinesAreMyLoveLanguage #HoldYourPlansLoosely