Things I Don't Manage. Thank God.

I’ve spent nearly twenty years forced to sleep within my husband’s meticulously arranged blankets. When he’s deployed or TDY, however, I get to flop into bed like a tornado, leaving a trail of pillows and twisted sheets in my wake. I lean against a pile of unfolded laundry, slide my dirty feet around the sheet (he would lose his whole mind), and enjoy evening snacks with the trace evidence of a starved Cookie Monster.

We joke about it, but it’s obvious that my comfort zones are wildly different from his … and probably from most people’s. For example, I'll bring up sand. We’ve spent most of our marriage raising children on islands and near beaches. To him, sand in the car, in the house, in the dryer lint trap, or even embedded in freshly washed hair is a nightmare. A lot of effort goes into prevention. But to me, when you live by the beach, sand belongs in those places. The inconvenience comes from trying to avoid it.

It’s no secret that he prefers and thrives on order, particularly, back to the sanctuary of the bedroom, where the last item put in place at night pulls everything together for him. After a day of donating his autonomy to the Army, I think that little bit of structure gives him a sense of calm. I, on the other hand, need that last item of my day to release everything. Decision making, weighing options, navigating unpredictability … flopping into a pile of demands left undone is my version of peace. It’s funny, when you think about it - we’re both exercising the same principle, just in opposite directions. Neither path is wrong, but it’s interesting to notice how differently we approach comfort on the surface.

Nighttime subliminal disaster seeking isn’t my only “yucky charm.” While most people are conditioned to avoid sensory and boundary discomfort, I seem, overall, relatively unafflicted. I mean, I first started working in an elementary school at the height of the pandemic! Kids with loose mask morals sneezing in my eyeballs? Oddly fine with that. But I knew I had to perform the expected “ewe!” and fast-grab for disinfectant to meet the expectations of other adults in the room anyway. Sharing from a kindergarten class’s sticky-handed communal M&Ms bowl? Okay, actually no thanks. I do have some survival instincts - but it’s still more about choice than panic.

The first time I remember being forced to look directly at this half-hidden sense of misalignment was while filling out my first application for a mission trip to Nicaragua. One of the questions asked something like, “How much comfort are you willing to give up?” or maybe, “How much of your cultural comforts are you willing to leave behind?” I don’t remember the exact words, but I do remember thinking 1) my answer was obviously 100% I’m willing to give up all of it is this a trick question, and 2) seriously, what other answer is there? Are they expecting someone to write, “I’ll give up 60% of my comforts, but I require a 30 minute air conditioned break every two hours and name-brand coffee?”

Also… if that is an acceptable answer, do I have a glitch in my self-preservation meter?

Wandering wonder aside, filling in that answer revealed to me that, while there must be a visible line, I was simply okay giving up what most might consider essential. Now, this didn’t fully prepare me for the freezing cold showers of that trip! But discomfort blindness did make it easier to keep going back. It’s not that I love discomfort, exactly, but I somehow don’t carry the cultural weight that makes it feel unbearable. And more than that, on my own, I don’t inherently feel panic, shame, or dread over it. Unknowingly, that has shaped the way I live, serve, and move through the world, in ways I hadn’t realized.

This mindset has followed me through other adventures, too. While living on Kwajalein, I spent an incredible amount of time doing mission work on Ebeye, fully immersed in conditions most people would relate to third-world by their lack of resources. I had no phone, ate what they ate (even when it was literally looking at me), drank what they drank, and just… went. I never felt panicked; I simply lived. And the bonding and love that I got to experience there was bigger than any of the differences in our lifestyles. In fact, I began to feel more at home there, as there was no second glance at sitting on a high-traffic floor to eat, no judgment of the leftover chicken under my nails post-feast. There was a time to clean up and be presentable, of course, and we all need some boundaries and structural resets at times. But in the off time, being human felt more natural for me there, maybe because avoiding discomfort is not really an option.

I also consider my walking the Camino de Santiago (with my girlfriends who coined phrases like “ground food” and “peepee nooks” and are nodding and cackling as they read this). Our first go lasted a whole 40 days, staying in a different hostel with strangers every night, sharing bathrooms, beds, tables, water, and smells with people we didn’t know. Not exactly everyone’s idea of a vacation, but it was an experience I wouldn’t trade. And looking back, I know my lack of fear (or disgust) played a huge role in letting me fully show up for it. It surprises me, the number of people who have said, “Oh I couldn’t do that, I need my privacy” or “there’s no way I could tolerate sleeping that close with snoring strangers.” (Ear plugs were my favorite souvenir!) Again, a situation that I chose to return to.

It wasn’t just push-ins and adventures that revealed the tolerant side of me; everyday life offered small, surprising moments too. Perhaps marinating in such desensitization is how I found myself last year giving a foot massage to my friend during our kids’ dance practice. We were sitting on the floor beside the stage, her leaning against the wall, giving her pregnant body a rest. I know what it’s like to be pregnant on a tropical island, it really does take a different kind of energy. Without thinking, I grabbed one of her feet mid-conversation to massage it.

She looked at me like I had three heads and said, “I can’t believe you’re touching my feet right now. I would never touch someone’s feet… but oh wow, bless you for doing this.” Eyes closed.

I explained with a laugh how her aversion to dirty feet mirrored my husband’s, and how things as such don’t faze me. I admitted that I could sleep peacefully in a bed of crumbs as she curled her nose at these thoughts ruining the moment.

“I know. When I say it out loud I can hear how weird it sounds. I’m gross,” I said. Correcting myself once again to show recognition of the expectation of pulled-together boundaries.

And then she said something that landed: “You’re not gross. That actually sounds… freeing.”

Freed… from what? I realized she wasn’t talking about crumbs, germs, or the actual act of touching feet. She was talking about the freedom to live without letting trivial discomforts (or cultural expectations) dictate how you engage with the world. Sometimes grace shows up in the weirdest moments. And for the first time, I thought: maybe I’m not just “gross” for being okay with things most people fuss over. (Confession: I won’t return a dish if there’s a hair strand found. I simply make sure nobody is watching and pull it out. Judge as you need.) But maybe I really do have a special freedom, and it can only be appreciated by accepting how I’m made. After all, God did give each of us unique wiring for a purpose.

For a long time, I secretly interpreted the ways I didn’t naturally align with adult reactions as shortcomings. Ease with mess felt like being dirty. (I do wash the sheets!) Low aversion read as being weird. Flexibility looked suspiciously like a lack of standards. It took me years to realize I’d been treating my difference as deficiency - assuming discipline was missing where design was simply … unique. What I once tried to correct or apologize for, I’m now learning to recognize as a feature, not a failure. Some of us are built to tighten the lines; some of us are built to loosen them. Both keep the ship steady.

And to be clear, I would never dismiss real sensory limits. I live alongside them every day. O’s experience of the world (in all his autistic glory) has taught me how deeply embodied and legitimate those challenges can be. But I do wonder, in our eagerness to name every discomfort, if we’ve expanded the language so far that we’ve stopped asking an important question: Is this inherent … or is it learned? Because there’s a noticeable shift between learning to recognize your own limits and assigning moral weight to them before development has even completed. It’s become difficult to even suggest pushing past discomfort at all, because entire identities have formed around labels for sensory experiences. From this lens, aversion is becoming the rule more than the exception, almost shifting the burden of shame onto tolerance.

Somewhere along the way as well, social media encouraged, almost imperceptively, a defensive posture of turning a tired mom's “mess” into a personality. You can passively pre-explain it if it's turned into a brand or photographed as a trophy. In reality, I don’t align with this performative version either. I actually run a pretty tight ship, and I enjoy feeling put together and working on organizational growth. The basic sticky that comes with raising children isn’t novel; it isn't chaos that needs curated, and we shouldn't need a slogan stitched onto a throw pillow for proof that it's okay. Likewise, I don’t need my tolerance to be admirable, or even accepted. But I do think it’s time to gently suggest we relax on labeling quirks and sensory boundary preferences as soon as we see them, for better or for worse ... as well as believing you have to find an appropriate camp for them to function. Let uniqueness breathe and explore.

This is the stance of my support for O right now (who is actually the best of both sides, a bed-crumb maker, and a bed-crumb cleaner!) – hoping to prevent future limits by trying not to assign names to what he experiences right now, and instead, just walking alongside him as he lives through them, knowing that he's still growing into his own wiring. Regardless of how he defines his preferences later in life, I do insist that we remember that contentment does not have to come from perfect conditions.

I consider now Philippians 4:11-13, where Paul, writing from prison, reflects on a lesson he’s learned over time: how to be content in every circumstance. With plenty or in need, with comforts or without. He lived with uncertainty about his fate and was dependent on others for basic provisions… not exactly an easy place to be. But Paul wasn’t pretending prison was just fine either. He was practicing peace without requiring conditions to change first. Reflecting on that helps me keep gratitude at the forefront as I embrace the freedoms I already have. And what once felt like a flaw now feels like a kind of quiet confidence that I get to carry with me everywhere.

So yes, I flop into beds before they’re cleaned and fluffed, even sleeping soundly next to people who snore in foreign languages. I’ll touch feet, hug sweaty kids, and accept a half-eaten sandwich from a stranger. And honestly? I like having this gift. It makes me question the things I’m told to fear, and allows me a unique freedom. It took time to see it clearly, but I know now that contentment is not about enduring the depths of discomfort or pretending every moment is easy … it’s simply accepting the way I’m made, and how I love, in the midst of whatever situation I find myself in.

... and also being able to brush my teeth with a kid’s toothbrush because mine apparently got shoved into a black hole.