Another late Sunday night pillow talk. My intention is always to get to bed early so that I’ll get a head start on the week. As usual, I’m behind before the week even starts. But it’s good. Because Todd is so wise and helps me see another way of looking at my concerns. And when it’s late, and the kids are bedded down, when we’re coming off a busy week and full weekend, I have all sorts of things jumbled in my head. And so does he. And so it’s worth it to stay up an extra hour to talk about it and just be tired tomorrow.
At one point we were discussing our assignments at church, it being Sunday and all. And what we needed to do with them for the upcoming week. We didn’t get that far before I felt tears in the corners of my eyes. This, I’ve learned, is typical whenever my current calling comes up. As innocent as inquiries are about how it’s going, I can’t help but get emotional. I try to be vague with most of my friends, Fine, I guess, fine. Actually I have no idea. But with Todd, I just tell him the truth.
I’m not doing it everyday. I feel like a fraud. Why don’t they get someone like the lady who was doing this before me? She was perfect for the job, super kind and organized and on the ball and the type to visit and remember things and seek out the lonely and make the effort to notice all the details about everything. I’m not her. And my other friends who’re doing the exact same thing… wow. I just feel like a slug. I confessed all the things I wish I was. I told him all the things I love about other people. I wondered for the eight hundredth time why me. There are so many more qualified, right people for the job.
And then he said something that stopped me in my tears. Then become that person.
He wasn’t being mean. Not at all. He wasn’t trying to just shut me down. He was just making an observation. And offering a solution to my woes. Typically male. But a perspective I’ve come to value and respect over the years.
My initial reaction was self-preservation. Todd, quit trying to fix things. Just hear me out, commiserate with me. Don’t you understand? There’s no way. I’m only who I am; I can’t change just like that just because I want to.
But after I settled down, much like a tired two-year old becomes after a thrashing tantrum, I had the wherewithal to consider his advice.
And I realized that of course that was an option. The best kind of option.
Not that I can become Super Woman by sewing all the traits I love about other women into my own cape. But I realized that instead of bemoaning the fact that I’m not doing xyz, why not try?
This is a natural tendency, we see this all the time in society. People who play victim, who keep telling themselves their station in life is unfair or they haven’t been as fortunate or lucky or blessed. We tend to blame our pasts, our upbringing, our parents, our lack of talent, our weaknesses, our circumstances, lack of opportunity and even our personalities for what’s not going well in life. I totally get that life isn’t fair.
And I’m the first to admit it would be helpful to have an outgoing, confident, get-er-done personality and over-the-moon-charisma in this calling. I would love that! But what I really want is to connect with other women. I want them to know they’re not alone, that they have friends, sisters who know about them and care what’s going on in their lives. I want to know these people. I want to make a difference in their lives. I want to give them hope. And I think that’s doable. Because I’ve seen my friends doing this.
The women around me that I admire so much are teaching me to carve out time for visits, to communicate more clearly with those I serve with, to recognize needs better and sooner, to pay attention to what’s not being said, to think of things like phone calls and notes and potted plants, to go find and accept and love those who aren’t sure where they are at the moment. They’re modeling things that don’t come naturally for me. Yet I know Todd’s right. I can work to integrate traits I love about them, they can become a part of me.
This mindset can work for all of us. Not crafty, musical, culinary, athletic, or thrifty? Take a class, get a book, hire a teacher, trainer or life coach, enlist a friend. Not that kind of mom? Decide what you envision for your family and do what it takes to incorporate some new ideas. Not outgoing, detail-oriented, or well-read? Maybe not a handyman, green thumb, or confident public speaker? Work on it. In the wrong career, job not working for you? Go back to school, make some changes, use your contacts to meet new people who can help. We don’t have to stay where we are.
Why can’t someone who still can’t read in second grade become a veterinarian? Why can’t an awkward, shy teen become a comfortable conversationalist as an adult? Why can’t a new wife who doesn’t know the first thing about yeast or cooking in general learn to make bread and dinner every night? Why can’t we move past our pasts? Why don’t we stop letting our perceptions paralyze our progress? Why can’t we see that we can become him or her, the person we see as our ideal? Not a person we know somewhere out there, but a composite of traits we admire, an enlarged, better version of ourselves. I know this is what Todd was in essence trying to say, albeit much more succinctly. Stop wishing you were something or someone else; and, in your own way, do what it takes to become her.
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