The Unexpected

Unexpected, unforeseen, unanticipated, unpredicted, unlooked-for, sudden, abrupt, surprising, unannounced. UGH! God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can and the wisdom to know the difference.

There are a lot of things in life we have control over and many more that we don’t. It’s impossible to know just how many because we don’t see them coming. They blindside us. James Lane Allen is quoted as saying, “Adversity does not build character, it reveals it.” How do you react when you are struck ? Do you get angry? Do you raise your voice and cuss? Do you become defeated and cry? Do you fall and struggle to get back up? Maybe it’s a combination of all of the above? What about a different reaction? Feels like a punch in the gut, then tears, then contemplation followed by action? Empathy, sympathy? Do you trust there will be a blessing or a light or a lesson waiting to be revealed and you will become a better, wiser, stronger person because of it? What is the foundation of your character that will be revealed when adversity drops like a mountain two inches from your face?

I can put myself back in multiple situations when the unexpected came knocking. The first one I can remember made me angry. I was young and lacked wisdom, but hindsight revealed it to be the place where the foundation of my character was created. Once I gained an understanding of what happened I was better equipped for the next, and the next and the next. Some were minor, some more like the grand canyon. Either way, what I began to see is that adversity does not judge and it is in these places where we find common ground with others (when we are willing to be transparent). As I collected my own treasure chest of loss and lessons they started to feel heavy. How was I to lighten the load without tossing every experience of my life aside as if none mattered? I have always had a hard time with the notion of “leaving the past behind.” It’s not that I don’t move forward or keep going, it’s because I have honored my past and what I have learned. I have committed to discerning that “serenity prayer”; what I have a choice about and what I don’t. How does this lighten my load? I use my knowledge and wisdom to help others whose shoes are not as worn as mine on whatever road we are now sharing.

“If you want the best the world has to offer, offer the world your best.”
- Neale Donald Walsch

Walsch also shared that a friend once asked him two questions.
1. How can I help myself?
2. How can I help others?
Walsch responded, “The second question answers the first.”

It is in giving that we receive. Find someone struggling in a place you’ve been or are now and offer to help. It will lighten your load. I have experienced this and watched it happen time and time again with the people around me. One of my favorite quotes as of late says, “I love when people that have been through hell come out of the flames carrying buckets of water for those still consumed by the fire.” Reading that created a literal picture in my mind of someone carrying two buckets of water with a pole across their shoulders, walking willingly towards the fire to save others. When you take your own survival and turn around and help others, healing happens. This is where I have made a choice.

I don’t carry my hurts and pain and losses like a velvet cloak that weigh me down. I do my best to treat them like new eyes and new wings; wings to help me fly and eyes to help me see life in ways I haven’t before.

I am far from perfect. I don’t high five myself everyday and say, “Nailed it!” I do my best. I take responsibility for what I do have a choice about and trust that the experiences I’ve had have made me who I am. If I find myself encountering the same issue(s) over and over regarding things I have a choice about, then it’s on me. Very recently, life delivered another one of those grand canyon size adversities that I didn’t have a choice about. It has rendered me numb for the moment, but the eyes of my heart see that I have been chosen to be an expert at something most would never choose. The wings I have been wearing since I was barely a teen will continue to help me help others learn how to fly. I trust that my losses and hurts and pains will be revealed as lessons for the greater good. I have been chosen to lead those consumed by the flames out of the fire.

I don’t know what waits for me around the next bend. I do know that when a mountain gets dropped two inches from your nose, you have to make a way through it. You can’t move it, you have to start chipping away or adjust your wings and turn a different direction and keep going.
Four decades later this is my character. I can’t always choose what happens to me, but I can choose how I allow it to affect me. Life is 10% what happens to us and 90% our attitude towards it, right? I think that percentage is more like 99 to 1. Life prepares us for life. How we respond is a choice.