One of my multiple weird hang ups is my inability to not answer the phone when I am in the shower or tub.
It has taken me years to over come this foolishness.
I would bring the phone and sit it on the side of the tub.
I would fling open the shower door, slopping water everywhere while risking life and limb in a sliding dash for the phone.
Now usually these vital calls were from dear "Rachel at card member services" whom, if destiny complies, I will have a cage match with some day.
This year I learned to say the five hardest letters in the English language: It's OK.
It's ok if I take a deep breath and enjoy my bath as the phone rings.
It's ok if I don't even bring the phone in the bathroom.
I will in fact have time to check the caller ID when I am finished.
Why does it feel like I have spent half of my life giving myself permission to live?
It's ok if people don't understand why I do what I do.
As long as I understand- It's ok.
We are social beings we are meant to relate to other people and to do that we have to care or take note of what they are expressing. I get it.
Some of us are so invested in this that we eventually have to join "I cannot say 'it's ok' anonymous".
You know all of us gathered in our little community center drinking inferior coffee saying "My Name is Kellie and this is my fourth week of saying 'It's okay'. Yesterday I had thoughts of hustling and bustling over something that was in reality 'ok'."
God has helped me with this by sending people along side me who were determined to have an "It's okay" intervention with me. Confronting me that desperately needing to meet some crazy standard whether internal or external is like seeking a high that is never gonna come.
I mean at least drug addicts get high. Refusing to accept what is yours to handle and what is not, never pans out. There is no pay off.
As I approach 40 I get the message loud and clear- life is too short.
I was talking to a teenager last week who said she was afraid to grow old.
I am afraid of what my life would look like if I never had.
I am pretty sure the teenaged me would have made the worst immortal in the history of ever. ;)
It must be an "almost 40 thing." Just this past year, I stopped throwing off the arms and legs of children when we're reading a book & the phone rings. Before, it was chaos, trying to get up from the sinkhole wherein three children were somehow always intertwined with me on the sofa, totally interrupting their book to find the phone. I hated myself, too, making them think my time with them was not important. So, I stopped. It's ok to just let that phone ring. Almost anything can wait five more minutes. :-)
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