I am having to practice what I preach to my children.
It happens to all of us at some time. Whe have a special social event, an important class or function at church, have to work more hours than we planned at our jobs and all of their teachers at school decide to give them extra homework right before the semester’s major project is due…all at the same time!
You get the idea.
My oldest daughter went through an impossible difficult gauntlet in her next to last semester in college. My son is going through something similar now.
Both times, I could see them getting overwhelmed. The fear of failing was making inroads into their minds.
In both cases, I actually gave them some great advice.
“I know it seems impossible to do everything that you have to do and if you look at all of it, it is. You will be tempted to crawl into an emotional cave.
However, you don’t have to figure out how you are going to do all of it. All you have to do is to do the next thing to the best of your ability. You can do that. You can handle that.
When you finish that, you go on to the next thing. You can do that, right?
You don’t have to worry or fret. You can’t do anything about all of the other things at that moment. The time for those things will come. And if you keep doing the next thing as soon as it rises up, before you know it, you will have made it through and done the “impossible”!
Now it is my turn. Mine situation is not in the “impossible” realm…but it is in the “I hope I don’t forget something critical and screw this up” realm.
We are moving into a 2BR apartment in two weeks. I have already started packing up all of the books that I will have to be put back into storage. I am looking for a church to join. I am trying to help my son successfully jump through all of his hoops, prepare for his graduation, trying to get him into Drexel University, figure out how to pay for it, learn enough PHP/MySQL/HTML to get my commentary running, stay faithful in writing this blog, etc., etc., etc.
Today, I reached the point where I had to have a talk with myself. I heard myself counseling my children. I decided to follow my own advice.
I just did the next thing.
I called the Drexel Financial Aid office. They had missed a $3,000/year scholarship that my son is eligible for. While on the phone, I sent them an e-mail with the validating information and they agreed to recompute his financial award letter.
$3,000 down! Only $19,000 more to go!
Huh?