Sometimes our entire life feels like one big plan. Our parents plan for our futures when we are born then when we reach a certain age and have dreams of our own, we start planning for those dreams to become a reality.

We plan everything from prom, to studying for a difficult math test, to where we are going to go to school after graduation. For a lot of us, the first 22 plus years of our life are planning for our future. We are learning and growing and changing.

Some people plan on going to work directly after high school, while others are living up their young adult years making memories with friends and continuing their education.

We plan on falling in love, our wedding, having a family, our career, what house to buy, where we want to grow old, what vacations we want to take, what kind of animals we want, we save for our future and we continue to make plans for it.

Sometimes the road that we are going down is mad crazy with excitement and we forget to see that there’s an unfinished bridge at the end of it or there is an ugly bump in the road and we just can’t get around. We do everything we can to get around the roadblock, but there’s just no way. We have to turn around. We have to change direction. Our plan is no longer valid because the path that we were taking suddenly isn’t an option.

This isn’t the way we expected life to be. We are thrown a horrible, what seems like, extremely unfair and unjust means of interrupting our lives and we aren’t sure what to do. We planned on going this way….but now we have no choice but to go this way.

In the middle of chaos and despair, we can’t see that the roadblock was actually to protect us. We can’t see that it was used for a great purpose of leading us to something even greater than what we could’ve ever imagined. The journey was definitely longer and more difficult. We weren’t even sure that we could make it. It was exhausting, painful and downright difficult.

This path that we were forced to take had more bumps and roadblocks and we had to keep going a different way. We had to keep fighting to get to our destination. We never gave up. Against all odds. WE MAKE IT!!!! We got a little scratched up and bruises during our journey but the scars are beautiful, because they are a reminder that we fought and we won!! We fought hard to get here. It’s beautiful, changing direction in the middle of what we tell ourselves is the only way that we wanted to go.

It’s beautiful and magical and still isn’t perfect but now we understand why our plans don’t always work out. We became stronger and healthier and richer with self love and determination. We are now prepared for anything that comes our way. We will still make plans but if something happens and we have to change course again, we will smile, simply turn around and continue down the road until we reach our destination.

JMS