Change of plans this morning. Elizabeth had an opportunity that was too good to say no to, (look for her on WALKING DEAD! My girls babysitter is going to be famous!) and Tiffany is pinch hit babysitting for us (and girl had coffee and breakfast in a bag waiting for me when I dropped off the kids. Someone knows me well enough to know I will not get up earlier; I will instead run late and skip breakfast. She did me a favor…and then fed me breakfast. My friends are the coolest. The. Cool. Est.).

This is where we ran into the problem. Our GPS got stolen out of our car sometime this summer (mostly because I don’t lock it) and we haven’t replaced it. Those of you who have had the pleasure of riding in a car with me know I have no sense of direction. None. At all. I got lost last year on the way home from work. The same work I had been driving to and from every day five days a week for 3 or so months. I just get confused.

Tiffany lives up by my work, so it makes the most sense for me to drop off and pick up the girls. I got to the house with only one whoopsie-turn-around. Christian had looked up and explained the directions to me. But then, I had to get from the house to the school…which I had only done once with the help of the GPS. Oooof.

Through no small miracle I ended up going the right way on the right street. But right as that street went around the bend it all suddenly looked so very unfamiliar. So I turned around. Right in the middle of the street I pulled a u-y and went back the way I came. Doubting myself the whole way. So, just in case you got lost in all this lostness: I am now going the wrong way, which I think might be the right way.

I think this wrong way is the right way because:

• Having just traveled this way, it now all looked familiar, and familiar feels better even if it is wrong.
• By turning around, instead of continuing on I feel like I am doing something pro-active, even though it is detrimental.
• Direction wise, I have been wrong too many times so all the voices in my head start competing and I listen the loudest most obnoxious one, not the steadiest one.
• I cannot see what is just around the bend, I would rather go with what I can see than what I cannot.

After a few emergency calls to my husband and a call to my department head to let him know I would be there late albeit shortly, I found myself exactly where I had turned in the first place. I had taken a twenty-minute circle only to begin again. So I hung a left on Mansell and did it right this time. When I got to the bend in the road, I continued. Had I waited it out another thirty seconds I would have known exactly where I was.

The car is not the place I learned this behavior. I am all to familiar with this pattern just about everywhere in my life. Right when I get to unfamiliar territory I freak out. I worry. I turn around and stay in familiar places because it feels better. Even when I know that it isn’t the right way, even when I know it is only driving me in circles. I ignore the still small voice in favor of the loud obnoxious one saying DO SOMETHING! CHANGE GEARS! STOP! TURN AROUND! I am afraid of what is just around the bend, simply because I cannot see it. So instead, I go in circles.

I refuse to drive in circles anymore, in my writing, in my parenting, in my classroom, in my relationships. I don’t want to act out the familiar simply because it is familiar. I will not do, and say, or try to strive simply because I need to feel like I am doing something. I will push through the uncertainty that the still small voice is ensuring me is temporary, and emerge on the path that feels right once again.

Watch out friends. I am just clearing the bend, and something tells me I am about to pick up speed.

Tell me, where do you trust your insecurities, instead of what you know? Because now that I have made these declarations I am feeling pretty intimidated!