Dealing with adversity when things don’t go my way is incredibly difficult for me. I’m not gonna lie, it puts me on edge faster than when my husband decides to “organize!” I like to have a plan and to stick to it. That includes remaining on schedule. I have a work schedule, a writing schedule, a daily schedule, a family schedule, and a schedule for trips. This month, I have also had a schedule for family fun. But things don’t always go as scheduled and I’m learning to go with the flow. Let me assure you though, it’s not a class I signed up for!

A few years ago, we took a family trip. I had everything planned and we were right on schedule. Our next stop was a small, engineering-themed children’s museum. I had planned to get there two and a half hours before they closed, giving us a fair amount of time to be there. But the address and consequently, the directions to the museum had not been updated online and we had no idea how to get to it. We finally found the new museum (this was one of those times that we wished we had a smartphone and GPS) with only a little over an hour before it closed.

By this time, I was stressed out and panicking because now we faced a total conundrum. We didn’t have much money and the museum fee was not minimal. Do we still go and take the risk that only having an hour to spend would be a total waste of that money? Or do we disappoint our kids because we just didn’t have the time and things didn’t go as planned?

We decided to go anyway and after all that worry, we learned that an hour was the perfect amount of time to spend there! It all worked out in the end and all that snapping at my husband and children in the car while trying to find it was a TOTAL WASTE of energy! In the end, our family had so much fun while they were at the museum, and not one of them was sad because we didn’t get to stay longer. If only I had just been able to go with the flow. But we learn and live!

I’m sure you have your own stories about when things didn’t go as planned. I would dare say that plans are disrupted in some way or other more often than not. Last night, our family packed into a very small tent like sardines in order to make some memories. We have stayed in many hotels on family trips and there are very few that stand out in our memories…but camping…that has a tendency to stick with you. Because things rarely go right when camping.

We tented in our backyard…on the only night that our neighbors decided to have loud, rowdy, foul-mouthed friends over in the twelve years we’ve lived here! My entire family was sound asleep, thankfully, while I laid there, feeling like the tent was closing in around me, hoping and praying my children wouldn’t wake up and hear the words that were being said next door and praying that the friends would leave soon. (I may have prayed that their kid would wake them up with a toy xylophone at 5 am too.)

I knew that if I got up and went in the house, I would risk waking everyone else and they would not be able to fall back to sleep with all the ruckus.

Finally, at 3 am, they left! I had no idea what time it was by then, but I knew it felt like I had been lying there for hours…and I had been! I threw in the towel and quietly went inside to sleep a couple of hours. Consequently, my plan to get up early and work went down the drain and I had to be gone today. When would I get everything done?

I mean, I had not planned on getting a great night’s sleep, but I also had not planned on not even falling asleep until 3 am! Now, not only had my night not gone the way I’d planned, but my morning hadn’t either…and on top of it all, I had to fight against crabbiness due to lack of sleep. Boy, that’s not easy sometimes!

So, obviously, God is teaching me to go with the flow a little more. Life happens and we have to keep moving forward. We have to adjust as best-laid plans unravel. And that happens so much more than with nights of lost sleep and closed museums. It happens with the overall stories of our lives. God gives us plenty of detours that were not in the plans, and learning to go with the flow is an essential life skill.

But how can we get better at this? Mindset it everything!

Points to Remember when Learning to Go with the Flow

1. Stay Positive—

1 Corinthians 12:9 says, “But He said to me, ‘My grace is sufficient for you for my power is made perfect in weakness.’ Therefore, I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses so that Christ’s power may rest on me.”

When I don’t get my way or things don’t go as planned, I get bent out of shape quickly. Why? Because I’m selfish and I want my way! I’m not proud to say that. It’s pretty humbling to have to come to terms with your own selfishness. But when things don’t go my way, I need to call on the Lord and ask Him to make His power perfect through my weakness.

He has shown me time and again that He knows better than I do! Things will work out and be just fine, but in that moment, it’s hard to stay positive because it feels like everything is going down the drain quickly. Remember to stay positive! Things always have a way of working out.

Don’t Overbook—

The times I am unable to roll with the punches have always been the times in which I have overbooked myself. When I try to cram too many things into a short amount of time, I get frustrated if something goes wrong because something else suffers.

I am working on not being as busy and not overbooking myself. The stress level from me is much lower when I don’t have pressing commitments and don’t need to rush from one thing to the next. This affects my children as well and they are much happier when I’m not yelling, “GET.IN.THE.CAR!”

Also, allowing my children to take the time they need, without feeling rushed from one thing to the next, helps the overall level of stress in our home. So often, I get frustrated with my children for…being children. No. My daughter can’t tie her shoes as fast as I can. No. She can’t buckle her seatbelt quickly while rolling backwards down the driveway. These things take extra time and I need to plan my schedule in a way that allows them to take the time they need too.

Kids are far too busy with extra-curriculars these days. It seems there are only two options: Kids who are being shlepped from one place to the next all evening, and suffering from complete overwhelm; or kids that are going home and playing video games all evening, doing, essentially, nothing productive with their time.

Friends, there is a balance! You can say, “No” to activities and to video games. Limiting your schedule and not overbooking will allow for far more peace in the home.

Cut Yourself Some Slack—

Sometimes, the work just can’t get done today. That’s what happened to me this morning. I could have stayed up all night trying to get my writing finished, but it wouldn’t have been quality work. I could have been stressed out all day about it (and I was to a certain degree) and rushed home so I could get done, but then I would have had to reject an invitation to dinner and a chance to make two little girls incredibly happy!

So, I had to cut myself some slack and let it be.

Give yourself permission to not be everything to everyone. That’s not why you’re here. You don’t have to take on everyone’s problems, work, or issues. You don’t have to do it all. Instead, do what matters. Do the things that make the biggest impact on the people that matter most. If the other things don’t get done, oh well! Sometimes, it’s easy to think that our world would not survive without us, or that the peace and happiness of the entire household hinges on making sure this one little task gets done. It’s not true. Life moves on–and it will move on quickly, whether you’re flowing with it, or sulking about it.

Remember What’s Important—

Small changes to plans are not as big as we make them sometimes! Are our plans really so important that they can’t be changed? Y’all, my plans are not that cool! I can’t think of a plan so grand that it couldn’t be changed. So, what’s the big deal?

It’s control. Guess what! You’re not in control! (I may or may not be saying this out loud while looking in the mirror.) I love to think I’m in control when I am absolutely not. In fact, sometimes, I even find myself saying, “Lord, I give You control over this” and I picture Him just chuckling and thinking, “Isn’t that precious? She thought she was in control!”

Remember that God’s plans are far more important and better than ours could ever be!

All’s Well That Ends Well—

We love to listen to Little House on the Prairie books whenever we drive somewhere. It amazes me how anytime they overcame a big trial of any sort, either Ma or Pa would say, “Well, all’s well that ends well.”

That statement is quite profound to me. It all works out in the end, whether things went according to the plan or not. For them, things rarely went according to plan, and they endured major trials! But they were constantly able to say, “I guess as long as it worked out, there’s nothing to worry about or complain about.” What areas in your life do you need to adopt the motto: “All’s well that ends well”?

Final Thoughts on Learning to Go with the Flow

More than 90% of what we worry about never actually happens. Isn’t that profound?! And most of the trials that do affect us, we never saw coming anyway. My friends didn’t lie awake at night wondering what they would do if their house burned down. But it did. And they survived. When our sons got into a serious car accident, we had not even thought about that or worried about it at all. But it happened, and thankfully, we all lived through it! So, we worry about things that never happen and we don’t plan for the things that do. That’s definitely a sign that we need to learn to go with the flow and roll with the punches!

In my personal life, I am dealing with some things that were unplanned. Aren’t we all? I would daresay that the last two years have brought a lot of unplanned things to pretty much anyone not living in a cave somewhere. I am definitely learning to go with the flow as I’m forced to.

And so we pray that all’s well that ends well and keep moving forward. My imagination could run rampant with “what-ifs” right now, and those “what-ifs” could be dire, but God has proven Himself to be faithful in my life time and time again. How offensive is it to Him to doubt Him? Instead, I’m trying really hard to go with the flow. I am viewing this unplanned change of events as a gift, and trusting that the Lord’s plans are better and far more important than mine! I hope you will too!