More Important Than Your Plan.

As I am sitting at my desk attempting to get some work done, my phone keeps beeping. Most of my notifications turned off means that what comes through generally requires attention. Both my boys are in school, but they still manage to interrupt my day with access to phones.

“Mom, can you remind me to…….?”
“Mom, I need you to email me a picture for a project.”
“Mom, can you pick me up today? I don’t want to ride the bus home.”

It’s lunchtime for my middle schooler, not his favorite time of the day. He put his earbuds in and called me, “Mom, this place is insane. Save me from it, please.” He’s right. I struggle to hear him over the loudness of cafeteria chatter. I can not save him from the chaos, but I can remind him he is not alone.

Finally getting back to my task, the dog wanders in, her nose nudging against my arm. I know if I ignore her, she will start talking to me, only getting louder. She wants to go outside.

A text from a friend struggling through the day. A conversation with my husband when he comes upstairs to take a break from his work. An email from the school reminds me that I signed up for snacks that need to be delivered. The sound of the clock, tick-tock, remind me that the hours‘ pass and very little has been accomplished. It has been a day interrupted.

As I look down at my task list, it is easy to get frustrated by the lack of completed items. At one time, I would have pushed myself harder to satisfy the need to complete everything. But today, I am drawn in a different direction. Instead of focusing on what I have not achieved, I pause to consider what I have done.

I was there for my son when he needed support.
I was there for my son when he needed to know that he was not alone.
I was there for a friend who needed to know she didn’t have to do it all alone.
I was there to listen to my husband and process the day with him.
I was there to pause and play with my dog.

With just a short amount of time before the after-school rush would begin, I looked down at my list of tasks and asked myself, “what matters most for today?” The rest would have to wait.

As I reflected on this day, I began to realize that not all interruptions are created equal. There are the things that interrupt our days, pulling us away from what matters most. The times we allow ourselves to get on social media only to discover we lost an hour. The rabbit trails we take to avoid what we’d rather not do. Those interruptions keep us from completing what is more important.

But, some interruptions are perhaps more important than what we had planned to achieve on that day. The hour spent on the phone with an aging parent. The pausing to respond to a child needing to be seen and heard at that moment. These are the interruptions that might just turn out to matter more than the tasks we had planned to complete.

There are those times when we need to block out the interruptions to focus on work that needs to get done. Some of us perhaps allow unimportant interruptions to keep us from what matters most in our day. But, when it comes to living real life in community with people, what if our frustration over incomplete tasks causes us to miss the reality that we actually accomplished what mattered most for that day?