But I mean it REALLY went out...all of San Diego County, as well as parts of Mexico and Orange County and Arizona (you can read the full story here). I read that 5 million customers were without power. It took my husband over 2 hours to make the 10 mile drive home from work yesterday. Apparently traffic lights are very, very necessary. I also just read that the outage caused a sewage spill in San Diego that closed area beaches. Awesome. I also just read that "human error" was to blame. I get human error - we are humans, we error. But usually errors don't affect 5 million people. I'd hate to be that particular human.
When it became clear yesterday that the outage was B-I-G, and the power would probably be out for hours I thought about women giving birth, or people in surgery (what? I did). How do power outages work at hospitals? Then I realized hospitals have undoubtedly thought about mid-birth, mid-surgery power outages and have backup generators or something.
But you know who doesn't have a backup generator? My MOPS (Mothers of Preschoolers) group.
This morning was supposed to be our first meeting, but it was cancelled due to the outage. I should be at our church campus right now prepping balloons and running around like a crazy woman with excitement for a new year of MOPS. But instead, I am at a coffee shop, practically in my jammies, writing about this experience so that I can just MOVE ON and put it behind me. (Yes, the power came back on late last night.)
Here's the thing. It wasn't the MANY hours that MANY people put in to preparing for our first meeting that upset me most. It wasn't even the MANY fabulous volunteers who were coming to help work with the kids and had to be cancelled that made me cry (yes, I cried...but that isn't saying much for me). It was the fact that this wasn't my finest week of mothering that really made me upset about the whole thing.
I had been working hard preparing for MOPS this week - at the expense of my kids - and now there was no MOPS this week. Certainly not all of my work was for naught, we will have a second chance at a first meeting in two weeks. But I will NEVER get back that terrible hour and a half running errands at Target and The Party Store yesterday (could you hear Abby's tantrums from your house?), or have the opportunity to handle the terribleness differently. And I will never get the chance to take back my general impatience or inattentiveness with my little munchkins this week.
Here is what the power outage taught me...when the power goes out, what matters the most is how you handled yourself when the power was on. Things get cancelled all the time. Weather happens. Power outages happen. When things get cancelled, even important things I have put a lot of time in to, what matters most to me is how I have handled myself as a mother and a wife.
And although I am just talking about my week and MOPS, there is a pretty obvious metaphor here (that I can't pass up on) regarding the fact that "the power" is going to go out for all of us at some point. I mean totally out...permanently...lights off and not coming back on...ever. Follow me? And what will matter when that day comes is not what we were trying to accomplish, but how we were, and who we were, and how we treated people when "the power" was on.
My great friend Anne tried to comfort me yesterday when I shared that it wasn't my best week of motherhood by reminding me that, no matter what, I had "clothed the naked and fed the hungry" this week (a reference to Matthew 25). I really needed and appreciated that. She was right. Well, mostly...because at the time Samantha was only wearing underwear and a t-shirt (but it WAS a hot day!).
