Address the Fixable

After a month and change of letting the world have its way with its me, I've made a decision. A lot of it revolved around repetitions of the serenity prayer. What can I change? What goes into the "that which I can't" bucket? And where's my wisdom to figure out which is which?

Life teaches much if you are open to the lesson plan. Everyone is open to learning as long as it doesn't inconvenience her. But reining in pride and hubris? The stiff-necked rebellion that comes with humiliation? These things are hard.

I've gone through more rounds than I care to count with the last in the past few weeks. I found myself in our tent on Sunday, in another state, wondering how I was going to deal with Nic's latest round of escapades.

I let myself get quiet enough to hear my instructions. "You have a choice; you can continue to hang yourself on the cross of other people's doings, or you can own what's yours and let others own what belongs to them."

This is where I get strung up, and this is what's been stringing me up since the end of May--I let whatever anyone else is doing spoil my good time, either by trying to own what happened or by trying to buffer other people.

Why? Who knows? But clearly I need to stop because it's making me nuts.

And suddenly, life just got a whole lot better. Nothing has really changed, only my perspective.

But what a difference. If only I could figure out a way to bottle and sell it.....