Things you can’t change

Posted on by Jane Carlile Baker, Author, Editor, Teaching Consultant

     I’m a fixer. I fix lasagne, toilets and relationships. I fix corn on the cob (with a really coool way not to have to shuck it), hoses and stuff other people should fix. So on the scale of 1 to 10, I’m about a 9 fixer because I’ve been trying to obtain some balance. Otherwise I’d still be a 10. Soooo, when someone has a beef with me, I generally reset to fixer mode, about an 11. Crud.
     Then I have to have conversations with myself, God, Bake and my best friend. I take up a lot of everyone’s time. If only I weren’t a fixer. Yeah, right. It goes like this. “Oh, I don’t understand this person’s inability to see my point of view or even care about my feelings.” I go find Bake and repeat my lament.
     He says, in his best psychologist’s lingo, “You could try … or … ” And  I tell him all the things I already said.
      “Sounds like you’re going to have to let the situation stew.”
     Let the situation stew. Fixers do not allow situations to stew very well. So I’m mulling this over in my mind every time any little thing reminds me of it for a couple of days. I pray, “God, I’m so tired of this same old thing. I’m so tired of thinking about it. Couldn’t you just remove it?”
     I bet He elbows Jesus, and says, “Yeah, just like I did for Paul.”
     It’s coming up in my mind everytime I’m not busy thinking about something else. I think I’m losing it. So, just in case, I pray, “If there are demons hanging about causing this, would you send angels to run them off?” Things get a smidge better.
     Then I go visit my wise friend, and whine. She has stuff like this too, but she’s further down the fixer road than me. She’s probably a 7. So she says, “I had to make up my mind, I will do what I believe is right. What they think is what they think. It is not mine to worry over.”
     I drive home reciting the mantra, “What they think is what they think. It is not mine to worry over.”
    Does that sound anything like, “But though we had already suffered and been shamefully treated at Philippi, as you know, we had boldness in our God to declare to you the gospel of God in the midst of much conflict. For our appeal does not spring from error or impurity or any attempt to deceive, but just as we have been approved by God to be entrusted with the gospel, so we speak, not to please man, but to please God who tests our hearts.” I Thes. 2:2-4

Published by Jane Carlile Baker, Author, Editor, Teaching Consultant

Jane has loved writing from the time she learned to hold a pencil. Her writing journey moved from that pencil to personal computers through the seventies, she edited for a hospital public relations department. The eighties found her owning a public relations business, publishing newspaper and magazine articles, and directing communications for a large church. In the nineties she published her first book and led critique groups and writers' workshops. In the twenty-first century she became a teaching consultant for the National Writing Project, published several more books, and began an editing business. Jane also loves raising chickens, dogs and alpacas, gardening, oil painting, swimming and hanging out with her family.

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