My husband is a pretty calm individual. His emotional state is fairly constant and steady, regardless of what is happening. I grew up with parents that were a little more emotionally reactive. If the car broke, it seemed like a stressful, big deal. If kids were doing things they shouldn’t, it seemed like there were some tense, emotionally changed conversations. Things like that. Before anyone gets the wrong idea, my parents were extremely loving and good. They are the kind of parents that other people dream of. My dad worked hard and supported us in all of the many activities we wanted to do, financially and with his physical presence at every single performance. Let me say that there were a lot of dance recitals and musical concerts with three girls, which I’m sure he didn’t enjoy as much as the sports events. But he was always there. My mom is incredible. If everyone could be loved like her kids are by her, the happiness in the world would implode. She lives to make other people happy and more comfortable. She is one of the most selfless people I’ve ever met. I’m not trying to say that I grew up in an unloving home-that couldn’t be further from the truth. I’m only saying that when difficulties came up, it seemed stressful. Half of that might just be because I’m a sensitive person, especially when it comes to words and tone of voice. My siblings might completely disagree with my perspective.
When I got married, I still remember being surprised when my husband didn’t react to things the same way my parents did. When the car broke, he just calmly made arrangements to take it to the shop. When I backed his car into the basketball hoop in the early morning, dark hours…he just gave me a hug and said it was okay. Just today our teenage son realized that he couldn’t find either of his keys to his car. He had misplaced his regular key several weeks ago and had already been using the spare. That was the one he just realized was lost after our trip. My husband just told him to look for it, see if he could find it. He calmly said it would be expensive to replace if he couldn’t find it. That wasn’t even the whole story though. Before finding out that our son couldn’t find a key to his car, he had already discovered that both of our cars weren’t starting. His truck battery died because something had been left charging, and our van was having problems when we drove home from our trip and needed a new battery.
All of this happened this morning, and he never freaked out. He just calmly went about fixing things. His friend came and jumped his truck. He had our son go buy a new battery for the van and install it. That made me want to help our son look for his key, which was a good thing because everyone in this house knows I’m the best at finding things. Needless to say, I found the key.
All of these unexpected, potentially troublesome things were happening this morning….but my husband didn’t freak out; he just figured it out. That’s what we have to do with anything challenging that comes our way. The only way past it is to figure it out. That part isn’t optional. But freaking out? That part is completely optional and doesn’t serve us in the slightest. So go ahead and figure things out, but remember that freaking out about it is completely optional.
Work In Progress 