Who cares? Well, apparently, me.

Sam is an engineering project manager.  His job is to oversee the execution of a project from start to finish and ensure that it is completed in a timely, effective manner.  In my opinion, a large part of what makes a person a successful project manager is not only their ability to troubleshoot problems as they arise, but to anticipate what might go wrong in advance and have a solution at the ready in case it does.  Sam is great at what he does. 

If you juxtapose Sam's ability to solve problems against my ability to anticipate the worst case scenario in every facet of life, you might say we're a perfect pair.  

Sam booked the tickets for our imminent European adventure on May 13th.  It is now August 14th which means I have had exactly three months to worry about every possible thing that could go wrong.  What this also means is that Sam has spent every spare moment in the past three months anticipating problems and creating preemptive solutions for all things European/travel related.  The other night, I stayed up late fretting and listing my concerns in my head and rather than physically writing them on a piece of paper so I wouldn't have to carry them around in my brain (an exercise I affectionately refer to as a "data dump"), I remembered to pray about them (if I'm honest, my inclination is to worry first, pray later).  When I woke up, 2 Timothy 1:7 came to mind:

For God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of power, of love, and of sound mind.

 As a special added bonus, God has also given me Sam.

I told him that morning that I was going to voice my fears to him about the trip with the hope that we'd talk through how silly they were or how we'd deal with them if they arose.  I hoped we'd do more of the latter than the former.  Knowing many of my concerns were rooted in how other people would be affected, I wholeheartedly expected Sam to meet them with "Who cares?"  If there's another thing Sam is really good at, it's not worrying what other people think.  For me, it's as much a part of my routine as making sure I shower daily.  Later that day, we took a walk and thus began the therapy session conversation.  I suspect Sam felt like he was an unwitting participant in this game:

Nevertheless, he humored me.

What if Zachary cries for the entire 8 hour flight?  He won't.  We can walk him up and down the aisles.  We can make him room to walk around in our row.  He'll probably sleep some.  Airplanes are loud.  He likes white noise.  
What if our kids are terrible in a foreign restaurant?  What if we don't know what or how to order?  We just won't go to restaurants.  We'll cook our own food or buy street food.
What if someone gets hurt?  What if I get a kidney stone?  What if someone breaks a limb?  We aren't going to a third world country.  We'll just go to a hospital and get taken care of.  Our health insurance covers us.
What if our phones don't work?  We'll go to the store at the train station and buy prepaid ones.
What if we get separated on the train?  Like, you and half our kids are on the train and I'm left in a foreign city with half our family and I don't know how to speak the language and I don't know how to get in touch with you and I just sit down and cry because I don't know how to find you?  That won't happen.  But if it does, all train stations have wi-fi.  You can get in touch with me no matter what.  You can get a new ticket for the next available train or rent a car and drive to us.  
What if someone steals our passports?  I made copies.  We take them to the US Embassy and they'll make us new ones on the spot.
What if one of our Airbnb reservations is canceled upon arrival and we don't have a place to stay?  If there's a train station, there are hotels.  We will find a place to stay.  I also have Marriott points to redeem, if we can find one of those.
What if I have a headache the whole time because coffee isn't as readily available there?  Literally every place we're staying has a coffeemaker.  PHEW!

There were more, both that he answered and that I forgot to ask.  I think you get the point.  Some people have contributed to my list of fears without realizing it by posing their own concerns and voicing warnings to me, to which I can now say, "Bring it! I have Sam and he has the answer."

To his credit, he did not say "Who cares?" one single time.

My biggest unvoiced concern is "What if people are rude to us?"  The answer to that truly is "Who cares?"  But also, "How would I know?"  I can understand a very tiny bit of German, can speak even less.  And other than that, I know virtually no French and absolutely no Dutch, Swedish, or Danish.  They can say whatever they'd like to or about us and I can remain in blissful ignorance.

Maybe we're a little crazy to take a trip like this, but with each passing year, it becomes increasingly more important to me that "someday" doesn't turn into "never" or "we missed our chance."  We want to see the world, to take our kids out of their bubbles, get me out of my comfort zone, try new things.  What are we waiting for?  Nothing.

If you would, please pray for our safety and sanity as we trek to Europe.  Please pray that the only reason we would stand out is as a light, whether here or there.  Also, pray that I don't gain back an unwanted 20 pounds in chocolate, bread, and frites.

A literal foreign land full of history, culture, food, and people awaits.

Telling myself I'm awkward. And stopping that.

I have had a lot of awkward conversations in my lifetime.  You might say I'm particularly gifted at them.  When I walk away from one of these encounters, I typically assume the fault was on me, like 100% of the time.  Under very few circumstances do I leave and think, "Man, that other person was super weird and hard to talk to."  On the contrary, I carry on with life, rehashing the strange, possibly offensive, confusing words of chit-chat I attempted to contribute, telling myself that someday I won't be so goofy and uncomfortable.  If there's one thing I can do well, it's own my awkwardness.  I do give myself a little credit for trying.  If you knew me 20 years ago, you'd probably think I've come a long way.  Credit where credit is due.

What I didn't realize is that other people do this too.

A few days ago a sweet friend came up to me and said, "I'm sorry I was so awkward when we talked last night.  I thought about it all night."

I was taken aback.  I didn't think the exchange was awkward at all.  In fact, I had thought nothing about it after I left.  I assured her nothing about it was odd in the slightest and confidently declared that if it was awkward, I accepted sole responsibility.  I wish she hadn't worried about it at all.  I hated that she spent even a moment thinking about it on my account.

And that's when I realized that this is exactly what I do.  How many times have I replayed what I presumed to be awkward for hours on end, fretting about what I could have said instead or maybe not at all, worried the other person was upset or thought less or differently of me because of it.

Only, that other person?  They didn't think about it.  At all.

You may have heard it said, "You probably wouldn’t worry about what people think of you if you could know how seldom they do!" — Olin Miller

I never really believed that until the aforementioned conversation.

Sometimes people don't believe I'm an introvert (hahahaha!).  Sometimes, people tell me they don't think I'm awkward (that's really kind of you, thanks).  I don't think that introversion is a bad thing that needs to be fixed, nor do I think we're all meant to be public orators or the life of the party.  Thank God he created us to be unique.  I am a big fan of the fake-it-till-you-make-it philosophy though.  Sometimes, you have to be cordial to strangers and engage in nominal conversations, clunky as it may be.  A few things are possible: it was not as awkward to them as it seemed to you, they thought it was awkward too but assumed they were responsible, or they literally thought nothing of it and carried on with life.  None of those are worth losing sleep over, right?

I have an idea.  Let's be as generous with ourselves as we are with other people.  This is a little corollary to the Golden Rule.  Of course, we should treat others the way we want to be treated, but sometimes I think we speak so unkindly to ourselves that we start to believe that we're....whatever we say we are.  Maybe you tell yourself you're awkward.  Maybe it's something else altogether.  Slow-witted, disorganized, too fat, lazy, un-athletic, boring, a terrible cook, fill-in-the-blank with your own personal brand of self-deprecation.  Then, stop saying it.  Seriously, stop it.

Speak kindly to yourself.  You are always listening.

This means I'm TOTALLY NOT GOING TO THINK ANY MORE ABOUT how I exhaled Twix cookie crumbs all over our precious church preschool director this morning because I giggled (naturally) mid-bite.  Surely she didn't think that was as awkward as I did.  Right?  RIGHT?  Right.  Definitely.