Shifting

Shifting.  

When I was twenty-one and entering my senior year of college, I had my whole life planned out. 

I would marry the boy I was dating after I graduated in May. I would teach for two years, and then have the first of our four children, and I would be a stay-at-home mom, and never teach again. Of course, my mother would be there to help me plan my long dreamed about wedding which would be held in the chapel of our church. Life looked pretty grand through my rose colored glasses. 

As it turned out a few months later I broke up with my boyfriend, and would not get married until eight years later. I was unable to secure a teaching position, and was grateful to accept teaching half day while  working at a shoe store at the local mall. My mother passed away before the end of the year after a three month battle with cancer, and my teaching career spanned over thirty years. My large family of four children ended up being only one child. 

It's interesting how sometimes you think you have it all figured out when it comes to the future, when in reality how could you?  To be honest, my twenties were some of the most challenging times of my life. I just couldn't understand why I didn't seem to be getting a break? Love seemed to be just beyond my grasp, teaching was now becoming a career, I missed my mother desperately, and the family I so longed for seemed an impossibility. 

Things don't always work out the way that you have planned, but that's not always a bad thing. Disappointment and sadness is part of life, but that doesn't mean there isn't room for all the good things, as well. As I look back over the last thirty years I feel quite blessed as to how things actually turned out. 

Author Pema Chodron in a commencement speech about failing states, "It's a little hard to tell what's a failure and what's just something that is shifting your life in a whole new direction."

As I look back over those challenging years that appeared to be one failure after another, I realize now that they were just "shifting my life" into an even better direction. If I could give advice to that young woman of my twenties it would be to just hang on. Embrace the good, and there was plenty, and know that things have a way of working out as they should.