What principles define how I live? That’s the prompt from the hosting site today. It’s also my sister’s birthday. Today is also the day I had assigned to be the day I dug out from the hole dug by my vacation and got back to my routine. It’s Tuesday, so that also means it’s the day I begin to look forward to a new week for the Dallas Cowboys, a new opportunity to delude myself into believing this is “the year.” We have our faith community’s men’s group tonight, followed by the prayer group.

Yesterday was supposed to be the day for the reset from vacation, but a leaking sewer pipe changed those plans immediately. (The leak is fixed, but there’s a promise for a full replacement in the future.) This house stank, and probably still does a little, but I am thrilled at the words “a little.” It won’t for long.

And it’s kind of funny, I actually spent time and focus considering a variation of this exact site prompt.

There are some characteristics that you know about me. Maybe you know that I have highs & lows, mood swings, and (what I think is a relatively mild form of) clinical depression. I run hot and cold, use “always” and “never,” and am an overthinker (or what I lately like to call a ‘ruminator.’) So last week, on vacation with the Angel, I was overwhelmed and overflowing with gratitude that spilled all over everyone and everything. It was easy to see the blessings and gifts of my life, and I could have cried at any point in disbelief that a life could be this fantastic.

Then, Sunday night the smell was palpable and I knew it would require professional attention. I decided to ignore it until the morning, but I didn’t sleep (apparently, ignoring it meant choosing to lie awake thinking about sewage all night long.) Then, I made phone calls in the morning, had a great friend come to fix it in the afternoon, and did nothing else. I went to the gym answering calls preoccupied with sewage, shopped for groceries dreaming of sewage, then sat in the house soaking in the sewage. My hero fixed it in an hour, but my day was lost to the spiral of circumstance (mostly the imaginary future circumstance.)

One of my core values is consistency. Being the child of an alcoholic probably often leads here, when you live on eggshells, it becomes very very important to create a new reality. And yet, I still can be a prisoner of the moment. I don’t mind being prisoner to the beauty and wonder of life, but allowing a leak to steal an entire day of my life is not consistency. It’s choosing to live in chains, in a prison in my mind. I handled everything I could have handled, made all the right decisions in relation to the leak itself and it’s repair. And made every wrong decision by giving the keys to my mind to that leak and several hundred what-ifs.

Yesterday I was a little short with the Angel, and raised my voice at a man/friend/mentor. Why? Because life happened? Because the home I am lucky enough in which to live isn’t perfectly everlasting and might need maintenance?

Of course, it’s frustrating and will cost money I don’t really have, but far more than the money, the much more expensive cost is the time I choose to pay. Lots of principles define my life, but this one is front and center today. I’ll breathe and be better next time, the time in that prison gets shorter and shorter and maybe eventually I won’t even have to get in that cell at all.