Saturday's Ponderings on Life

Life is funny. Things don’t always turn out the way you planned. You are headed in one direction, have all the pieces in place to meet your goal, or at the very least to have a clue about the future, and then something happens to derail that plan and you end up headed a completely difference direction. So when you finally resolve to yourself that, ok, I can go this direction I can change my destination, it changes again. I think life is a learning process that way. Everytime we think we might be getting comfortable in our current situation, we get a curveball to make us realize that we have no control over our lives and we have no clue about what this life has to offer us. This is life’s way of reminding us who is truly in control and that we have to surrender that control and those expectations. I mean really, what are our expectations for life? Do you expect happiness, home, health, family, retirement? Do you expect a great job and financial security? How can we expect those things in this life? None of it is guaranteed. We can work as hard as we want, eat the right foods, exercise, take care of our family, invest our earnings, manage our money, budget, cut coupons, nurture our relationships, raise our children, love our friends... we can do what seems like everything right, and it still won't turn out the way we had planned.

Life is a lesson in resiliency and hope. I am as guilty as the next person throwing my expectations out there to the universe and expecting them to come back just the way I tossed them. But the universe does something when it gets a hold of those expectations. It puts its own twist on them and when they come careening back to us they frequently don't even resemble the ball we tossed in the first place. That's where hope comes in. I like the quote "life may not be the game we expected, but while we are here we might as well play." So things don't turn out the way we planned, does that mean we just pack it in and give up? I would hope not, because HOPE is what keeps us going. Life may not be the game or the party or the adventure we expected. In fact, the odds are it is NOT going to be what we expected. So, play anyway. In keeping with the baseball metaphor, you never know what is going to happen in the next inning. Pitchers change, their arms get tired, the ump can't see, every ball is made a little differently, so you can't be sure what the next pitch is going to be like. So play anyway. Play hard, play with enthusiasm and keep your heart in the game.

I know I didn't expect this cancer. When I tossed my expectations out there, I was not expecting a curve ball to come back at me on the next pitch. But it came anyway and I had to change the direction and the expectations of my life. And its not easy sometimes. But I keep the hope and the faith and I get my little successes along the way, like yesterday's CT scan. I AM getting better. And that gives me the hope that I need to keep playing the game. I'm up to bat and I am not sure what pitch that pitcher has in store for me, and I'm not sure what the umps strike zone is... but I think I'm gonna swing. I may just hit a home run this time.