Jumping to "Yes"

This week has been hectic, and mildly frustrating at every turn.  On top of the usual activities that have ramped up this year for us, we had Sunny being spayed, an orthodontist appointment, and to cap it off a less than ideal IEP meeting today for Kenny.  At every turn it seemed nothing would be successful...it took me 4 attempts to order a single TShirt for Matt for Civil Air Patrol, I still have yet to get the money order I need to send to our adoption agency to cover expenses for a post placement report as I went to 3 different locations only to find that the machine was broken to print them or someone was not there to handle it.  I still do not have an appointment for Matthew for Shriner's in November after several calls, and I had a package to send to a friend overseas that was lost for 3 months, returned and then I struggled to find the best way to resend it.  As you can tell from the description, none of it was major, but it has just been one of those weeks where every simple task turned into something more complicated than it should have been.

So this afternoon, I decided we would all take the afternoon off.  I wasn't sure what we would do, but after art class we all came home and didn't feel like returning to work.  I suggested we take a walk, which then turned into all of us taking a 4 1/2 mile walk around our block.  You see out here in the country, our blocks tend to be HUGE and take us past rustling corn fields and over swiftly running irrigation canals.  As I looked out the window, I saw dark, ominous thunderheads gathering over the San Juan Mountains off in the distance, heading our direction. 

I almost did it, the word was sitting right there on the tip of my tongue, just waiting to be released. After all, it was most likely going to rain, if it did we would get caught in it, we would be pretty far from home and would be a muddy mess.

"No"...it is SO easy to jump to the "No".  As a Mom, we so often have to maintain order, keep schedules, make sure all is on track.  It is far easier to say say "no" to make life easier.  After all, there is still dinner to prepare, potatoes to peel, laundry to move from the washer to the dryer, school work to correct...lots of things that have to get done. 

Today though, I jumped another direction...today I jumped to "Yes" :-)

And I am so glad I did.  What would have been missed was totally, completely priceless and precious.

Oh, we were rain free for the first 20 minutes or so, and as the thunder began to rumble overhead the excitement grew.  Further and further we walked, stopping here or there to call out to the cows in the nearby field, or wonder at what was hidden in the little hollowed out area near the canal.  The drops started to fall, a plop here...a plop there.  Grins started to appear wider, and a lilt came to each of their voices as they wondered "Will we get home before it starts pouring?"  Anticipation of the downpour to come caused our pace to pick up, but we still had a couple of miles to go.

"No"...oh, how easy that would have been.

It started to rain...hard.  We were all getting wet, really, really wet.  So...what do you do when you have no options, when you are already drenched with no hope of escaping?

Your mom finds the BIGGEST mud puddle around and jumps in it, splattering everyone and starting a Mud Puddle War to end all wars!  Then we danced. We walked down the middle of the deserted road singing and chasing each other, we waved at the few trucks passing by as their drivers smiled and waved a hearty hello back, in all likelihood looking at this oddball band of 6 and wondering what in the world we were all doing out there. 

It was magical.

And jumping to "no" would have caused us to miss it.  Jumping to "yes" brought the magic.

We stopped in the rain to marvel at a fascinating road kill victim, a frog who was perfectly flattened with, believe it or not, his tongue sticking out.  We picked up a random golf ball that had somehow ended up on the edge of a corn field. We walked single file, stomping to splash the person behind us.  We did nothing important at all, and yet, it really was.

Suddenly, Josh rushed up, flung his arms around me as he grabbed me in the biggest bear hug.

"Thank you, Mommy."

"For what?" I asked.

"For all of this." he happily replied.

As we finally came upon our road, Olesya, hair dripping, declared "I just love my family...we are so crazy!"

Kenny said "This was the best day ever, Mommy, the very, very best." and Angela said "Yea, this was totally cool!"

I turned to them both and said "OK, so you have to promise me something...someday I want you to say "Yes" to something your kids ask you to do.  Remember this afternoon, and pass it on to your own kids."

The look on Angela's face told me that she totally got it.  "I promise, Mama, I'll never forget this day."

Neither will I :-)

Jumping to "yes" is really not all that hard, but it takes moving beyond our auto-response mode. It takes recognizing that often we say "no" for no good reason at all, and that there are many times we could say yes with a minimum of effort required on our part.  We live in a "no" oriented world.  Spontaneity is viewed as irresponsible.  After all, we have a schedule to keep, we have plans to follow.  How could we possibly say "yes"??

I urge you all, one day this week, jump to the "yes"...then write and tell me what you did with a friend or family member...or even just for yourself when you jumped to the "yes" and turned off the auto-response.  I challenge you to do it just once, and then share with all of us.



We found a monster worm!




We got filthy!




We loved every moment of it!