Best-Laid Plans
By Ruth Gyllenhammer | January 2024 Newsletter
We’re just a few miles from our destination, a mountain lodge where we’ll spend the next few days, when our youngest boy, still strapped into his five-point car seat, says, “I have to throw up.”
As soon as the words leave his mouth, they are joined by the contents of his stomach. The vomit comes in waves—fast and torrential. In one swoop, I unbuckle my seat belt, dive to grab the fleece blanket, and stretch it across the car floor just as the vomit cascades on top.
And so begins our annual Family Summit.
Our middle son goes down next. He throws up in the “check-in” parking spot, and our oldest gets the bug by breakfast. Turns out the “food poisoning” my husband had just a few days prior was actually … the stomach flu.
The plan was to take the first few days of Thanksgiving break to spend quality time as a family, brainstorm family rhythms, talk through values, and draft a bucket list before the new year. Maybe even coach the older kids through setting 2024 goals. A pre-game before the holiday whirlwind.
After our first son was born, my husband and I started a tradition of beginning the new year with a retreat—heading to a local bed & breakfast to dream and pray about the year ahead. On January 1, we’d eat cinnamon rolls and watch the Rose Parade on TV. In the afternoon, we’d pack and drive twenty minutes to the B&B, arriving in time for afternoon hor d'oeuvres, cookies, and sunset over the harbor.
Within a few years, we outgrew the bed & breakfast. We moved our retreat to a beach town a 45-minute drive north, to a hotel off Main Street with a giant outdoor chess set and complimentary s’mores kits. We’d roast marshmallows and watch movies in the hotel room in the evening. The next morning, we’d talk about the year’s family bucket list over breakfast. With each passing year, our retreat became (slightly) more organized. Each year, a new iteration of years past.
Now, quarantined in our cabin with sporadically vomiting children, I nevertheless pull out the sparkling drinks and special snacks. We are here. We are together. We might as well try. I open the family workbook I bought for the occasion and, pencil in hand, read aloud the pages of family values. My husband leads the “fun” list brainstorming, and one child calls out ideas from the bathroom. Understandably.
We don’t get through all the pages. We don’t break down any goals. We wrap up the “summit” after making a short winter bucket list and schedule our first weekly family meeting for the following Sunday.
The circumstances aren’t ideal, but life in practice rarely is.
So we practice rolling with the punches. We practice maintaining priorities even when the execution goes awry. We practice faithfulness as best we can, holding our plans with open hands.
The kids recover quickly. The next day, we’re back at it—attempting a family tennis game and throwing a football around on the lodge lawn. Fresh starts all around. When it’s time to leave, the boys ask when we can return. “We had so much fun, Mom,” they say. As it turns out, even our best-laid plans are no match for new morning mercies.
Love,
Ruth
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"The circumstances aren’t ideal, but life in practice rarely is." I need this on a sign, or a mug, or something! So good.
This is so relatable! I’m always amazed at how my kids remember the good parts while I tend to get hung up on all that was hard and stressful. I love that last line: “As it turns out, even our best-laid plans are no match for new morning mercies.” I’ve realized, too, that I need to change how I talk about certain times that were in my mind horrible because my kids are holding onto a different and much better perspective of what happened.