There is no doubt in my mind that everything happens for a reason. I know, I know. That has to be one of the more trite statements, to be sure. But it’s true nonetheless. Of course, if you’re like me you spend way too much time trying to figure out what the reason is. I mean, how many times have I said, “Why in the heck did that happen?” Or “Could someone please explain to me how my cell phone ‘randomly’ phoned someone or sent a text I meant for one person to someone completely different?” How on earth do those things happen? Those sometimes relatively innocuous, “random” occurrences happen and at the time we think, “Huh, that was weird,” and go on about our business only to discover later that what seemed a little weird sets in motion a chain of events that alter the course of our lives. Sounds dramatic, doesn’t it? But it’s often true. It certainly has been in my life.
I am grateful tonight for lessons learned. I generally have considered myself relatively intelligent and in some ways a very quick learner. In other ways, not so much. I could choose to look at how my life has unfolded over the past 12 to 24 months and say that I suffered from “a series of unfortunate events” and feel sorry for myself about all the “bad” things that happened. And to be sure, much of what happened had a profoundly painful and deeply difficult impact on my life. But rather than simply cry and moan, “why me?” at times I found myself genuinely asking, “no really…why did this happen?” To not ask the question is to waste an opportunity to potentially gain clarity. There’s a natural tendency toward sensemaking: how can I think about this situation in such a way that helps me understand not simply how I got here, but why and what is the lesson in it for me. (Dang, this is one of those nights when I’m having a hard time trying to articulate what I want to say…)
In September of 2010, my father died, leaving me and my five siblings orphaned–no matter how old you are when your parents both die, you’re still an orphan. A few months later, in January of 2011, my partner ended our six-year relationship. Two months later, I lost my job. In May, my son and I moved into a new place and I essentially started a new life, definitely not one I had envisioned for myself when I first moved to California seven years ago. I struggled for months trying to make sense of everything that had happened while simultaneously trying to figure out how to move forward. It was among the most difficult periods in my recent memory. Anyone who has read this blog periodically knows my story–it would make for a really sad old-time country-western song or perhaps an Irish ballad (though my friend JoHn who’s an Irish American musician would say that if no one dies in the end, it’s not really an Irish ballad…) But my story is not just about what happened to me, but about what it did to me, how I chose to deal with it.
The past two years has been in part about learning what I am made of; that through the proverbial storms of life, the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, the fell clutch of circumstance, I didn’t crumble into dust and blow away. It has been difficult, and I have cried and freaked out and had many wakeful, anxious nights wondering how I was going to make it through the challenges I (and by extension my kids) faced. But it has also been about learning valuable lessons about family and true friendship, about the nature of suffering and what true suffering looks like, about listening to the still, small voice that tends to get drowned out in the course of the hectic pace of life, about seeing the beauty that is literally everywhere if one chooses to look, that broken hearts can be mended, that what you do for a living does not define who you are and what you’re capable of or what gifts you offer to the world.
My life is about to shift again. In a few weeks I am moving across the country to a new city to start a new job. In some ways it’s been a long time coming; in others it’s been the blink of an eye. What is two years in a lifetime? Five years from now assuming I’m still on the planet, how will I remember this time? Everything happens for a reason, to be sure. Even now as these months have been woven into the tapestry of my life, I can see the pattern emerging. I don’t have the clear picture, but this much I do know, I absolutely had to go through what I’ve been through–not just in these last two years, but throughout my life–to get to exactly where I am and who I am now and will be from now on. Those seemingly random things like renegade text messages and accidental phone calls are all tiny pixels that make up my picture, my life. I may not always know the reason–heck I might not ever know–but I do know there is one. And that’s good enough for me. #Grateful.
