Staying Flexible

If you asked me on Monday morning what I was doing on Wednesday, I would not have known. By mid-afternoon, I had plans to play tennis with my friend, Amy. By Tuesday morning, our plans had changed, and we were going to snowboard/ski together instead at Keystone!

And then Tuesday afternoon, I got a text from the marketing director at Keystone Resort asking if we’d like to join for a powder day photo/video shoot the next morning!! That sent all other plans out the window and me into a barrage of texts to coordinate the special opportunity. I was inviting other kids to join us and asking our friend Vickie who lived at Keystone if we could spend the night at her house so we could easily get to the mountain the next morning.

I’m so grateful for these friends, Amy and Vickie. Vickie was most hospitable (as always!) letting me and three kiddos crash at her place within a few hours notice. And I told Amy that I wouldn’t be able to snowboard with her after all, and she said it was fine! “You can always cancel on me because I totally understand,” she said.

And that’s why we’re friends! We love living in this beautiful place with a boatload of amazing adventures and options EVERY SINGLE DAY, so I think everyone is generally loose about plans because new things pop up each day. I also think it’s unique living here in this area, because we inherently know that things can change at any moment…the weather forces us to live that reality of life. It can change here within the hour. A bus delay, or getting stuck in the snow, or just even taking the wrong turn down a ski run and ending up at the wrong lift can quickly alter plans. And we learn that that’s totally ok. We learn to roll with it, to look for the good in it all, to be patient and understanding. All the time.

Staying flexible this week allowed us to coordinate an amazing photo/video shoot with a fun crew of these awesome young snowboarders and friends. Here are a couple photos that we’ve seen published to Instagram so far, and we can’t wait to see what else Keystone puts together with some of the video footage they captured!

I realize that people who really are naturally flexible don’t necessarily need to talk about it (or write about it! ;)) They just live it, without even thinking about it.

So, the fact that it is something notable may say something about me! Ha! I feel like I’ve been on a long journey of becoming more flexible in life. And so, if there are any others out there on this similar journey, here are my best two cents to embrace it:

1. Life is more fun when you are flexible. Plain and simple. You don’t get disappointed as much because you don’t hold on as tightly to expectations of plans or people.
2. You live life more “eyes wide open” looking for the surprises and opportunities instead of trying to control the fun and plan everything out.
3. You learn to be more patient and gracious with others and with yourself. And relationships are just more meaningful and long-lasting with patience and grace.

And I’ll just end with some favorite quotes I found on flexibility:

Blessed are the flexible, for they shall not be bent out of shape. -Michael McGriffy, MD

Flexibility is the key to stability. – John Wooden

Problems disappear when we become willing to be flexible. – Roxana Jones