I’m inflexible

I've long labored under the belief that I'm rigid. Situations calling for flexibility are just not for me. And walking into those situations I pray hard because I can't just drop everything and let it go. I don't go with the flow. I did this internship when I was a senior in college and they talked about the need for flexibility. Things might come up and plans change at the last minute. You have to be ready for that. That is how the line went in the predeparture training. And inside myself I cringed. I don't do things like that, why am I here? This is so not for me. And the internship actually went pretty according to schedule. Craziness ensued in the plan but everything that we were scheduled to do and take part in really went off fine. So I was for the most part ok. The culture transition was a bear but then when isn't cultural transition a little less than pleasant. Still it was ok. I was ok.

When I got married, in the pre-engagement counseling, we talked about flexibility. You know living with someone. Other people are a mess of inflexibility. You have to work together to get a marriage and that takes flexibility. Well, my darling Jonathan already knew I was the most inflexible person on the planet, so if I made the overture of bending to 45 degrees I think he would have been astonished. And our first few years of marriage went off swimmingly. We had @ and I began to raise him to be a rigid rule follower and we were ok. We got kicked out of a country and that was probably the first real knot I've ever been in. Really terrible experience for the inflexible because that would certainly not be the plan (it's an unplanned life change).

Now I had a minute to survey the landscape of life today at a stoplight. The car was quiet and the world was humming and it was 4:30 and I looked at the day and saw what all had gone on. I flipped through my daily docket sheet in my head. Then I flipped through the week. And in a glance I thought, I'm not supposed to be able to do this. I'm inflexible. I don't change. I have a plan. But the calls at the gate, the tutor spending a few extra minutes for conversation when people need naps and school, ! racing outside to the dirt after I had changed her to go out, my neighbor coming by for an hour visit as I was cleaning up lunch and readying @ to finish up school, catching up on the phone with a friend, the swim teacher calling to cancel- after I've left for the lesson, impromptu decisions for school . And I'm not angry or in tears. I'm in a fine mood. Perhaps at some point while I was slip sliding through life I twisted into a pretzel while juggling a nice marriage and 2 squirreling kids. And perhaps I didn't hate it. Perhaps it was life happening and I'm awfully thankful.