For Better or . . . For Change

For Better or . . . For Change

This past weekend, my sister-in-law let us each take a personality quiz on her computer. I got a great kick out of standing behind my husband’s shoulder and mentally (and sometimes verbally) agreeing or disagreeing as he selected various choices.

Earlier, I had taken the same quiz and admitted that I was pretty inflexible. My husband, on the other hand, believed that he was flexible. My sister-in-laws and I rolled our eyes and smiled behind his back, for he is as routine-oriented as I am—if not more so.

However, since I’ve taken the quiz I have realized why we each believe we have different levels of flexibility.

My husband is greatly flexible when it comes to the large changes in life, whereas large changes almost debilitate me.

I’m so afraid I’m going to make the wrong mistake that I have a tendency to never make a large change at all.

For instance, my husband was sure we were meant to be together almost from the instant that we met.

I was not so sure.

I had distinct moments of clarity where my spirit seemed to be confirming where our lives would one day end up: the summer day he rescued me when I almost toppled over a waterfall, the Sunday afternoon I watched him get baptized in the creek beside his uncle’s church, when he taught me how to shoot a revolver in the sun-shimmered field ringed with mountains, hiking together in the rain, sitting on the roof and looking up at the stars in Bogota, Colombia.

And then reality would clamp down and I would panic and run so fast in the opposite direction that my feet would leave a Road Runner plume of dust in my wake.

So marrying my husband really came down to an issue of relinquishing my control and knowing that to join my life with this tall, quiet-mannered man would be one of the best decisions I would ever make.

And I was right.

Nevertheless, almost six years later, the two of us remain as different as night and day—and not just because I am rather short and . . . well, not so quiet-natured.

Right now, we are on the road for a last minute babymoon. I considered postponing the trip a few days because our toddler daughter, fighting a cold, had such a rough night. But my husband didn’t want to change our hotel reservation along with our other plans.

I took a sip of my decaf coffee and gave him a rueful look over the rim. “Didn’t you click ‘flexible’ on that personality quiz?”

“Actually, yes,” he said, acting miffed. Then the two of us laughed and decided we would pack up our bags and head north. And so we have.

Every once in a while, he stops flipping the radio dial and glances over at me. “You okay? You need to stretch out on the mattress or something?”

Then I just laugh.

Before we left, he placed a gigantic blow up mattress in the back of the minivan so I could “stretch out” whenever it suited my pregnant fancy.

And again I know that we might be as different as night and day—tall, short; dark, fair; introverted, extroverted—but for all of our various approaches to life, we are indeed the perfect fit.