Not How We Plan It...

Much like an earlier post on this blog... When my goal was to run 15k and life threw me curveballs and crossroads, well here we go again.

The odd thing is... It's also reminding me that things beyond our control, things we judge as bad could be molding us and shaping our lives into what it's meant to be.

It reminds me of that movie, Under The Tuscan Sun.

In the beginning of the movie, the lost and distraught women left her life as usual when she discovered her husband was having an affair.  She finds an old house in Tuscany that needs a lot of work and repair, but buys the house regardless.  She hires these three men to help her renovate.  Near the beginning of it all, she tells a new friend she's made that she imagines a life for herself there.  A wedding in the backyard, a baby in the spare room... surrounded by love, friends and family is how she envisions her future.

Fast forward to the end of the movie... and there you find her, with that same friend in the backyard of her finished house.  Hosting a wedding to a couple of young friends while another friend who came to stay with her bounces her baby in the distance.  Her friend then points out to her that she got everything she wished for.  A wedding in the backyard, a baby in the spare room... and she was surrounded by love, family and friends.  The movie leaves us with hope for a new love interest thank God, because it was kind of an unsatisfying discovery, albeit very true.

In life, we don't always get what we want.  Things don't always go as we plan.
Or sometimes we get everything we want, but not in the way we had hoped for... just like the leading lady in Under the Tuscan Sun.

All that to say, that while I had planned on paying off all of our credit card debt and saving 15 grand in only 18 months... it has happened, I have accomplished such goal.  Only it's a bit less satisfying because it did not happen as I had planned.

My husband filed for divorce before we could pay off our debt and the cost of such divorce only put us into further debt forcing us to claim bankruptcy.  So while the debt is gone, and I am free of it... it was not how I imagined or had hoped to achieve it.  It is what it is.
I suppose when we get what we want, even if it isn't as we had planned... there is still some joy to be had in it.

Life, afterall... is what happens when we are making plans... so I've learned to let go, be flexible and dance through life with the grace of a woman and not the fear of a child.

It's amazing how beautiful life can be when we embrace it with the idea that things don't just happen to us... they also happen for us!

I still have good days and bad, and I struggle sometimes with the stresses that come from severing ties... but for the most part I feel relieved, free and happier than I've been in a long time.

So sometimes life doesn't happen as we plan it... And Sometimes, it's better that it doesn't!