Well, this summer was going to be my zero hour. My plan was
to launch all kinds of projects and to get moving on the stalled plans and
must-do things on my list. I needed to get my writing energized and focus my
concentration to finish my book.
Naturally, I've accomplished almost nothing and the summer
will soon be over. Some months drag along, but this summer has flown by too
quickly. Why is it that time stalls when you are feeling like hell and it flies
by when you need more of it?
The car broke down, the A/C went out, my 89 year old mother
got sick and it has rained for 10 days straight. Nothing goes as planned,
according to Hoyle, or SNAFU or Murphy’s Law…whatever you want to call it that
can go wrong, will go wrong. It can and it will go wrong in the best
Seinfeldian tradition.
One thing that I've got on the never-ending to-do list is
starting a Newsletter. It connects me with friends and readers, and helps me to
focus as I'm finishing my GF Writers Cookbook. The book is partly a journal of
my life after I started eating gluten-free almost 20 years ago. It's been a
revelation to re-think my diet and to focus on what I'm eating and it's made me
more mindful as to what's in the food that's going into my body.
In retrospect, it made me eat more healthfully and
definitely changed my life for the better. Although looking back, I didn't
believe it at the time! I was so focused on what I had to give up, there was no
thought as to what I would be gaining in the process.
It’s like that for so many things in life. You rail at
life's injustices and errors and when you look back, you realize in retrospect
that all things happen for a reason and it gives you pause. We were talking the
other day about our little dog, Abby, and how much we love her. She fit in our
household from day one, and we couldn't imagine life without her.
Abby was an owner-surrender that showed up on online
classifieds. But it was a random chance that I would even have seen the ad,
because we had gone a month earlier to look at another dog I found online. But
the heavens opened up with a deluge as I drove to see the animal, and the owner
never showed up so the whole transaction fell through. I pondered the notion
that perhaps God was trying to tell me, “Wait, you will get the right dog and
when the time is right-You will know” Which proved to be so true.
We get frustrated when things don't go our way, and we are
rightly suspicious when things go too well or seem too good to be true. Because
through life's daily setbacks and adversities, we stumble upon diamonds in the
rough or undiscovered treasure that we would never have found if things went
according to plan. Perhaps it's a good thing that life doesn't always turn out
the way we want it or expect it to. It's a humbling reminder that we are living
in God’s time, not our own.
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