If I could create the perfect day, I would need a magic wand. Perfection isn’t real, and although I get to make the choices about what happens in a day, the truth of the matter is there are a lot more influences over my choices than simply what I want.

Ideally (there’s another word that ought to be accompanied by a magic wand), I get up early, boil water for tea or push the button on the coffee pot and read scripture then write in my notebook. I’d go for a run next. Then shower. Then be ready to face the world. In my pretend-world, this would be about 9:00 am and I would be ready to write on my new project.

In my real life I’m out the door by 6:45 every morning (and earlier many mornings). So if I adjust for real life, my next choice is to exercise after school and go for a run while it’s still light outside. But when I get home there are four people waiting to tell me about the incredible-paper-airplane, or the hilarious-teacher or the you-can’t-believe-what-happened-at-recess or the my-best-friend-hurt-my-feelings or the help-me-with-my-homework or the watch-what-I-learned-to-do-on-my-skateboard or the I-can’t-believe-what-happened-in-my-book.

All of this always takes precedence over the run. So I adjust and make dinner and plan to exercise after they go to bed. I wrinkle my nose knowing I’ll be stuck on a treadmill or with a workout video, wishing I were breathing in fresh air instead of surrounded by walls. Then they hug me one more time, remember the last minute item for school tomorrow, get all excited about another part of their books, ask to pray for one more friend. It’s after 8 before I have my shoes laced and I’m ready to drop.

But if I’m going to write, I need to move first. So I put one foot in front of the other and I don’t think about the time. The sweat rolls stress off my shoulders. I take a fast shower — they are always fast these days — then fill my water glass and pull my computer out of my bag, snuggle under my quilt and begin clacking keys.

My plans rarely go in an ideal way. I know how I want things to go, but then I write too late into the night and hit snooze on my alarm in the morning and there’s one more story or hurt feelings or misunderstanding or any one of a hundred other needs. So I adjust.

And make it work.

Because there isn’t another choice. It will work — the teaching and the parenting and the loving and the exercising and the writing — it will all work.

It always does when you are called to do something.