The Hippie

I’ve decided that I want to become a hippie.  Before you freak out and picture me in a field surrounded by magical mushrooms, burning my bra while psychedelic music plays in the background, perhaps I should explain myself.  It seems that everything in our American culture is geared towards fast pace, efficiency, stress, and productivity.  We value people who get things done, and get them done quickly.  We stress when things are not done in the way that we specify they should be according to the cosmic master plan that plays in our heads.

I distinctly remember sitting at the lunch table with my friends in fourth grade, telling them my life plan.  In my purple velvet shirt with a built-in choker and massive glasses with bifocals, I confidently told them, “I’m going to meet my husband in college, and then we’ll get married the summer after we graduate college.  We’ll spend two years together before we decide to start a family, and we’ll have one boy and one girl.  We’ll have the boy first so he can look out for his little sister.”  Well, I did meet my husband in college (thank goodness, it took me that long to tame my curly fro and get rid of my 2 inch thick glasses), but we didn’t get married until the summer after my first year of grad school.  Plan fail #1.  We have been married 2 years and are pregnant, but with a girl.  Plan fail #2, there’s no older brother to look out for his little sister.  Later in life, I created another “rule” for myself that I wanted to be a young mom, so I needed to be done having kids by the time I’m 30.  Why do we make these ridiculous plans and rules for ourselves that are often beyond our control, and then get mad when our plans fail?  Don’t we know that, despite our best efforts, we are not the cosmic rulers of the universe?

A few weeks ago we went back to Blue Springs for a wedding, and I had the pleasure of attending the church I grew up in.  I always love hearing Pastor Rodger preach, God has blessed him with so much knowledge and insight.  This particular Sunday, he preached on being led by God.  I often find myself making plans with little thought as to whether or not my plans align with God’s will.  I worry that the alternative would be to never make plans, and just “let things happen”, which is not in my nature.  In his sermon, Pastor Rodger said that it’s necessary to plan, but our planning should be flexible and conditional.  In other words, we shouldn’t haphazardly drift through life, waiting for things to happen to us and for us.  But at the same time, we should always leave our plans open to God’s leading, and our plans should be conditional on God’s permission.  We have to be prepared though that God’s will for us may not always be a smooth road.  When the road is bumpy, that doesn’t necessarily mean God hasn’t lead us in that direction.  It does mean that we should thank God for the opportunity for spiritual growth through the trial…how often do we not get our way (or not get it easily) and decide to say thank you to God for the opportunity for growth?  (If you want to listen to Pastor Rodger’s full sermon or read his online notes, you can find them on the church’s website marked as 3/11/2011—even though it’s 2012-- http://www.woodschapelonline.org/Pure%20CSS%20Version/wc_sermons.html).

I’ve heard so many stories the past few years of people who are unhappy with their current life situation.  Either something isn’t happening that they feel should be happening (a boyfriend, a marriage proposal, a pregnancy, etc.) or something is happening that they don’t feel should be happening (a loss of job, loss of a loved one, marriage difficulties, etc.).  I’m often guilty too of trying to rush along my life, fitting it into a box of what I perceive should be happening.  But what if I shifted my focus from hyper-egocentric woman who knows what she wants and wants it RIGHT NOW to calm, poised woman who puts God’s plans over her own?

Hence where I’ve decided to become a hippie.  My definition of hippie obviously doesn’t align with the actual definition of hippie, so let me give you MY definition of a hippie: “someone who is super chill about when things in life don’t go according to plan”.  This may sound like being laid-back to you, but to me this is radical.  This is me surrendering my grip of control, my perception of my plan for my life, and even…oh gosh…even the possibility that the plans and rules I’ve created myself may not work out, or aren’t God’s will for me.  This means when I come up with a parenting philosophy and something needs to be altered or modified, I go with it.  This means if my husband decides that our entire house could fall down at any moment because of those “deadly termites” and wants to spend our entire savings on “termite insurance”, I actually consider it.  This may even mean that my throw pillows are in slight disarray when company comes over.  I might as well be dancing in a field of magical mushrooms, burning my bra, and listening to psychedelic music, right?