Children are for growth or I Digress, AGAIN

It's been a busy week and tonight has been a busy night.  I didn't get to start my evening after all the kids were down until much later and all the great plans I had for tonight dissipated in the evening's tired mist.  All week long I was walking around with all these great writing ideas bouncing and buzzing around my head but one thing that was in short supply was the actual writing time.  So I've been thinking, why is that , that life with children so often forces one to change one's carefully laid plan?  Why is it so often chaotic and unpredictable?  Why is that, that as soon as one thinks one understands something and has finally figured it out, the rug is pulled from under one and it's back to the drawing board.  So here is what I think is the lesson.  Chindren are for growth, of the parent that is and not just the child.  Being a parent forces on to constantly examine and re-examine things, to get to the core, to strip away all the nonsense that so often clutters our vision.  Parenting and the growth that it engenders is much more about the struggle and the journey and the lessons learned along the way than the items that could be checked off the endless "to do"  list at the end of the day.  Educating ourselves and our children, along the way, is not about the perfect end product in a conventional meaning of the term.  It's about self-perfection in the most meaningful  and ultimate sense, if one only lets.  If One only lets.  So bring on the change of plans, the other things will have to get written another time.