Have you ever been stuck in the middle of something, and been comtemplating…do I go back to where I was, or simply go through it?
I found myself in the middle of inches of yellow road paint…ugh! 2 years later, the evidence is still on my tires.
You’re listening to the Love Tidbits Podcast, where you’ll discover a small, tasty, delightful, bite-sided, tidbit of love. I’m your host, LeAnn Austin
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Welcome to Love Tidbits, episode #57: Go Through It
I had a friend recently ask, “why are your wheel wells on your car bright yellow?” He kind of snickered and said, I think “I may know what had happened.” Oh, the memories of quite an adventure that made me chuckle.
So almost two years ago, I was driving out to the airport to pick up my son and almost daughter-in-law for their wedding. I was hurrying really quickly to get there, and one lane of traffic was pretty backed up, so I went to the lane next to it and turned on to get onto the freeway.
Well, lone behold, right there was a huge pile of paint. There apparently had been a truck, and all the yellow paint that they paint road lines with was all over. Buckets, spilled all over the ground, like a huge, probably a couple inches thick, of just all of this paint. And they were trying to shut the road down, but hadn’t quite gotten it shut down.
And there I was, there was a jeep in front of me, and then me right in the middle of the paint, before I even could stop. So I was like, oh dear, this is not good. I can’t really back up. I mean, all I can do is go forward. I need to get to the airport. So that’s what I did. I just kept on going.
Have you ever been in the middle of something and then contemplating, wait, do I go back? Do I go forward? Do I go through it? What do I do? I’ve heard of this referred to as the River of Misery by Brooke Castillo and also the Messy Middle by Brené Brown. For me, in that moment of bright yellow paint, I knew going backwards wouldn’t take the paint off, and I needed to get to the airport. So I may as well go through it and I’d figure out the paint mess later.
Well, as you can see, it’s been almost two years and I haven’t really done anything about the paint. And a great thing because of having yellow wheel wells is, it’s really easy to find my car. I can look around and I can spot it from quite a ways away. So there are perks to yellow wheel wheels. It makes me laugh and smile, and when I see the yellow paint as I’m getting on the freeway every time, it’s still there. I definitely just chuckle and realize that, you know, sometimes we’re in the messy middle. It probably happens quite a bit, at least for me it does. I’m in that messy middle a lot and, what can I learn from this?
It’s really helpful for me to think where do I ultimately want to be? Where do I wanna be long-term, even though in this messy middle, it feels terrible, what do I want on the flip end of this? Life can be really hard, and accepting that, and even finding a little humor in it, makes things easier, and actually brings some relief.
One other example, last week I was out running. It had been raining and I was dodging a lot of puddles. It was dark and my headlamp wasn’t working very well, and all of a sudden I noticed that my feet were getting very cold and wet. My headlamp had missed the puddle, until I was there right in the middle of it. I could have turned around and gone back, but why? My feet were already wet. I wanted to move forward and get to the other side of the puddle, not go backwards and have to figure out how then to get around it. So I finished my run with wet feet.
And just a little side note, lifesaving tip for anyone who has wet shoes. When you have wet shoes, take newspaper and bunch it up and shove it in your wet shoes. It dries them out faster than anything ever. This is a tip/trick that I learned years ago and I love it. So if you need to dry out your shoes, shove newspaper in them, and that helps them dry.
I love this quote from Tyrese Gibson: “You will always grow through what you go through.” Hmmm, something to think about.
Have a good one y’all, and here’s to going through it and love. If you’re enjoying this podcast, please share and leave a review to help others hear tidbits of love.
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