Day Planner

Just because something doesn't do

What you planned it to do

Doesn't mean it's useless.

-Thomas Edison

I turned a corner this morning and smiled when I took in this sight. It was lovely. This picture of my day planner... well, this is my life. The fat, pink notebook holds bills and a photo slide of Italy and recipes and jotted-down ideas and reminders to call my attorney and take a pot of stew to Mary Darden. The wrench was tossed there last night to nag myself to fix my clothespin bag. (After all, I really needed to wash and hang all my towels out to dry now that the gray, gray days are gone. Whoopee!) And the fabric? Isn't it pretty? The fabric on the chair is some I'm quilting this winter. I finished ironing it and have been too busy (lazy?) to fold it up. Yep, this picture is my life.

Isn't it funny how we keep... or refuse to keep... day planners? How we sometimes feel like slaves to our planners and calendars? Sometimes it's overwhelming. Although mine is only one step up from a stone and a chisel, I like my paper spiral because it continually keeps me from embarrassing myself. I have a terrible memory. (Also, I don't have to plug my planner in at night. I'd probably forget anyway and end up with a dead day planner every day.)

While day planners are good scribble-calendars, they are also good diaries. I recently found a day planner from when I was in college and was delighted to read of people and places and things I'd forgotten. (Can you believe I actually had to write a final exam paper entitled Hell: Exothermic or Endothermic? Or that I had a huge crush on Mike Ozman? Or that I lived for 3 straight days on donut holes from Bosa's?) See? Day planners are like paper time capsules.

Yep, they're cool. But sometimes, though... sometimes we get too bogged down in keeping... and keeping up with... the daily grind. Some days it feels pointless, at least to me. After all, I plan and I plan and I plan, yet never had I had a day that was exactly as I expected it to be when I looked ahead to it in my day planner.

I'm not making much sense today, am I? Point is, I guess, that I love my fat pink notebook, and while it's good to plan, life is volatile. Uncooperative. It defiantly sneers at our plans and interrupts our routines. People are here one day and gone the next. (God rest the dear Treva Wallace!) Problems that seem so insurmountable today will simply be ink on a page someday. And life - even if it isn't what we plan - is still good.

I love the quote from Edison. I adore thinking about how some things he made for one purpose failed in the intended respect, yet turned out to be a solution for something entirely unexpected. Kinda like my favorite Bible verse for today - Proverbs 19:21. It goes something like: Many are the plans in a man's heart, but it is the Lord's purpose that prevails.

Yep, my day planner is full. I'm all planned up, wrench and all. And yet... and yet... I'm good with the unexpected. The deviations. I'm good with the come-what-may. I'm good with Edison's theory on uselessness. After all, if it's the Lord's purpose that will ultimately prevail, how can any plan (or any life!)- fulfilled or likewise - be anything aside from lovely?