My husband and I are wrapping up a cross-country trip on an empty bus… Aka deadheading to Nashville. Now this didn’t quite go as planned. We were supposed to be home on Wednesday, but life and the bus engine decided that, no, we needed to sit in California a few extra days. (We broke down and had to be towed back to the bus shop, and it took three days to fix everything. )

We are about half-way through our trip… I’m somewhere in Oklahoma as I write this. With nothing but time and miles on my hands, I’ve had a lot of time to reflect on this trip. So today’s Five on Friday is a few lessons I’ve learned over the last week…

1. A positive attitude really is the best attitude.  At one point my husband stopped, looked at me, and went, “You’ve been so agreeable to everything this week…” I shrugged and went, “And being bitchy would get us what? Me being upset would just upset you and we’d be miserable! It’s an adventure. Let’s roll with it and make the best of it.” And we did. And it was great!
2. Pack for the unexpected. My mom always taught me to pack for extra days “just in case” any time we took a trip. I’ve been teased many times for over packing, but I didn’t care. Always be prepared. Mom said so, and Moms are wise. So I packed for 6 days instead of the projected 4. As such, I’m only one day short of all fresh clothes. Not bad! AND I always expect to not have food access, so I almost always have granola bars on me. A good thing when we got stuck on the side of the interstate for 11 hours. Score one for me!
3. Live in the moment. I struggle with this one at times. Okay most of the time. I’m a planner. I am good at changing directions on a dime and thinking on my feet. But I am always looking ahead and planning. If there is one huge thing this adventure has done to me is it has forced me to live in the moment, find the peace and joy within it, and give the rest to God. It is what it is and trust it’ll all come together in its own time.
4. I don’t deal well with not knowing. This somewhat contradicts the last point.  The only — THE ONLY —  time I had any negative feelings on this whole trip was in those hours sitting on the side of the road. Thank God we had cell service because we were in the middle of NOWHERE. Stuck at 2 am. About 4 hours from the nearest tow service. Oh and in the desert. We started feeling very forgotten and helpless for awhile.  But as soon as the phone rang and we were told help was on the way, I felt my stress level drop by 90%. So maybe I found it easier to live in the moment when I knew someone was working on the problem at hand. (Baby steps… but a big deal for a control freak!)
5. We live in a gorgeous country.  There is a whole lot of this country I haven’t seen yet, which is almost as humbling as experiencing how much of it that I experienced this week. I had never seen the west before this week, and I frankly hadn’t thought much about it either. But I feel incredibly blessed to have seen what I did. I also feel incredibly humbled. We get so wrapped up in our personal issues. We bury our heads in Facebook, Twitter, etc. and we fail to look up and out at the world. We fail to see the bigger picture. The red rocks of New Mexico, the deserts of Arizona, the open lands of Oklahoma and the powerful Pacific Ocean will definitely take your breath away and make you realize there’s so much more to lice than getting likes on your Facebook post.

Have an amazing weekend, everyone. Take a moment to stop and just take it all in…