Color Me Suprised

As the final countdown to unemployment begins, I have been thinking a lot about the future and where I want it to go and what I want to do. I have mental blueprints and checklists and charts for the hows and whys of my life. These simple outlines make me feel better. But then when I think of my past and what led me to this point, it is filled with messy and complicated answers to what I thought were simple questions at the time. And all of this thinking has brought me to these musings:

I used to believe that things were very black and white. There were good choices and bad choices. There were rules to follow and consequences for breaking those rules. And I lived by the rules and made the "right" choices. I did what I needed to make my parents, God and my husband happy and proud.

When my life starting unraveling this year, that was not part of my plan at all. I had followed all the rules and done what was right and still my life was filled with messy grayness. All of my black and whiteness started bleeding in to each other and I had a hard time understanding how something so "bad" could happen to someone so "good". It didn't make sense to me. But the hits just kept on coming and I started to live in the gray. I waited for the next big thing to happen to me and kept living in preparation for the shoe to drop and for the little earthquakes that would shake up my foundation and threaten to crack them. I learned to appreciate the gray because it was at least stable. Not good or bad, just in between.

Now that I am moving forward and making new life choices for myself... I have felt myself gravitating toward a different train of thought. Instead of waiting for the next disaster, I am using the in between time to be proactive and to make sure that my foundation is that much stronger when it gets shaken again. It is inevitable that it will get shaken at some point and in some form. There is a push and pull to life. As it has been said, life is a give and take. And part of that is understanding that God gives and takes away. I may not understand how or why and I certainly can not plan it. But I refuse to live in fear of it. I do not want to be a victim of my life. I want to take these broken pieces and make a mosaic.

I hate thinking that life is a serious of heartaches and disappointments that I just drift between. How depressing. I will have heartache and disappointment, but also so much life. Things are not black and white. Good things happen to bad people and sometimes things come easiest for people who try the least. And this is not fair. But... it is a give and take. And I find that when we enjoy that beautiful in between and learn to color it with a grateful spirit it paints a much prettier picture. Once again it all comes down to attitude and being willing to be the blank canvas and allowing God to color me with experiences and to blur those solid lines I have drawn for myself and my life.