“If you could go back and take it away- would you?” My husband asked me this question over a fancy dinner this past weekend.
After experiencing something unexpected, your propensity for small talk decreases. You swim quickly past the shallow waters and head for the deep.
I told him my truth: I would take back the pain my children experienced through the unexpected if I could. But I would not take back my own.
Some events are just too tragic for this kind of answer.
But then there are others.
Other unexpected events that have us teetering in along the thin veil that separates this world and another and we somehow stayed on this side.
I think others who have brushed their fingertips along this veil may understand my answer.
Because they know- that perhaps they too wouldn’t be who they are today without those long teary nights and endless close calls.
We wouldn’t be who we are today without the praying, the begging, the questioning and the searching.
We wouldn’t be who we are today without our unexpected stories.
My husband wasn’t surprised. He agreed.
When we get to this point, this point of not appreciating everything that’s happened to us but the transformation that happened through the unexpected- that’s Grace.
Grace takes what’s broken and even shattered and doesn’t necessarily put those things back together. But instead- breathes new life into it.
Grace is what helps us to look back with pain in our hearts that lingers & also gratitude in moving forward in the lives we now have– in the changed people we’ve now become.
We got up from dinner, we walked hand in hand, knowing we would be shocked by our answers only a few years ago.
Knowing, just because we are on the other side of the unexpected now, that it doesn’t mean it won’t come for us again.
Knowing that if it does, there will be pain. And. There will be Grace.
Thank God for that.
If this spoke to you, I believe my book, “The Gift of the Unexpected- Discovering Who You Were Meant to be When Life Goes Off Plan” will too
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