Evanston

This past weekend I was privileged to get some much needed S & S. Sewing and Scrapbooking. One of my awesome girlfriends has a condo near Park City. She invited a few of us up to eat, laugh and craft. I opted to sew. I finished a knitting project, a quilt and worked on a needlepoint. Hmmm. I sound like I'm eighty. Oh well, it was great fun. The best part of the trip happened before we had all even arrived. One of my girlfriends picked me up in my cute little town and we were going to drive the back way to Park City. I have taken this route many times with my family. As we drove we caught up on life. And then, all of a sudden, we passed a sign that said, "Evanston 4 miles." Any of you that have driven this route know that this is bad news. Our conversation went something like this:

"Oh my gosh!!! I think we missed our turn! We're almost to Evanston!"

"Don't we go through Wyoming to get to Park City?"

"I don't think so!"

Quick call to husbands ensue. Quick call to girlfriends who are already in Park City wondering where we are. MUCH laughter. The kind that makes your eyes leak and tummy hurt. It felt so good. We turned around and headed back to Park City. Yeah, we were late, but it was sooo much fun. We had a great weekend and shared lots of laughs.

Here's the analogy. So, here we are going along in life. Our life takes an unexpected path. It may be a poor decision that we make or something that happens to us that we have no control over. We ended up in Evanston. We "let our guards down" and were side tracked talking. So, what to do, what to do.

Option 1) keep driving, keep heading in the wrong direction. I mean after all, you're in the car, headed down that path. Why not just keep going? Throw in the towel.

Option 2) Stay in Evanston. We had our luggage and craft stuff with us. We could've just stayed the night there. We had each other to hang out with. It wouldn't have been so bad. We knew our other friends were in Park City, waiting for us. But they didn't need us to have fun. Right? What's the point. This would be the don't-do-anything-about-it-option.

Option 3) Option 3 has two sub-options.

Option 3a) Turn around, drive back to Park City. We wasted gas, and precious time.

How often does a mom get away, after all? And then gripe and complain and dwell on it so much

that we don't enjoy our time in Park City.

Option 3b) Turn around, drive back to Park City and even though we wasted time and gas,

we LAUGHED THE WHOLE WAY!! It wasn't the plan, but we made the best of it. And guess what. It turned out just fine.

In real life, I know that I've done all these things. We probably all have in one way or another. What matters is if we learned from our experience or not. What matters is what we do next time we find ourselves in Evanston.

Option 1 suggests that we just stay down when we fall. It's hard to get back up. We're already headed in that direction. It's easy, very easy, to just keep going, to take the path of no return and fall into self-destruction. Option 2 would have us not do anything about our situation. So we made a bad choice, so we had some bad luck. Don't do anything about it. Why bother? What's done is done. There is no return. You can't get back the wasted time or gas. Just stay where you're at. B-O-R-ing. Non-productive. Can be just as self-destructive as option 1, but in a less obvious way.

With Option 3a we think we have put on our big girl panties and carried on. Sneaky, sneaky. What is the point of returning if we don't allow ourselves to fully enjoy the rest of the trip?! What's the point of repenting, forgiving, moving on, pushing through, not giving up, if we don't allow our hearts to heal? It's like we are just going through the motions. Whoooppeee if you find the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow if you aren't going to spend it. Hello?!

Option 4 is the "high road." This is obviously what we should do. But it isn't always as easy or fun as a drive back from Evanston. Sometimes it's a lot worse. And a lot less entertaining. But at the end of the day, as we lay our tired bodies down to sleep with our dear friends in Park City, we'll know it's worth it.