I had plans for the week.

Of course I did.

And then Brittney needed help with her property.

What I thought might be a weekend project became several days of cutting, hauling, cleaning and trying to make a dent in what needed to be done.

Friday we worked until dark.

Saturday we worked until the heat told us we’d had enough.

Sunday, Brittney and I were back at it.

By Monday, I wasn’t tending much of anything except myself. 😂

Tuesday we went back one more time, finished what we reasonably could and hauled about half a ton of junk to the dump.

This was not on my planner.

Neither was the recovery time afterward.

By Wednesday, I was slowly finding my way back to everything else that had been waiting.

And yet, looking back at that week, I don’t think it was a week when everything went off track.

I think I was simply tending something different.

At some point I looked at the week I’d planned and the week I was actually having and realized they had very little in common.

If I measured the week against my original list, I wasn’t doing particularly well.

The courses weren’t getting finished.

Projects weren’t moving the way I’d expected.

Things I’d planned to work on were still sitting exactly where I’d left them.

It would have been easy to look at all of that and think:

I haven’t gotten anything done this week.

Except that wasn’t remotely true.

I had rested when my body needed rest.

We had helped our daughter when she genuinely needed us.

I’d handled responsibilities that couldn’t simply be ignored because they weren’t written in the right square of my planner.

And that week held more than work.

Jim and I celebrated 20 years of marriage.

Twenty years.

That deserves a little tending too. ❤️

There was still estate business that needed attention.

There were projects waiting for me.

There were family things, household things and all the ordinary pieces of life that don’t disappear simply because one part of the week suddenly demands more of you.

Some things needed my attention immediately.

Some could wait.

Some deserved to be set aside for a while so I could pay attention to something—or someone—more important.

That sounds like a pretty full week to me.

Just not the one I’d planned.

I’ve been thinking about that distinction ever since.

There are things we plan to do.

And there are things we choose to tend.

Sometimes they’re the same things.

Sometimes they aren’t.

A planner can help me decide where I want my attention to go, but it can’t always predict where my attention will be needed.

That’s life.

Family needs us.

Something breaks.

Someone calls.

We get tired.

An unexpected responsibility appears.

A conversation becomes more important than whatever we intended to do next.

And sometimes the right thing to do is close the planner and deal with what’s actually in front of us.

That doesn’t mean everything urgent deserves our attention.

Goodness knows, the world is perfectly capable of producing an endless supply of things that would like to have it.

But there are people, responsibilities and parts of our lives that we’ve decided matter.

Those are different.

They need tending.

I like that word.

Tending.

It isn’t particularly impressive.

It doesn’t sound like productivity.

You don’t hear people talking about optimizing their tending strategy. Thank goodness. 😂

But tending is how a garden grows.

It’s also how relationships grow.

How families stay connected.

How homes are cared for.

How skills develop.

How ideas become something real.

How we take care of ourselves.

How the things we say matter actually continue to matter.

And tending isn’t evenly distributed.

Some weeks, work needs more of me.

Some weeks, family does.

Sometimes I’m deep in learning or creating.

Sometimes somebody I love needs help hauling half a ton of junk to the dump.

Life moves.

So my attention has to move with it.

Maybe that’s why I’m becoming less interested in whether every week looks productive on paper.

I’m more interested in where my time actually went.

What did I tend?

What needed me?

What moved forward because I gave it some attention?

And did the way I spent my time have anything to do with what I say matters to me?

That week didn’t go according to my planner.

But when I looked at it that way, it hadn’t gone off track at all.

The track had simply moved. ❤️