Not Quite How I Thought It Would Look...

"If you want to make God laugh, tell Him your plans for your life."
--Woody Allen

My life, that is. I'm referring to my life and how, if you'd asked me five years ago to tell you where I saw myself today I'd have painted a picture for you that is so far from the reality of things that it'd be laughable. And in hindsight, that's not necessarily a bad thing.

The other day I was talking to my friend Jonnie (who I know reads this blog--hi Jonnie!!!) and we got on the topic of how, when you're growing up you have this mental imagine of who and what you want in life and how rarely those daydreams actually come to fruition. "Did you ever picture the type of person you thought you'd end up with?" she asked me. "Did you ever imagine what he would look like and how he would act and what his personality would be?"

I did. And I still do.

The thing is though, just because we think we want something, and even when we do our best to plan for and make it happen...sometimes it just doesn't. I don't know why. I guess because it is in times like these that our plans for our life don't quite mesh with God's plan for us so he is forced to step in and intervene. I have no idea. What I do know is that if you'd told me when I was 19 that by the time I turned 24 I'd be living on my own, going through a divorce, (in New Orleans of all places) I think I'd have assumed you were smoking crack and laughed in your face. "Not me," I would have said, with more than a hint of self-righteousness. "I'd never get a divorce. I believe in the sanctity of marriage and divorce is only for quitters. I'm better than that. And New Orleans? Nooooo way."

Gag me. When I think about how naive and just holier-than-thou I was, I want to punch myself in the throat. Ugh.

I think maybe sometimes we have to fall flat on our face in order to get it through our thick heads that we are in fact, all human and that we are all capable of things that we do not admit or realize. We're not nearly so perfect as we'd like to appear.

I do not know why my life's journey had to include this particular stumbling block but I do know that I've learned more from it than you can possibly imagine and I think in the long run, this whole experience will have changed me for the better. At least for me it took experiencing the pain of something as devastating as divorce to teach me that I am no better than anyone else. This whole thing has taught me compassion and empathy--never again will I look down on or judge people for the situations they find themselves in or the choices they make in handling those things. I've learned that no one can truly understand or appreciate pain like this until they've lived it themselves and for me to tell someone that what they have done is wrong, or to judge them for their choices, would mean that I have learned nothing at all.