because life is full of twists and turns

Did you know that my blog has a subtitle?  Well, it does.  At least, it does in my head.  In my head, it reads like this:

this glorious maze: because life is full of twists and turns

I named this blog at a confusing, disappointing stage in life  My life looked nothing like it had just a year before.  And it certainly looked nothing like what I planned it would look like.

I thought I would be working part-time and going to grad school full time while my husband served in the Air Force.  We would be blissfully happy newly-weds, working hard to pay off student debt, yet enjoying every chance to just be together.  We would adventure together, through travel and living overseas.  My plan was glorious.

Instead, that year I became a stay-at-home-mom to a baby that I adored, but definitely hadn't planned on having.  Instead of my dreamy ambition to study, write important papers, and debate theology in seminary classes, my days were filled with diapers and spit-up.  We were exhausted and depleted, in every sense: physically, emotionally, and spiritually.  We were in the trenches in the war for joy.  I never would have planned this.  My life didn't feel so glorious at that moment.

This wasn't the first time my life has looked radically different than I had imagined.  And I can say with absolute certainty that it won't be the last.

Because life is full of twists and turns.

Isn't it though?

Stop right now, right where you are and picture what you thought life would look like.  Close your eyes, if it helps you.

Perhaps you imagined being married and instead find yourself single.  

Perhaps you planned on being done with diapers and potty training and thought you'd celebrate when the youngest child entered kindergarden.  But instead you welcomed a surprise baby and geared up for another 4,000 diaper changes (and, of course, innumerable joys).

Perhaps you planned on being overseas doing missions works, but finances or sickness held you back. 

Perhaps you thought that you'd still be at that Church or in the friendship or with that company.  But instead find yourself wounded and in shock and just trying to figure out what the hell happened that it could have ended like that.  

Or...perhaps you hadn't really thought too much about the future, but you certainly DIDN'T plan on it looking like this.

The thing is, sometimes (often?) we look back and see that that out of the surprises, out of the horrible, came something beautiful.  Or, at least, something worthy.

There's something wondrous about this maze of life, isn't there?

Somehow these life events, the good and the bad, mingle together.  Pretty soon you're not quite sure these good/bad categories are as exclusive as you thought they were.  Is it just the way life is, that we grow and learn from hard events?  Or is it God, with His nonsensical exchange rate of beauty for ashes?

This maze of life is beautiful.  And this maze is brutal.  (Author Glennon Melton mixes the two together, just as life does, and says that life is "brutiful".  The longer I live, the more I think that should be a real word.)

When we get to the end of this maze, or when we just get to a resting point along the trail, will we look back and see how the good and the bad mingled together and how the maze turned into something glorious?

I sure hope so.

What's ahead for you?  Does the path look straight?  Are you walking in a haze and unsure where you're going?  No matter where you find yourself, take a deep breath, and then keep trekking.  I hope you'll find that the maze ends up being glorious.