How To Take a Hint

Do you ever feel like God is trying to tell you something? He gives us little hints, little taps on the shoulder. But we're so thick headed and stubborn that we brush them off and proceed anyways. Inevitably, we leave Him no choice but to hit us over the head with a big, heavy mallet. Thud!

Sound familiar? It's happened to all of us, and probably happened more than once to most of us. That's exactly what happened to me this weekend.

You might remember that we had big plans to make our reemergence into Civil War reenacting this weekend. A lot of time, energy, and money went into the planning and preparation. We dug through countless boxes to find our old gear, I sewed for a week to make the boys' costumes, we bought black powder and paid the pre-registration fee, and even my mom donated her money and labor to send my dress and make Josie's costume just in time for the big weekend. We thought we'd taken care of everything.

Josie in her reenacting costume

But not everything is under our control. About a week ago we found out that James' duty section schedule had been changed and, whereas he was originally going to have the whole weekend off, he now had to work on Sunday. That's okay, we figured we'd just go for one day instead of the whole weekend. Then we mapped out the trip and learned that what we assumed was something like a two hour drive was actually a four hour trip there and a four hour trip back. That's a long drive to make in one day with three kids. Then we found out that the tenant in our New York house hadn't paid rent yet and we wouldn't be seeing the check until the middle of next week. It would cost us every last penny left in our bank account if we chose to go to the reenactment, so that's when we decided, with much sadness and disappointment, to call it off. James emailed the reenacting company that we were going to join to tell them we wouldn't be able to make it. We laughed when we got the reply. Apparently we were the last to bow out and no one else from the company was going to be able to make it either, so if we had gone there wouldn't have been a company for James to fight with. And the final kick came when I woke up on Saturday morning with an awful head cold and Johnny and Josie were both showing symptoms as well. So if we had gone to the reenactment, it would have been completely miserable.

Thud! It was a big knock on the head with a heavy mallet. And it hurt. I was so sad that all that time and money and excitement went to waste on a reenacting adventure that never was. But hey, sometimes you just gotta know how to take a hint.