We are having an open house tomorrow for our exchange student… our beloved Egyptian daughter.

And I wanted my house to be perfect.. ok.. I wanted the garage to be perfect.  My house is too small.. and the weather too nice to have a gathering indoors.  So my goal was to organize and clean my garage… so in the end it wouldn’t look like a garage.

Well… Garage.. slash… sewing room.. slash storage.. slash art supplies.. slash… Yes, my garage is very multi-purpose.. But my hope was to disguise the “multi”… But alas it was not to be. The shelf I ordered to organize the drawers of overflowing art supplies.. came 3 days late.. arriving late Thursday. Everything I cleaned would get messed back up.. My chickens followed me everywhere… Every complication under the sun.. complicated my week. Nothing went right…

Add to that my teary-eyed-ness as our time with our exchange daughter is coming to an end..

You guessed it.. my garage is barely organized. … I was obviously not thrilled…

But with all the complications that frustrated me to tears… I also had surprises.. 3 surprises to be exact… 3 separate surprise visits from family and friends.. Each visit bringing smiles and laughter with it… It felt just like Christmas. With every smile I began to relax..  I could hear God’s still small voice whispering to me…

What is this really for?

So tomorrow when people begin to arrive at my house… They will see totes and totes of my preschool teacher “tools”. (You never know when you may be called to teach preschool again.  I have to be ready..)  They will see totes of costumes. They will see baskets of material stacked in front of my sewing station… And they will probably EVEN see a toy that we missed picking up from my nephews playtime today…

And they will see me smile… because no one really cares if my garage is cleared. They don’t care if I condensed my teaching totes. They don’t care that I have 2 totes that still need to be unpacked.

Tomorrow is about celebrating our Egyptian daughter… one of the most amazing girls I have ever met… Celebrating that God chose to Bless Us with her…

So that is what we will do….