Zeke and his Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day

As soon as I made eye contact with Zeke after school his demeanor changed immediately as he came running up to me.  He started stomping his feet and punching the air.

I'm left wondering what in the world I had done wrong.

"Daddy said HE was going to pick us up after school!  I didn't have a good day!  It was a TERRIBLE day!" he shouted.

Trying to calm him down and get to the bottom of his "terrible" day as we walked home, I began probing him with questions.

The culprit(s) to Zeke's terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day were as follows:

• a lost water bottle at lunch
• a crown that got left behind in his classroom
• the realization that his Uncle Heelz wasn't going to be at our house which meant he couldn't wrestle with him that night
• Daddy didn't come to pick him up
• he ran out of time to eat his snack
• he didn't get to check out a book during library time

After a long talk about how God has given us a choice to respond to disappointments in different ways, and about how that response can redeem a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day we walked through the different things in his day that made it seem so terrible.

• His water bottle can always be replaced.  (It was later found inside his lunchbox while I was cleaning it out.)
• His crown could be replicated. We can always make a new one. (It was later found in his cubby at school waiting for him.)
• His Uncle Heelz lives close by and the fact that his family didn't need to stay with us that night was a blessing for them because they had better arrangements.  It just means that patience would have to be practiced while waiting for his next wrestling match with his Uncle.
• Yes, Daddy said he would be the one to come and get you after school, but plans change and we have to be thankful for and proud of daddy for the hard work he does to provide for our family.  He'll be home very shortly and then we'll have daddy for the rest of the night all to ourselves!
• It's true that running out of time to eat your snack is devastating, but now you get to eat that snack as soon as we get home.  We can sit and tell funny stories while you eat it.
• It's a good thing you go to the library every week.  Now you have plenty of time to decide in your head what you want to pick out for next week so when the time comes you won't have to waste that time deciding on the perfect book.

What a great reminder this little conversation was for me.

So often I let my circumstances determine my response and outlook of the entire day.

Like when someone spills a freshly poured cup of milk on my freshly mopped kitchen floor, or a vase gets broken, or I miss out on an important event for Areyna at school because of poor communication, or I run out of time to go to the store...

Gosh, my list could go on and on.  But if I let those little things effect my entire attitude then I'm going to be the one responsible for the terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day...and make it that way for the rest of the people around me.

So, I'm working on perspective today (and I'm putting that milk in a spill-proof sippy cup this time too:)!