Ohhh my. Passivity is one of my weaknesses, my bad habits. It is amazing that I can get out of bed and get myself dressed in the morning. If Jason ever dies, heaven help me. I am totally that lady that doesn't know how to change the batteries in my kids toys because I can let my husband to it and so I leave it up to him. There are many examples of this and it is unfortunate that I am writing after 10 at night because I can't think of any at the moment.
The irony is that Jason is also passive. Which is why we don't go on vacations with just the 4 of us. We only show up to big family vacations when we are told to and everything is already planned for us. We don't do things on the weekends and we hardly ever go on dates. We're always waiting for the other one to do the planning. Thankfully, with the exception of planning fun activities for our family to participate in, we are passive mostly in different ways. That is the only reason my kids ever have toys that work that require batteries. Or chargers. Or, now that we are here, transformers to cut the electricity in half so we don't blow up our appliances.
The move over here has made me extra passive. I've retreated into a protective little shell called my house. Actually it isn't really my house, it is just where we live for a year, but we will call it "my house" for the sake of the story. Honestly it does not provide quite enough shelter from the outside world, to which I am specifically speaking of the 18 construction workers that are in front of "my house" everyday peeing all over the place. I somehow manage to deal with it. It's a miracle.
I think it is safe to say that I hate (my kids just got hot sauce in their mouths for using that word) driving here. I hate "my car" which is like driving a cross between a monster truck and the Titanic around town. In my head I call "my car" a monstrosity, but I will save that for another post. My second week here driving on my own, I hit a trike (a motorcycle with a cab) and it was enough to keep me from driving for quite awhile. About 6 months. I can hardly handle putting a dent in our own car, but I certainly can't handle ruining someone else's car. For awhile I even made Jason drive me to the grocery store every week. I'm sure that made me even more dear to his heart. He must love having to babysit his own wife.
As a result of my passivity, the kids and I mostly sit at home all day. We do school, the kids fight with each other, the kids fight with me, we watch movies, and when we are really desperate we read books.
When we decided to come here we thought that it would be a great experience for our family. A great experience though, I have recently concluded, requires leaving the house.
So I patiently waited for Jason to come up with an amazing way for us to do something to serve those around us here. To get our family out of the house and experience life here. I'm stupid passive like that.
I have graciously allowed him 6 months to come up with a fantastic idea on his own of something for us to do together as a family (so that I would be off the hook for driving) that would be meaningful for the kids and not require knowledge of the local language. Easy peasy! I would allow him to make the arrangements on his own and then to drive us to wherever it is that we would go that would help make this year a great experience for our family. I figured he was the head of the house so it was his call. I even mentioned the orphanage in town a couple of times just to help him along a bit. I'm super helpful like that. Helpful passive.
The man is busy though. He doesn't sit in the house all day twisting his hair and wishing that there was a Target around the corner that he could go and walk around in for a few hours a week. And I mean every week. Alone. With a bag of popcorn.
Today I decided that maybe, just maybe, it was time to kick my passivity in the butt and write the darn orphanage and see if there was any way we could help out. I mean I've only been thinking about it for the last 10 months or so. And if I have to drive us there myself, then I guess I will drive us there myself. Time to put my big girl pants on and live my life.
I just pushed 'send' on the e-mail this afternoon. We will see where it will take us. Hopefully out of the house and towards a bigger, more compassionate world view for us all.
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