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Curveballs
My husband and I are totally different in so many ways. He is a planner, as in a way, way out planner—he is already booking jobs for a year from now. The idea of looking at a calendar that is booked out a year ahead of me makes me feel kind of claustrophobic and nervous. I look back on where I was one year ago and think about all the twists and turns life took in just one year and think it is sort of futile to plan too far ahead.
It probably works well for us this way because my lack of concrete plans allows me to be very, very flexible—and he needs for me to be flexible to smooth out things for him so that he can stick to his plans. See how that works? The last two weeks have been spent on troubleshooting all sorts of technology problems that were threatening to undo his schedule. What plans or intentions I had were put on hold so I could get everything back up and limping along.
Then, in an instant, something changed. Unlike many people, I always have in the back of my mind just how quickly things can go wrong out on the road. There is not a time that one of my family members leaves my house, even to make a run into town, that I fail to say a prayer for their safe return. I always ask my praying friends to add my guys to the prayer list during “helicopter season” because it seems like such a dangerous thing to do flying around in a helicopter, but the real ever-present danger is on the road. Friday, we lost two beloved sons/brothers/fathers/ cousins who were out minding their business, driving down the road. One was my husband’s cousin and the other a man I knew from around town, like we do in small towns.
As you get older and experience more loss, it would make logical sense that you would get a bit better at comprehending it, at working through it in your heart and mind. Maybe some people do, but I cannot say that I have gotten much better at it. It is especially difficult when every memory of the person you have is of them smiling, giving you a big bear hug, and being a ray of sunshine in the world.
Sunday morning I got the news that my cousin had passed. He was an incredibly quirky character—a very intelligent man who, if circumstances allowed, could have been one of those with umpteen PhDs and a whole string of inventions and discoveries named after him. It was no surprise when I learned that he had wanted his body donated to the University of Tennessee Anthropological Research Facility, more popularly known as The Body Farm.
It has been a tough few days dealing with these hard curveballs that life has a way of throwing, but there is comfort or maybe distraction in the plans that demand our attention. All those plans certainly show that life keeps going on, dragging us with it. The Bible talks a lot about running our race, and it certainly does feel like a race at times. SpringCreekArtsGuild@gmail.com