Standstill Traffic, Screaming Babies, and Something to Blog About

So I’ve been thinking for quite a while now that it’s about time I blog again. You see, it’s been a while, and I’ve sort of missed it.  ~But I have a newborn.~

There’s something freeing-and-stress-relieving to me about writing. ~But I have a newborn.~

I feel like God teaches me a lot when I take time to sit down and write about the events in my life. ~But I have a newborn.~

Lately, it’s been difficult to really come up with anything to blog about, because, you see, I have a newborn. And, well…. life truly consists of diaper changes, feedings, and structuring life around the idea and phrase “I have a newborn.”

I think you get the idea by now. But it’s totally and completely true. A newborn trumps everything on your to do list. Everything. Every. thing. E.v.e.r.y.t.h.i.n.g.

No matter what you have planned, your sweet little one will make sure to unplan it and reschedule it for you. For another time. Maybe tomorrow. Maybe tomorrow-in-18-years. But whatever it is – the thing(s) you had planned to do today – it’s not happening. So you may as well forgetaboutit. (insert baby smile and sweet-baby-coo here)

For a planner like me, this can become a wee bit unnerving at times and just-plain-exhausting at others.

…hang on to that thought of planning for a sec, and go here with me….

I’m very unsure if it’s God-given or self-driven or a weird mixture of the two, but I have this thing where I absolutely do not like hearing my baby cry. In fact, I do everything in my power to make sure she doesn’t cry. Ever. I mean never, ever. (I’ll admit I might even be a little hypersensitive about it.) Some may call that “spoiling a baby.” I like to refer to it as “proactive parenting” or “paying attention to details.” No matter what you label it, let’s be real, no one really wants to listen to that all the time. {Not even the baby doing it.} So, in everyone’s best interest, I make sure my baby doesn’t cry. Ever. Pretty realistic of me, right?

With all said, I found myself in quite-the-*unplanned*-little-situation today. It involved standstill traffic, a scream-crying baby-in-the-backseat, and now: something to blog about. [Ta-da!]

After spending an enjoyable morning at a friend’s house, I proceeded to come home with hopes and plans of getting baby Hannah to sleep in the car along the way home, cook some lunch for myself while she was sleeping-still-in-the-carseat (wishful thinking), and be ready-and-peaceful at home for Jeff to come see us on his lunch hour.

All was going according to plan until I reached Wards Road. For those of you not familiar with Lynchburg, Wards Road is like one of the main stretches in town. Every place you could want to eat and/or shop is located off of Wards Road. With two lanes in and two lanes out, it’s also your freeway to freedom from Lynchburg and gateway into the glorious county, which is where we now live. So there we are, turning the corner onto Wards Road, and what do you know.

Standstill traffic.

Standstill. Traffic.

Stand. Still. Traffic.

Traffic that is literally standing still.

No movement.

No attempt at movement.

No one even seemingly concerned at the no attempt at movement.

(I’m certain if this was occurring in Jacksonville, I would’ve seen some road rage… or worse.)

But not in Lynchburg. Well, actually, the county.

No one really seemed to mind the delay. Ahem, the dead stop.

No one minded except me.

Why?

(insert famous new-found-phrase) You got it. “I have a newborn.”

Precious and sweet as she is, said-newborn decided that this would be the most excellent time to try out her lung capacity and test if she really had the ability to cry or not (remember, I never “let” her cry) all within the very confined space between the four small walls of a Nissan Frontier.

I tried everything I could try, while managing to keep my foot on the brake and one hand on the steering wheel- just in case we decided to go somewhere anytime soon.

When I say I tried everything, I mean it.

I. Tried. Everything.

Talking to baby.

Looking at baby through rearview and baby mirrors.

Rubbing baby’s head.

Binky in, binky out, binky in again.

Dropped binky.

New binky found. Repeat.

Soothing worship music.

Loud soothing worship music.

Louder soothing worship music.

Super soft worship music.

Desperate prayer time. “God, You’ve gotta do something here. Get me out of this situation.”

Giving up.

Resigning to my lot in life.

Tears.

Mommy tears. (because they’re bigger and more meaningful than regular tears)

Sincerely not understanding why God didn’t answer my desperate heart-prayer and get me out of this situation. Pronto. Stat.

And then, guess what?

Movement!

Not only movement in the front, but also movement on the right side lane as well.

Although traffic began to move, all was obviously not quite back to normal because people began 

*try* to merge into one lane. My lane.

You guessed it.

I didn’t let anyone in front of me.

I was that girl.

That driver.

That mom with a scream-crying babe in the backseat.

As people tried to merge in and I refused, I got some stares.

But those people don’t know me.

They don’t know my life.

They didn’t know that I HAVE A NEWBORN FOR CRYING OUT LOUD.

And quite literally, my newborn WAS crying out loud.

And louder.

And louder and louder, by the minute, too, if we want to get technical about it.

Just as I started to pick up speed and make some headway through the traffic (by ignoring all the turn 

signals into my lane), my sweet baby Hannah calmed down and had managed to throw herself into a fitful NAP.

As the calm was coming to my nearly-20-minutes-of-fame mommy-meltdown-storm, I looked to my immediate right.

Saw a litter of people standing around, just shooting the breeze. (Some looking more upset than others.)

A handful of cars. (One smashed to smither’eens.)

Precisely, two cop cars.

One ambulance.

A bunch of lights flashing.

And a still small voice yanking away my soul, “This is why I had you wait back there. I always have your best interest in mind.”

As I looked in my rearview mirror again, my precious newborn was sleeping-like-a-baby. Literally. And all was right in my world again, but my perspective had been altered.

You see, twenty minutes in a car with a screaming child isn’t an eternity; although in-the-moment, it surely felt like it. 

On the flip side, had I been traveling twenty minutes earlier, I could’ve beat the standstill traffic, yes. But I also could’ve been the cause of it. 

In stark honesty, I could’ve been the one with the smashed-up car. Who knows, I could’ve even met my eternity in-that-moment.

God saw fit to give me something today that I never would have planned for myself.

It wasn’t easy to handle. God’s tests to us never are.

But He’s faithful, and He always sees us through to the other side.

No matter what else happens today and what does or doesn’t get crossed off the ever-growing to do list, I can know this much is true:

God can be trusted. Even when He hands you something difficult to go through or something different than what you had planned, you never know what all He’s saving you from.

At the end of the day, I can gladly say I endured traffic with a scream-crying child. I was thoroughly-and-completely rescued from a wreck of what might-have-been-me.

And I (still) have my newborn.


Thank you, Jesus, for standstill traffic, screaming babies, and something to blog about.