What A Difference A Couple of Days and A Couple of Friends Makes

 If you noticed (and if you read my blog at all, noticed), I wasn't having the best of times a couple of days ago.  Indeed, a couple of days ago I found myself wildly ranting to my co-worker about how I did not have a back-up plan for not being accepted to schools and how it was absolutely not acceptable that I had not planned for all eventualities that could occur in this phase of my life.  It was a rant, when boiled down to its heart, about the lack of control that I had over my life and how I needed to know what to do.  (In fact, it involved me practically bellowing, at least three discrete times, "I don't know what to do, but I need to know what to do."

Most people who know me, in any context, know I'm not the sort of person who feels lost.  I'm the sort of person who usually has a plan--any kind of plan--that she feels secure about.  And a couple of contingency plans in case the original one goes wrong.  (And as secure as I may be about some of my plans, they do periodically have a tendency to go wrong.)  I'm a fan of a certain amount of self-structure.  

But there are some things even the greatest architects build and there are some lives that refuse to be structured because people are building them the wrong way.  And what I've been freaking out about is the equivalent of builders worrying about a complete house before the foundation has even finished drying.  I recognized that when I read Katya's comment.  Lately, I've been allowing myself to fall prey to one of my most prominent flaws: a distinct lack of impatience and a stubborn adherence to the plan I want to happen.  Thank you for putting that into perspective.

My parents reassured me about things yesterday, but I have to admit that when it comes to matters like these, they sometimes don't count as much as they should.  Because they're my parents and they have to reassure me, right?  But there are a number of other people who have reassured me I'll be fine that had no stake in the matter.

And the best helps have been those friends who have chatted with me, letting me know they think I'm brilliant.  And not allowing me to make any of my usual cracks about my intelligence levels, because they know such self-deprecation won't help me right now.  My future is still uncertain, but I realize now I don't have to face that uncertainty completely alone.  I have a support system.  A darn good one.

Because sometimes I feel such a need to be a solitary creature, I forget that Heavenly Father sent us to this earth to associate with other people.  So they could lift us and we could lift them, each in our own turn.  I've discovered this weekend that I'd much rather be doing than lifting than be the lifted, but I also think I've been learning an eternal lesson here: we can't always be on the giving end.

We also need to learn to be graciously grateful in the receiving.