Why Can't You?

"It takes but one positive thought when given a chance to survive and thrive to overpower an entire army of negative thoughts.” ~Robert H. Schuller, American Reformed Church Minister, Entrepreneur, and Author

Today I’m going to combine my Fridays With Louis post with my Sunday Inspirational post. Just so you know :).

Everyone needs a Louis in their life. Or at least someone who is 100% in your corner, 100% of the time. Last weekend, as you know, I went to a women’s writers retreat at this awesome bed and breakfast in Ohio. Now, for two weeks the weather had been clear, but all of a sudden when I have plans, a Snowicane, as they were calling it amid much controversy, comes around.

I paid for this weekend months ago. There would be no refunds. The night before, my son and I were supposed to go to see Eric Clapton in Pittsburgh. That trip got canceled due to the Snowicane. I was not going to let the rest of my weekend go that easily. As the snow continued to fall, I checked Accuweather almost hourly. I noticed a small window of opportunity between 11:00 a.m. and 1:00 p.m. where it wouldn’t be snowing both here and where I was going. It was only an hour and a half away. Surely two hours would be enough time to get there during the "eye" of the storm.

Louis knows I don’t watch TV. Sweet man that he is, he was calling every day with weather reports, just in case I didn’t know what was happening. I got the feeling he was becoming a worrywart. But my determination was growing with every hour. I was not going to let the snow keep me from my retreat.

“Are you still going?” he would ask. And I would hedge and say I wasn’t sure yet, because I didn’t want him talking me out of it.

I should have known better.

The weather cleared. I packed up my computer and dropped it off at the shop for upgrading (been having problems with that, which is why there was no post yesterday). I was 45 minutes late leaving, but that was all right. The skies were still clear. I headed for Ohio, all the way thinking if it weren’t for Louis, I wouldn’t be doing this at all, bad weather or good. Before Louis came into my life I would barely drive myself to the mall, fifteen minutes away. The first time he asked me to come and see him, five hours away, I said, “I can’t do that!”

“Why not?” he asked, genuinely puzzled.

See, this is the thing about Louis. For as far back as I can remember, people have been telling me “You can’t do that!” and I believed them. Because for some reason I believed everybody else knew more about me than I myself did. Louis was the very first person I met who would ask, “Why can’t you?”

It startled me. It shook me. I really had no answer. Whenever I would mention that I’d like to do something, either right then or “someday,” he’d ask, “Well, why can’t you?”

I suppose, coming from his perspective, there would be nothing to stop me. But I didn’t see that. I’d erected walls around myself that kept me contained as surely as the walls that hold him inside do. I’d cut myself off from doing a lot of things I enjoyed, and made my world smaller and smaller, until…

Well, until it had to stop. So, six months later, along comes Louis, who fears nothing, and keeps asking me, who feared practically everything, “Why can’t you?”

So in 2002 I went to see him. The first several times, I took a friend. It was fun. Two women on a road trip, driving across the state. My companion would be someone looking for some quiet time, maybe some writing time, or just something different to do that weekend. Until finally I got confident enough to go by myself. I also found that I, myself, enjoyed the alone time. And that I preferred bed and breakfasts to hotels.

So when this writers retreat was announced, it was right up my alley. I didn’t care that it was in the dead of winter. I knew that with Louis now on this side of the state, and therefore no more weekend getaway road trips on my horizon, by then I’d need a break.

And wouldn’t you know it, a Snowicane came along to try and thwart my plans. But after eight years of Louis asking me “Why can’t you?” I was conditioned. I was already asking that question of myself.

Even at the retreat, we had a speaker who essentially said, “If you tell yourself you can’t, you won’t. But if you make up your mind to do something, things will fall into place and you’ll find a way to achieve your goal.”

I made up my mind to go to the retreat. The weather provided a two hour gap. Thanks to my faith sharing group and their prayers, God and the angels provided protection--because along the way I counted seven cars that had slid off the road, and could just as easily have been me.

Since I left town 45 minutes late, it started snowing the last half hour of my trip. My fault, but I made it. I arrived at the bed and breakfast an hour before check-in time, but was able to entertain myself until they opened. And by the time they did, the snow was coming down full force, and did not stop until Sunday morning—just in time for me to go home again.

When Louis called Sunday night, the first words out of his mouth were, “I am so proud of you. I am so proud of you.” He just kept saying it over and over, and to me, there was no sweeter thing he could have said. He said he’d called on Friday night, and when I didn’t answer the phone, he knew I’d gone on my trip and he hung up the phone smiling.

In a letter I got this week, written and mailed before we spoke, he said the same.

So then he says, “Now you know you can drive in the snow.” I smile, knowing already how he’s setting me up. “Yes, now I know I can drive in the snow.”

“Now you can come and see me in the snow,” he says.

I laugh. “No. I’m not coming to see you in the snow. You’re in the middle of nowhere.”

“Oh, I see,” he says knowingly. “Now I know what’s more important to you.”

But he doesn’t. He doesn’t realize that without him, I wouldn’t have gone on the retreat at all.

Like I said, everybody needs a Louis in their life.