Life Changes on a Dime...

Just like that, and everything is different.  Lives are changed with a phone call, a text message, a day.  Sometimes for the better and sometimes not.  Yesterday, my daughter got her horse dream job in Arizona and she will be moving there beginning of October.  The results of my MRI came back and then an immediate referral to a surgeon.  Both of these events are good news:  my daughter has been trying to figure out what is next for her and my neck has been bothering me for a very long time.  Both things were also bad news because I do not want my daughter to move away and I do not ever want a consult with a surgeon.

But yesterday was just a life day.  Life is full of twists and turns and things you didn’t see coming.  It is full of things that are going to adjust your life in ways that perhaps you didn’t want.  But, they come anyway.

Yesterday's news was both good and hard.  I want my daughter to launch into her life and this is an amazing opportunity.  I am happy for her and want her to go and do this.  And at the very same time I feel all those positive feelings, I am sad and bereft of her moving away from home.  The last 20+ years of my life have been as a mom with kids in my home every single day.  I have wanted this moment to come, I have prayed for it at times, but I thought it was still out there somewhere in the future, not October!

I also have known for some time that something is really wrong with my neck.  The pain is increasing and unremitting.  Most days, it is livable but the longer it goes on, the worse it gets. I have known I needed answers and now I have them.  And the only option seems to be surgery.  And that I do not like at all.  I do not want to be limited and I do not want surgery, again, ever.

But I can see the good within the bad as much as I can see the bad within the good.  There is a balance there even if I don’t love it all that much.  The world doesn’t care about my preferences a great deal of the time and I can see that this is as it should be as well.  On the whole, life has bigger concerns than my petty preferences, likes and dislikes.

I spent my younger years thinking it was up to me to bend the world to my whims.  And then quite a few years realizing that was not really possible and a hard way to live.  Now, I attempt to live in a more quiet acceptance of what is.  The ups, the downs, the life that unfolds in front of me every day.  I do not always like it but, most of the time, I see the good within the hard and the hard within the good.  Which leads me to an enjoyable, well balanced life.

I am going to miss my daughter greatly.  But I can visit and am grateful Arizona is only one state away and I really do love the desert.  I am also grateful the MRI showed the problem and there appears to be a solution for it.  I am never going to like how time keeps altering my face, body and life.  But I can accept it as my reality and deal with it with as much grace as I can muster.

Today, I am grateful that I got 18+ years with her every single day.  I am grateful I got to raise her and show up for her and laugh with her and watch her grow into the amazing young woman she is.  I know that my job as her mom is not done, it is just shifting to a new way of being for both of us.  I know as excited as she is, this will be hard for her too.  And I am exceptionally grateful I can show up for her, no matter the distance and love her and support her through whatever comes her way.

I am stunned today with the rapid movements and paths life takes.  It is hard, scary and sad but it is also amazing, joy filled and uplifting at the same time.

Life changes on a dime and I am grateful I have the tools and skills to pivot with it.  I can only imagine that it would be so much harder if I needed things to remain fixed and constant, lacking the ability to adjust myself to the changes life throws at me, one day at a time.

I am also grateful there is just this day that I have to live.  I am very happy that I do not have to live in the next day or three weeks from now.  I also do not have to undo the past, only grant it space and time to play out in this day before me.

"Life moves pretty fast. If you don't stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it".  Ferris Bueller.

I do not want to miss it. Any of it. Regardless of how I feel about it...

Again, still...