6 Weeks ’til Summer: Part 2
This is week two in a six weeks series.
There’s actually two gray eyelashes. And when I looked at them while putting on some mascara, I noticed that they are actually white. And they stick out like a sore thumb. If you read part one in this series, 6 Weeks ’til Summer: Part 1, you know that these eyelashes are an anomaly for me. They’re what I’ve decided is my tell for internalized stress; and the stress is heavy folks.
I’ve been ruminating for the last couple of days about what I’d write about the past week. It was the usual – work, school, kids’ practices, soccer, etc. But on Monday, I watched as multiple people ran stop signs during the morning drop-off hour. After the third person breezed through a four way stop, I knew exactly what I would write about. Last week I finished out my post with questioning my faith. And after my mini-meltdown Sunday, I’ll come back to that, I realized that faith was indeed my issue. But the stop sign incidents helped me realize what’s wrong with my faith – a lack of patience. Stopping at a stop sign takes no more than about ten seconds. But if you’re in a hurry or running late to work, that ten seconds feels like a lifetime. So you pause, sometimes check for traffic, and keep rolling. Most of the time when you hit that California stop, as my husband calls it, and you carry on unscathed. But sometimes, you get pulled over by the police, or worse – cause an accident. Me? Sometimes I wait patiently for my time to move through the stop sign and others – I blow through, full speed ahead, praying I come out unscathed.
Here’s the thing. When I was having my mini-meltdown on Sunday, my husband reminded me of some things – I’ve been in this position before and I don’t control the universe. I know both of these things but when I’m in a hurry, I forget about them. I pray and ask God for an answer and expect same-day delivery – as if He’s Amazon. And if I can’t get same-day, I expect two-day shipping, right to the front door, and it better be exactly what I ordered. What I did remember though is that when I rush through the stop sign, even if the damage isn’t immediate, it can be colossal. And I had to decide Sunday if it was worth rushing through the stop sign. It isn’t.
There’s something else my husband said as well, and it made sense. This whole time I’ve had a plan. I know unequivocally what I want. But in order to have it, I’d have to give up some other things. And the truth is, the reason that my children want what they want, how they want it and when they want it, is because I’m the exact same way. So I’ve had to really think about what I want and what I’m willing to give up to have it. Because as I constantly remind myself, everything has a price. I just have to decide how much I’m willing to pay.
To be continued…