Sunday, January 8, 2017

Damn you, weather!

We want everything to be perfect.

Right now I'm waiting to go to the airport to catch a flight up to Portland. My grandson who is only 8 months old, is having surgery tomorrow and I want to be there! But they are having ice and snow storms in the Pacific Northwest and over 100 fights have been canceled as I sit here. Waiting. Wondering. Am I going to make it up there tonight? And if I do, will there will an Uber driver that is willing to risk his life to come and pick me up? I shiver just thinking about it. (It's a balmy 65 degrees today here in Santa Barbara.)


I already had a panicky reaction when I heard this news. I started to wrack my brain as to how I could get up there tomorrow before the scheduled surgery time of 4:00 pm. I have to be there! I instantly started feeling like an inadequate grandmother, a mother who would be letting her daughter down. A failure in a sense. But I took in a few deep breaths, calmed myself, and remembered a saying I had heard before - "beating ourselves up only gives us bruises."

It's hard when things don't go our way. When roadblocks (such as weather) show up and interfere with our plans. These things are out of our control and yet we still believe deep down that we are in control of our lives. And we are in control of quite a bit of it. But more so we get to control the way we feel or react to things that happen in our lives, not the actual happening.

So I will keep checking my flight status, hopeful but without expectation. I'm not even going to make a Plan B or think about it until, and if, I see that the flight has been canceled. I will trust that I am exactly where I need to be - and will somehow be in Portland by this time tomorrow.