One victory for me!

I have a confession. Actually 2 confessions.

The first one is this: I HATE driving. Hate hate hate. 

I have an especially hard time driving our manual Jeep Liberty. After 2 1/2 years of "learning" to drive it, I'm just barely starting to feel kind of comfortable with it.

his name is Jupiter

When Will is gone, like he has been for most of the past couple of months, I am left with this car. And so far I haven't driven it while he's been gone, except to drive down to see my parents. Where I use their car if I need it. I stay inside all day or beg rides off of other, very understanding, people. I decide that anything that involves the car doesn't really need to be done. So I just wait for Will to come home. This includes going to the grocery store.

My other confession is worse: I'm a quitter.

When the going gets tough, Mary runs away. Unless it involves something REALLY important to me, like my family, I'll just decide that it's not important enough. I quit games, I quit teams, I quit projects... I'll quit just about anything. I even tried to quit when I was in labor. (Yeah, changed my mind, let's be done now...) I'm much better than I used to be, thanks to Will, but it's still something I battle with. Here is a perfect example:

When we were living in South Africa (I think I was about 15) we visited one of the many exciting tourist destinations: Cape Town. Just outside of Cape Town is Table Mountain. It's a rather high mountain with a flat top, called the "table". Sometimes the clouds cover it just right so it has a "tablecloth". Very charming. Our family outing that day was to climb said mountain. 

Now, I'm all for hiking. But I have a teensy-weensy problem with heights. When encountering them I have been known to freak out, cry, throw up and even faint. I do recall that there was a cable system that would let us ride up and down, but of course that was not an option. The way up wasn't so bad. Every once in a while it got steep and rocky, but we were facing the mountain, so I didn't really have a problem. We finally got to the top. It wasn't very exciting.

When it was time to go down, we didn't pick the same path we'd taken up.

While the hike up had been easy, the hike down consisted of what I considered a rather steep path of broken stairs and a view that looked out over Cape Town and the ocean. I don't even remember there being any trees to block the view. While I slowly scooted down the steps (on my butt) my little brother and sister were scampering around like mountain goats. I didn't make it very far before I sat down and started to cry. I tried to quit. Finally my dad looked and me and said something that I don't think I'll ever forget. He said:

 

You can either sit here on this mountain forever and cry, or you can come down.

Now, every time I think about something that I don't want to do, I find myself thinking the same thing. You can either sit here and cry, or you can go do it. (Sometimes I still sit and cry).

When things just need to be done, I can do them. I made it down the mountain (although I'm pretty sure it took a lot longer than it should have), I had my beautiful baby and I've made quite a few breakthroughs. 

So now I'm going to take it one step further. Today, Ellie and I are going to the grocery store. Alone. And I have to pick up my new glasses. They are both fairly close by and I've been to both several times. But I'm going to be brave and go instead of deciding that I can go another week without milk or glasses. 

It will be a victory. One small drive for most normal people, one giant leap for a yellow-bellied quitter named Mary.