Protection Looks Like Inconvenience Sometimes

Let me set the scene.

I'm playing on a Saturday, which in my case means painting kitchen cabinets and baseboards to elevate the space, then running fun errands.

I hit the grocery store, then Target, then Trader Joe's for some flowers and frozen pineapple. All of these stores are on the other side of town, and the most efficient way to get back is the parkway. When I left the Trader Joe's parking lot, I had fully intended to go straight and hop on it. But I forgot and turned right.

I probably drove for two minutes when I came to a red light where a ton of things merge at that end of town. I was in the center lane about six cars back from the intersection. When the light went green, I hit the gas and nothing happened. I looked down and every light in the car was black.

I tried to start the car. Nothing. Hazard lights. Nothing.

I was a sitting duck, and people were pissed.

I waved them past me, and new cars would come up behind me with no way of knowing I was in distress. Long story shorter, I called a tow company (was scammed by the first one, but wouldn't know it until after another company had already towed my car), and my mother-in-law called the cops to come help me, then drove across town with chilled water to sit with me in the car in the middle of the road.

I got to drive my car, with the hood up while a battery charged mine enough to get it in motion, onto the giant flatbed tow truck.

Then I gathered my box of groceries, my Target bag with three kinds of flowers sticking out of the top, and carefully made my way down the ramp while people stared at the spectacle.

And I laughed.

I was blocking heavy traffic for almost 90 minutes. Here's what I walked away knowing:

I was a witness while it was all happening. I was the same Heidi, emotionally and energetically, that I am sitting comfortably in my office. There was no way for me to indicate that my car was busted to the people behind me. Some were angry and impatient and yelled at me as they drove past. Others were compassionate, curious, and beautifully willing to help, going out of their way to try to get me to safety even though we couldn't. I'm a fierce advocate for myself (the towing company that fleeced me did not get to keep that money).

The biggest takeaway was that I went through that entire experience in full ownership of my emotions, energy, and thoughts.

The situation did not own me. I owned my experience of it.

This is freedom.

This is another way of living entirely.

And it is radically different from how I would have handled that situation before I healed the way I've healed. I would have claimed victimhood and milked that for everything I could get out of it. There might have been tears, embarrassment, scarcity, anger.

But I get to choose, in every moment, how I'm navigating this gorgeous human experience with all of its ups and downs.

Things are what they are. It's how we engage with what's happening and the meaning we make out of it that determines how we go through it.

We need these moments of measure to show us where we're still hung up on something that keeps us from living in freedom, and how much freedom we've tapped into when we see how differently we're responding this time.

A few days after this whole adventure, I learned that the alternator on my car had died. When that happens, the car functions until the battery is completely drained, at which point it just dies. It also happens without any indicators leading up to it.

If I hadn't forgotten to go straight to get on the parkway, I would have been driving 50 mph when the car died.

Protection looks like inconvenience sometimes.