The other day I had to call and reschedule a dental procedure for my son. The appointment was about a week and half out, but we had just learned that his basketball coach had arranged for them to have a tournament that next weekend. My kid wasn’t supposed to do any strenuous exercise for 48 hours after this procedure, so I figured that a full day of intense basketball games the day after probably wasn’t a very good idea (I’m an insightful mom, like that). Anyway, while I was on the phone explaining to the receptionist that I would like find another time this summer for my son to come in, I found myself apologizing over and over again.

“I’m so sorry we have to change this…I know you blocked out the time.”
“I apologize, we really want him to get this done but we didn’t know this tournament was coming.”
“I’m really sorry to do this, but he only has a few of these all summer and he doesn’t want to miss it!”
“I hate that you have to change everything for us!”
“I’m so sorry to mess up your scheduling…I promise I’m not always this flaky.”

By the time this conversation was over and we had successfully changed his appointment to the following week (because they had quite a few openings to choose from!) I felt guilty and irritable and just plain bad. Why? The receptionist was very nice and understanding…she was a mom of 5 and understood summer scheduling! She didn’t try to make me feel guilty; in fact she told me that I’d made a good decision. But STILL. Still I felt frustrated. Not at her, more at myself and my son and his coach. Again, why?

Well I’ve been reading this book called Rising Strong by Brene Brown (thanks to my friend Tracy and her neighborhood bible study!) so I decided to “unpack” those feelings. I am, by nature, a people pleaser. I like everyone I interact with to walk away feeling pleasantly content. I don’t like people having to do any extra work because of something I’ve done. My son is an extension of me, so if something in his life requires me to put any type of burden on anyone else, it’s the same as if I myself am asking the favor. My son’s basketball coach/team is an extension of him, so their requirements become my son’s requirements which become my needs which puts the onus on someone else to do something extra. Make sense?

In other words, the fact that I was inconveniencing (however slightly) someone else bothered me more than making sure my son’s needs were met.

Ouch. That is NOT so good when it’s spelled out like that.

Surely this is a horrid isolated incident, right?
Yeah, not so much.

I don’t know about y’all, but our trips through drive-thru windows often go something like this:
Me: Kids…make sure you know what you want!
Worker: Can I help you?
Kids: Um, can I have a blah-blah?
Me: We will take one blah-blah please!
Kids: Actually, can I have a blah with a blah instead?
Me: (glaring at whichever kid changed the order) Um, I am SO sorry but can we change that?
Worker: Sure, no problem! Here’s your total!
Kid: And can I please have a side of blah?
Me: No! Too late! You’re too slow and out of luck! Be ready next time!

Maybe your family isn’t like mine at all…but even if it’s a restaurant we’ve been to 3,291 times and it has a never-changing menu, they still want to peruse it forEVER and think about EVERYthing while the poor people behind us eventually succumb to starvation and the workers go legally insane from having to spend over 1.2 minutes working on our order.

See? When I present it like that it seems pretty silly. But….there’s something about being in that line speaking through my open window to a lighted menu that makes me feel AWFUL about making the person behind that speaker wait on me! It goes back to the “I-hate-to-inconvenience-anyone” issues I have. So tell me, why is a minor inconvenience (or maybe a fictional inconvenience that I have made up!) toward someone I have possibly never met and will potentially never see again more important than the people closest to me having a nice experience?

Exactly.

Sure, I don’t think we should go out of way to make anyone’s life harder, but I honestly don’t think that the people who make schedules are truly angry and put-out when someone calls in and politely requests a change. I don’t think it really ruins a fast-food worker’s day when someone changes their french fries to tater tots. It’s part of their job…something they do every day…and they’ve learned how to effectively and efficiently take care of these issues.

However, I DO think when I grouchily tell someone close to me that they can’t have the simple cheese-curds they really want because I’m more concerned about a stranger’s impression of how efficiently I run my life than I am about them….well, it probably can kinda ruin their day.

So….when I weigh it out on the giant invisible scales of life…why does keeping my ordering time at a drive-through to under 27 seconds become more important than giving my kids a pleasant experience picking what they want for lunch?

I’m thinking it’s time I learn to stomp down on my pride and my “I’ve got it all under perfect control and never need to change anything” facade and just say, “Hang on a minute please…we need to look at the menu.”
I need to be able to joyfully tell people that my kid gets the opportunity to do something he loves so we need to change a routine appointment without falling all over myself apologizing.
And I need to remember that at the end of the day….the opinions, feelings and conveniences of the people I love the most matter way more than those of strangers whom I’m trying to impress with my “togetherness.”

It’s ok if plans or orders or schedules change a little bit…that’s life. For the most part, these changes don’t alter the course of the known universe all that much. Maybe this post is aimed totally at myself as a reminder that it’s OK to change things up. It’s OK to ask someone to switch some little things…and it’s ok to slow down and make the people closest to me happy–because even if I perceive it as some kind of “burden”…other people usually don’t.

And lastly, it’s ok to order fries AND cheese curds.
Just sayin’.