Life Lesson #162 ~ Recalculating

"I am learning everyday to allow the space between where I am and where I want to be, to inspire me and not terrify me." ` Mind Set on Greatness

Have you seen the car ad where the guy's life GPS just keeps recalculating? Personally this ad, strikes a cord with me. Maybe it's because my life continually feels like it's constantly changing, adjusting, modifying itself and ultimately recalculating my path. This ad gets it right. Sometimes life takes a sudden, and very dramatically different turn from what we originally had planned. Truthfully my personal internal GPS has driven me all over the map through the years. I set off in life with a plan of my own but not everything lines up as perfectly as we want it to. "Life is funny isn't it? Just  when you think you've got it all figured out , just when you finally begin to plan something, get excited about it and feel like you know the direction you're heading in, the paths change, the signs change, the wind blows the other way, North is suddenly South and East is West and you're lost." Seriously, that's how it goes isn't it? Life' s taken me a lot of places. Many of them amazing, from the castles of Europe to the mountains of West Virginia. I grew up an only child, and have had two children of my own. I'm a public school teacher, a writer and a breast cancer survivor. I'm a daughter, a wife, a mom and one day, though hopefully not too soon, I'll be a Granny too. For the most part I've stayed pretty much on the road less traveled. I like it that way, but on occasion I seriously have to ask myself where the heck am I now and why?  When I think of my life, snark e cards comes to mind. "If my life was hooked up to GPS you would constantly hear, Recalculating." Maybe it's just my life but I suspect it's how all our lives work. Turn left, turn right, follow the white rabbit or make a U-turn in 3-2-1...  followed by you guessed it, another U-turn. Personally I know Jesus is my personal GPS. So if there's no exit sign, and He says exit I know there's something there for me. Of course that is if I can simply trust Him. No matter how many crazy turns, or sudden direction changes happen along the way, He's leading me in the right direction.

If I spent my time arguing and yelling at my GPS about where I'm going most of the time, I might really miss something important. Seriously, we all know how frustrating GPS can be at times. I mean, why is GPS pointing me towards a dead end? Unless of course I'm simply not aware of the train station waiting on me at the end of that so called dead end street. See what I often don't account for is God's master plan. I forget to remind myself , "You need to keep moving on, darling, or you'll miss the train to bigger things in life than this." I certainly wasn't looking for a lane change from single to married and I certainly wasn't looking for love when I met Johnny. Lord knows I was no where near take a left and say I do but God knew better. So my GPS recalculated taking my journey down a completely different path.  As our children were born life changed yet again. Then after years of planning, and saving we bought our first and only house. Our plans were as wide as the sky and as deep as the ocean. Breast cancer definitely wasn't one of them and chemo was not in our grand plans I can assure you. But while that combo along with an MRM were nowhere in our sights or on our radar, six months after signing closing papers, life recalculated again. And it continued to recalculate as the years went by. Everything from job loss, a child on the spectrum, another with a TBI, going back to work full time, the loss of Johnny's mom, going from one to three dogs and now sending our boys off to college you can be sure our GPS has not only recalculated but been recalibrated often.  Life simply in a rather complicated process continues to recalculate over and over again. If I have learned anything about life, God's plans, my own plans and where life actually takes you is something Marc Andangel so eloquently speaks of himself. "Use your struggles and frustrations today to motivate you rather than annoy you. You are in control of the way you look at life. Be mindful." And that's the thing, we can't always control where life takes us, what happens around us or even to us but we can control how we respond and react to each and every one of those unexpected GPS turns.

What I have come to fully and completely understand is that life is most definitely like a box of chocolates, just as Forest Gump tells us sitting at that bus stop. Not one of us has the ability to choose our starting point or set our own GPS when we first start out on this road we call life. Along the way we learn quickly life will recalculate and relocate us as we choose certain paths or as change takes over the driver's seat more often than not. Life may start off shaky or it may wind up somewhere down a dark, creaky, poorly lit not to mention badly maintained rickety road or bridge in the middle of nowhere. Either way, we all experience loss, pain and suffering at the hands of grief, fear and chaos. Life is not easy, and anyone trying to sell you that line probably has a bridge to sell you too. I love this quote from The Perks of Being a Wallflower. It explains things brilliantly. "I guess we are who we are for a lot of reasons. And maybe we'll never know most of them. But if we don't have the power to choose where we come from we can still choose where we go from there."

Today I can confidently tell you  my hands are firmly on the steering wheel. I've set a course I've chosen for my life and I'm extremely excited to see where it takes me. At 43 years old I still have a lot of living to do, sights to see and experiences to experience. I'd be lying to you if I didn't say I'm nervous and excited at the same time. Life, well it's quite an adventure, and one that seems to be recalculating with each mile we pass along the way. But this is the thing, I fully understand who's already programed my GPS. I know how that sounds, relinquish control, are you serious?  I get it but I know when I surrender myself to the One holding the master key, with access to a complete atlas, my life will recalculate correctly, sending me in the right direction. Proverbs 19:21 is a perfect example," We humans keep brainstorming options and plans, but God’s purpose prevails." And that's so true. We plan, we yell,  beat the steering wheel, scream at the passing cars beside us, take a right hand turn instead of the left one our GPS was so clear about in the first place. Then oddly enough we wonder why life is completely off course and our GPS is spending so much time recalculating a new route. So take Life Lesson #162 ~ Recalculating as what it is, a friendly reminder to stop and smell the roses. Life is going to turn you around, get off course and take more wrong turns than you can count and yes those new calculations will probably confuse you. When that happens, just pull over, take a deep breath and let your internal GPS do the recalculating. You'll be fine, I promise.

"In the end, she became more than what she expected. She became the journey. and like all journeys she did not end, she just simply changed directions and kept going." ~ R.M. Drake

~Christina