Sometimes, regardless of how hard we try, nothing goes as planned.

When we find ourselves in the midst of hard things or busy seasons, it’s easy to get discouraged. I hope you’ll find a laugh or two in this love note. But, most importantly, I pray you’ll find a little joy even when things don’t go as planned.

Onto the transcript…

(00:04)
Oh my goodness. It's been a while. It's been a long while. How many of you thought that January lasted for 723 days? I dunno about you, but I really thought 2020 this is it. I mean, this is going to be the year.

I just felt really good about it. I thought there was just so much hope, this hopefulness in 2020. And the Lord has really illuminated to me that's something that I really already knew. That is our joy and our peace and, who we are in Him is not indicated or dictated by a number on a calendar.

It's been reverberating in my mind. So at the time of this recording, it has been a week since, actually, it's been a little over a week. Oh, goodness. Where has the time gone? Yes. So it's been about a week and a half.

You Won’t Find Joy Or Peace In A Number On Your Calendar

(01:17)
I woke up to a phone call from my father at three o'clock in the morning, and typically I have my phone on silent. And if it's not on silent, it's on do not disturb because Mmm. You know how it is. You don't want to answer the phone.

Anyhoo, lo and behold, my ringer was on, but it was on do not disturb. Thankfully my dad is in my favorites. And so the call came through and so I woke up and my dad was on the other end of the phone and he was telling me that my mother had fallen and had cracked four ribs, had a punctured lung and was in the ICU. But everything was fine. Everything was fine.

Yeah. Okay. My mom's in the ICU, she has four cracked ribs. This is awesome. I'd talk to my mother about 9:30 that evening, and then obviously I was dead asleep when he called.

(02:20)
So I laid there for just a hot minute and my mind starts racing and I was just trying to wake up and then I was like, well, this is ridiculous. Um, I'm going to Texas now.

The funny part about this, funny, I use that tongue in cheek is my mom's 75th birthday was coming up and I was really thinking, Oh, I think I'm going to head to Texas for my mom's birthday. But then it was like I looked at my calendar and I mean it was just over packed, not really over-packed, but just had a lot of work to do. And so I determined that it really wasn't going to happen.

So I told my mom, I'm so sorry. I was really trying to get there for your birthday. And she said, well the funny thing is your father and I were planning to try and come to Nashville for my birthday, but we couldn't make it work either.

(03:17)
And so we'd kind of had a laugh about it. Now, here I am. It's about a week before her birthday, during this time. And this is when I get the call and literally within the span of 45 minutes, I have thrown clothes on, I've thrown stuff in a bag. And by 4:15am I am on the highway.

So I drive and it's about a 10 and a half hour drive to the hospital. And when I got there, Oh my goodness, my mom is super strong, super with it, all the things. And when I walked in, she's laying in this bed, she looked so small, her little voice was just so weak, but I'd never been so happy in the whole life to just put eyes on her. And then thankfully she didn't have to have a chest tube and she has made a remarkable recovery.

(04:16)
So she was in the hospital that happened in between a Tuesday and a Wednesday night and by Friday night she was headed home.

Needless to say, the longterm recovery, it's painful. It's very, very difficult, all those things. But thankfully she is better, and it's not a life or death situation, but during this time, I mean, just so many lessons I think the Lord was trying to show me. And the biggest one is that time is funny.

We think we don't have enough time, but then we raise the stakes, or the stakes get raised and all of a sudden everything else goes to the back burner. And it really illuminates what's important and family is, is definitely important.

And so that was a, uh, a big lesson that I think the Lord is really trying to show me is that whether it's 2020, whether it's whatever the year is, whatever the date is, the things that matter will always matter.

Making Time For Important Things When They Weren’t Planned

(05:25)
And we will always make time for those things that are our true priorities and I have to say in that moment. My mama, my mama was my big, big priority and so I ended up going down there. I stayed until Friday.

So the, the hospital was about an hour away and so I had been staying at a hotel so that I could just go back and forth. When I say an hour away, it's an hour away from my parents' house. It was 10 and a half hours my house.

So whenever they went home to their home, then the next morning after I had gotten a little bit of rest, then I headed back to Nashville.

Funny story.

Now I get back to Nashville late Saturday night and I'm exhausted. I am a sleeper. Um, sometimes I struggle to get to sleep, but I always end up managing to get a good solid eight hours. if you're one of those people that you might get on four or five hours, kudos to you.

(06:33)
But I'm an eight to nine hour girl, and I'm much nicer when I've had sleep. So all I could think about, think about Saturday night, I knew mom and dad were settled back at their house, and everything was going well there as well as could be expected. You know what I mean? So, I'm going to sleep for three days, I'm so exhausted. You know how it is when you're in the hospital.

I was exhausted from just the travel part of it, driving and so forth. So on Saturday night, I'm thinking I'm sleeping forever, forever. So I wake up halfway early actually. But I had gone to bed at a decent time. Lo and behold, I think you know that we have goats.

Finding Joy When Things Don’t Go As Planned

(07:25)
If you don't, we have fainting goats.

We live in Nashville about 20 minutes outside of downtown Nashville and we have some land. And we have fainting goats.

Unbeknownst to me, I'd found out about two weeks prior that our goats were pregnant. And so we had several of these baby goats running around.

Well, there was one more mom that had not given birth yet.

Well don't you know it, don't you know on Sunday she's going into labor. Oh yes. Going into labor, only she's small.

She's very little and God love her, she is struggling. She is struggling with the delivery.

So we are Googling what do you do, when do you step in, how do you help. All the things.

So God love TJ, he decides he is going to help pull, pull the little goat out when she's contracting. Well it’s not working.

(08:39)
And TJ is very strong. I'm standing over there just talking to the baby. I mean talking to the mom, and I'm trying to keep her calm and all the things but, I mean it's just not happening.

So this goes on. I mean, it seemed like a really long time, but it had to gone on for over an hour. So we called the vet because now do you, I mean, I don't know if you want to hear this. She had partially started giving birth.

So in your mind, if you can picture partial giving of the birth.

Yeah, it was too much. It was too much.

So we call the vet now again, this is on a Sunday. It, it just happens to be Super Bowl Sunday.

So I mean, people are very anxious to get to work and especially anxious about, you know, coming out to help 'em uh, a goat give birth.

So lo and behold there is somebody working. I mean, at this point we have no choice. I mean we've got partially delivered baby goat. We've got mom struggling. What do you do? Well, I'll tell you what we did. We load her up in the truck.

(10:04)
Yeah, the picture. I wish you could see.

The vet that we typically go to is 12 minutes from our home. It's easy peasy. Perfect. Well, we get there and realize, actually they call us and we finally figure out that they're not at the local place. They're at the hospital place that is a good solid 50 minutes from where we are now.

By this point, I'm exhausted.

My stress level. I'm thinking this is too much.

I, I've just gotten in the night before from driving 10 and a half hours and now I am on the road again for another solid hour with a goat in the backseat, partially giving birth.

Needless to say, like I'm saying y'all, it's just been good times.

So we get to the vet, we get her in there and the vet cannot pull the little baby goat out.

They do other little, I mean I don't know what all they did, but they did everything they could and it was determined that the baby goats head was too big and could not, she was not going to be able to deliver.

(11:29)
Oh. So now, now what do you do?

Again, picture if you will, just just in case, cause I would have never known because before I was a farmer, such a farmer. Now, but before as a farmer, I didn't realize that baby goats deliver with their hooves out first and their little head is usually tucked in right there, said that hooves come out first.

So here we are again, partial delivery.

So picture if you will, hooves. We've got little hooves.

So now we don't know, is the baby goat alive still? Because this has been going on for several hours. The mom is in distress. It's horrible. Feel free to make fun of me. I'm making fun of myself.

(12:20)
The goat has to have a C-section.

Yes, the goat has to have a C-section because the options that were presented to us were just horrifying.

A C-section it was.

Well, then the little girl who, you know when you're 45 everyone looks 12, so she is a veterinarian, but she looks 12, and she kept talking about calling this other doctor in, and she can't get anybody to come in.

She finally gets one woman to come in that's going to be a helper. And so she had kept, she kept referring to this doctor.

Now she's about ready to start, she's ready to start the C-section. And I said, well is the doctor coming? And she tells me she is the doctor. And I said, well that is fantastic.

(13:12)
So anyway, the 12 year old veterinarian is now going to perform this C-section on the baby goat, and they say it will probably take around two hours because they, you know, have all the things to do.

So TJ just are sitting in the truck and by this point I want to say it's probably, oh my gosh, 2:30, 3 o'clock or so in the afternoon. We've been dealing with this since eight o'clock this morning or about 8:30 whenever we first noticed that she was laboring.

And we just looked at each other and just started laughing.

I mean just laughing because I mean what else are you going to do? Laugh or cry? Here we are at an emergency vet on Super Bowl Sunday. Both of us exhausted and our goat is having a C-section.

We drive around a little bit and then we'd just hang out in the parking lot.

(14:20)
Well, then I was talking to my dad and I was telling him, I was like, daddy, I've just, I felt ridiculous because you know, here we are giving this goat a C section, but the options were just really not. The options were not an option.

So thankfully, he reaffirmed me that, you know, I made the right decision, and then he said, you know, well you don't want her getting pregnant again. I wonder if they could like tie her tubes while they're doing the C-section. I was like, that's a brilliant idea because she is so small that this would be a common problem.

So the front door is locked.

We're going back into the vet, we're going to ask the, you know the doctor to go ahead and do that for us.

Front door's locked, can't get in. So then sleuthers that we are, we're walking around the side of the building. I said, I'm going to try the side door. Lo and behold it is open.

(15:23)
TJ is like, are we really going in?

Yes.

And if when we are going in if we did not hear at that moment a baby goat cry. Yes, yes. A faint little cry.

They just delivered the little baby goat.

And in my heart I just didn't think he, I didn't think that baby goat would make it and he did.

And so coming in the side door where we’re really not supposed to be is the cutest baby goat.

We've had lots of baby goats and baby goats are cute. If you have not seen them, you should Google or do a a search of YouTube for a baby goats jumping around because they're just delightful and precious.

This is our first, he is all jet black. He is so beautiful. His hair is so thick and his little eyes are so sweet and you just want to squeeze his face.

(16:22)

So I look over and there’s the mama. I’m thankful I did not see any of that stuff. I did see the mama, but not, you know, all the fun stuff.

So then they asked me to take the baby goat because the mom, they're trying not to put her under too, too much so that they won't have as much trouble waking her up.

Here I am holding this little baby goat.

Now we're going to the um, waiting room area and so TJ and I are hanging out there while they're finishing up with the mama.

Unfortunately, the vet had not ever done tube tying so she didn't know how to do that.

We'll have to be very, very careful with our little Winnie. Winnie is the mama when he is the mama and then Big D is her baby and it is an, she had a little boy and Oh my Lanta, he is so precious.

(17:14)
So eventually we get them, um, all situated and we get them back in the truck.

Now we have had the goat’s C-section. We are heading back home and thankfully mom and baby are doing really well.

So we may or may not have set up a makeshift. Mmm. But what do we call it? Mini mini barn. A mini barn in our garage. Because it's cold here in Nashville.

So y’all, we're also having to bottle feed the baby because the mom, I think she's trying but she's very young and I mean you think about the stress that poor baby had been through labor all those hours and then having to go through a C-section and I mean just too much.

So yeah, every three hours I am bottle feeding this little baby goat and um, thankfully I'm happy to say he is now almost a week old. Mom is doing well. Baby's doing well.

Check Out “Big D” A Week And A Half Later

Here's a little video from our midnight feeding. (There's a slight red tint due to the heat lamp we have in the garage.)

Finding Peace When Things Don’t Go As Planned

(18:27)
But I'm telling you this wrecked my plans right? Because after I had been gone the better part of a week with mom, almost an entire week with my mom, then I come home, and it's just residual exhaustion.

And I do have to say major props to TJ. He takes the two o’clock feeding. I mean seriously, bless his heart. He gets up at two in the morning to go feed baby goat. Yes he does.

But then during the day, every three hours, it's like the I’m the guy on the donut commercial. It’s time to make the donuts. It's time to make the bottle, and off I go to the garage.

And throughout this just whole thing, it's just been one thing after the other that none of my plans have gone the way that I anticipated coupled that with the complete exhaustion that I'm just tired and and other things that have come up and this, that and the other.

Again it was like the Lord was just speaking to me and saying, circumstances are never going to be the barometer by which you measure if you’re content, if you have peace, if it's a good year.

(20:03)
And so I don't know if anyone else is having the same 727 days start to 2020 where literally, you thought, Oh my goodness, 2020 is going to be so exciting. There's so many great things on the horizon.

And then lo and behold, everything that you had kind of mapped out in your mind, everything that you had kind of planned for. It's just been one little thing after the other or maybe it's been big things that have come up.

Maybe you just need the reminder to that life is never going to go like we planned it. When plans go as planned, that's the exception. That's not the rule. Right?

And so if you are worn out and you're tired and you're thinking it's only February, I just want you to be encouraged. That is the, it's not about the circumstances, it's not about what's going on, but it's about the One that will provide you the kind of rest that you really need.

A Prayer for You

(21:11)
So I just want to end and pray for you.

If you are listening to this, and I don't know, you may be listening to this a year or two from now, but whenever you're listening, I just, I just want you to know that God loves you. He pursues you, He desires you. He wants you.

So I'm going to pray. I'm gonna pray for us.

Dear Heavenly Father, we just come to You and we thank You that we can come to You through Jesus.

Lord. I just pray that every, every person listening to this that You will just meet them right where they are, Lord, that you will sit in the midst of the mess and the yuck or sit in the midst of the good and the great that You're there through it all, Lord.

And I just pray that you would just give weary hearts, rest, and I pray that you would just illuminate that You are the source.

You're the source.

It's never going to be the circumstances. It's never going to be when everything gets checked off the to do list, it's not going to be whatever our plans just go completely right, Lord.

That where the contentment and where the peace comes from is that You don't move. That everything else may move and change, Lord, but you don't move.

You are the anchor. You are the stronghold.

Lord, that we can rest in You and that You have already won the battle.

Lord, I just pray that you would just remind each and every one of us of that, that through Christ, we win.

Lord, we love you and we thank you in Jesus' powerful name, Amen.

All right, my sweet, sweet friends. I hope that you will find some comfort in knowing that the Lord is our stronghold and that our circumstances are not going to, are not going to define what we say is a good day, a bad day, a good year, a bad year, all those things.

Now I hope that you go and take on the day.

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