Perhaps one of my favorite quotes is: “Life is 10% what happens to me and 90% how I react to it.” — Charles R. Swindoll
I think of it often. There are many things out of our control that happen to us, but we have total control of how we REACT. We have the choice to enjoy ourselves, make the best of the situation, or make ourselves miserable.
Last weekend didn’t go at all how I planned. Actually, there were several things that happened last week that seemed to be putting me behind the schedule I planned for myself. Although, I was trying to roll with it, I found I was stressing myself out.
Friday night, Robert had a show in Eminence and he needed me to go so we could take turns driving the 2 1/2 hour trip back to Springfield in the middle of the night. The show went great and at 2:00 a.m. Saturday morning we were on our way.
I was the first up to drive, and we weren’t very far from Eminence when something went wrong. I had no power to get up the hill. An awful shrill sound made my heart sink. I was able to pull over and Robert put transmission fluid in. He started driving, but we didn’t make it much further when the transmission simply failed on us.
To hear him say, “We aren’t gonna make it” was just a sad thing to hear at 2:20 a.m. with little civilization around us. He was determined to get to Hwy 60 and park at the filling station. We knew it was well lit, flat, and once they opened, we could freshen up a bit. He coasted through Wynona and we just needed to get up the hill to get to the filling station.
I admit I was nervous, but at the same time, I was confident that Robert would get us there. After some difficulty, we made it! He pulled out the flashlight to look under the van. In his words, “transmission fluid was puking out.” We were stuck for the evening.
With this realization, we had a choice. We could react in a manner of distress, annoyance, bicker at each other, or just be plain mad. After all, the schedule we had planned for Saturday was completely shot now.
Our choice was not to be mad at all. In fact, we weren’t even stressed. I think something was telling us that we needed to slow down. So, we ended up sleeping in the van while we waited to be towed back to Springfield. Instead of being miserable, we felt lucky because:
- We made it up the hill to flat ground were it would be easy to put the van on the trailer
- We were parked by a gas station and Subway, so food and bathroom were close
- It didn’t rain on us while we worked on getting the van on the trailer
- We made it home safely
Sure it put me behind on what I wanted to do and we had to rearrange some things, but why be miserable? It wasn’t the situation, but my attitude that would have made me miserable. Things happen and like Charles R. Swindoll says, “Life is 10% what happens to me and 90% how I react to it.”
