You Don’t See That on the Big Road

I admit it – I’m a planner. And I like things to go as planned. Sometimes I count too much on things going as I think they should. I have gotten better at letting go recently, though. If there’s one thing living with psoriatic arthritis has taught me it is that life is not predictable and nothing goes as planned. 

Not the Big Road

Then there’s my husband. He doesn't plan anything. It’s a challenge to get him to plan dinner when it’s his turn to cook. When things don’t go as planned, he just goes with the flow. I have no idea how he can possibly operate like this, but he does. I continue to try to improve my patience with him when he's lad back about things when I'm stressing. 

It didn’t strike me as odd, then, that when we passed the exit we needed to take to get to camp and were essentially lost (ok, we had a GPS, but who really trusts those things anyway?), that he didn’t consider it a problem. He simply got off at the next exit and trusted the GPS, which took us on a road that didn’t look at all promising to me.
  

"Well, this is an interesting road!" said my husband - the
 road looked as if it just dropped off into nothingness!

I took a deep breath and relaxed. I trusted my husband to get us where we were going. I took a deeper breath as I glanced at the gas gauge, and trusted there would be a gas station somewhere on this road through the wilds of New Hampshire. 

Pretty!

We saw some awesome sights on our detour: a really cool log cabin, wildlife, not-so-wildlife, beautiful trees framing a reflection pool-like pond. Each time, the love of my life commented,

“You don’t see that 

on the big road!” 

At first, as I was still working myself into a laid-back attitude, I found this slightly amusing, but mostly a commentary on my need to stress less and enjoy the scenery more. As we got farther off the beaten path, the words brought a genuine smile to my face and to my heart. 

We found a gas station. We made it to camp. But that's not the important part. The unexpected journey - the things we wouldn't have experienced on the Big Road - will remain in our memories and hearts forever. The lesson in the blessings of missing an exit, or making a wrong turn in life, will remain with me always. And maybe next time my heart will leap in excitement rather than worry over the change of plans.