THANKFUL FRIDAY

Morning

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Last week, I left work early to drive down to visit my Mom for the weekend. Since I was leaving early, I decided to take the old back way to her house and avoid paying a toll. It adds a little bit of extra time to my drive but does seem to be more scenic. I made it to Pleasanton Kansas where I was hit with a torrential down pour. It was raining so hard that I could not see the road ahead of me and I had to slow down to crawl. I was driving in the kind of weather that made me start to worry about flash flooding and tornados, but I just kept on going. I finally made it through the worst of it, but it continued to rain as I drove across Kansas.

There’s a section of this trip where I turn off the main highway and take a back country two-lane highway for several miles. I worried as I made the exit if I was making the right choice. I know that this part of the state is still recovering from flooding and I started to worry that I would end up hitting a section of road that was underwater and I’d have to turn around. I did see fields flooded with water, but the road remained clear. As I passed through Oologah the rain had completely cleared but I realized that I would be crossing through Tulsa right at rush hour. So then I started to wonder if I should exit the highway and drive through Collinsville to hook up with a different highway that would take me more around Tulsa rather than through Tulsa. I passed the Collinsville exit, stayed the course and had zero problems or slow downs as I crossed through Tulsa to Mom’s house.

How often do we all worry about the road ahead?

I never set out to worry about these things. It is not my intention worry, but it is still something I do. Most of the time the worry is not a crippling kind of worry that will render unable to make any decision or leave the bed. I still worry and I don’t think I am alone. It is part of our sympathetic nervous system. At one point the worry was pretty basic: food, water, shelter, avoiding predators. As all of those things became easier to come by (and in the case of predators, avoid) our sympathetic nervous system shifted it’s energy to other worries. It’s like the brain said we have to have something to worry over. Which is true. Worrying helps us solve problems and piece together puzzles. If the road ahead is flooded, then what do I do to get myself off that road and onto a safer one? There is, of course, a balance between stress and problem solving. You see, life has taught me that the road ahead is unpredictable. It can be a smooth ride or it can be treacherous.

Because of those lessons, I also know that I have the problem solving skills for whatever the road ahead brings me.