What Happens at Gramma's….

This post will be filed under Deep Thoughts.  So if you are here to be entertained today, I’d like to redirect you to my post archives…perhaps you can try Go Fish Go or Five to Fifteen in 3.5.  Or go read about Cupcake Cars or So That’s What Happened on my Quick Links website.

It’s not that I’m planning to be morose…or smug.

Maybe just philosophical this time.  (Philosophical means that means I don’t have to be right, by the way.)  Enter at your own risk…

Here’s something we all know…so much of our lives are spent in busy-ness.  Get the kids here, get the report filed, get the dry cleaning dropped, yay for the soccer goal.

We rarely stop to wonder about the basics.  Am I happy?  Is there something I should be working toward?  Is there something I should be doing instead?  What is my body telling me about my lifestyle?  Life is just life and it keeps rolling on.

But sometimes we are stopped by life.  An injury, a sickness…or just an unexpected lull in activity.  And the quiet forces us to stop.  And think.

I’ve made a lot of  decisions that have taken me down turns in life I never expected to take…never thought I would possibly take.  As a result of those decisions and, I guess, my personality, I tend to stop and take stock of my life when those things happen.

The quiet of this weekend’s snow storm and some recent events started me thinking about the unexpected turns in life and their relationship to clarity.

I am a very upfront person.  I wear my heart on my sleeve and I tend not to hide what I’m feeling and thinking very much.  My girls know the intense (and sometimes I’m sure they think, insane) love I have for them and my granddaughters.  There is no end to it and there is nothing that will stop it.  And people I meet pretty much know where I stand.  And they pretty much know where they stand with me.  I’m not abrupt.  I’m just straight forward.

Most of the time.

But when difficult situations occur, as well as I think I know myself…what I feel, what I want, what I need…they tend to catch me unaware and unprepared most of the time.  And, since that is the case, I usually end up fighting and railing against things I have no control over.  Sometimes for days.  Sometimes for years.

Until clarity comes.  And it eventually does tiptoe onto the scene.  Usually in a sudden moment in time…a lightening bolt of understanding.

…and it interrupts my fight. Throws a wrench in it. Causes a hiccup in my course of action.

And while that clarity many times doesn’t bring the solution I’ve been hoping for…the turn of events I’ve been hoping for…what it does bring is an understanding of how I’m going live with this thing that I think I can’t.

Not that this means that the emotions I’m having go away or that I feel differently about the basic situation. Because I know myself well enough now to know how I feel about most things and usually my initial reaction is true to my nature.

But what it often does mean is that, finally, the inevitable process of acceptance has begun.  And that acceptance of a situation that can’t be changed by me no matter what I do is coming.

Just hurry, already…