Hindsight

Girl dancing with bear
“Ahhh…the joy of youth!”

“Brothers and sisters, I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it. But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus.”
‭‭Philippians‬ ‭3:13-14‬ ‭NIV‬‬

If you could go back to a fork in the road of your life, what would you do differently? Was there that one moment that you made a split second decision only to immediately regret it? Or, did you labor over some long term plan that just didn’t turn out the way you wanted it to go? We all have those critical junctures, don’t we?

Sometimes life does offer you opportunities for do-overs, but not very often. I’ve had a couple, and the privilege was not lost on me. When I hit the bottoms of my barrel and my second marriage ended, I had an immense opportunity to rebuild my life from the ground up. It was a tremendous amount of work, but it was also tremendously fulfilling.

Losing Mr. Virgo was a life-shattering experience, but one in which there were incredible moments of personal growth. Again, I completely reinvented myself…I finally explored who I was and what I wanted my legacy to look like.

The young woman in this photograph is my friend Gail’s beautiful daughter who is traveling all over the world, teaching and learning. I look at what she is doing and marvel at her courage and strength, her stamina…her youth. While hers is not necessarily the course I would have taken, there are things I would have loved to do. I really wish I could have been a doctor. The opportunities with that would have been tremendous.

Acceptance of what was obviously God’s plan and not my own, shows me I am exactly where He wants me to be. If things were different, I would have my girls, my wonderful son-in-law and his family, my grandchildren. I wouldn’t have gone through the exact circumstances I needed to be who I am today. I wouldn’t have been married to the men I needed to be married to to learn the lessons I needed to learn. I wouldn’t have had Mr. Virgo. I wouldn’t have lost him. I wouldn’t have found love again with Mr. FixIt.

I love the freedom in this picture. It reminds me of my carefree youth and makes me smile. ❤️

 

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