Words With Friends

I am a machine. A "Words With Friends" machine.

Playing this addictive game is one of the perks to living in what I have proclaimed to be "The Year of Semi-Employment" (think Chinese Zodiac, except more descriptive rather than predictive).

I've also been making time for real words with friends, gleaning a good deal of wisdom and sharing in friends' woes. I wish I could repeat the HILARIOUS phrase my friend Jennifer used to describe the early 30's for most of our girlfriends, but it made me burst out laughing on our walk around Green Lake. I cannot repeat it because it is full of crudity that potential future employers might not want to read on a blog. But it captivated me. Mostly because of this:

Life does not often turn out the way we expect. We all know this to be true, of course. But when you are 33 and educated and privileged and mostly happy and often disconcerted, you eventually slow down long enough to let this though sink in uniquely: MY life isn't as fabulous or important or deeply meaningful as I assumed it would be. Marriage, babies, religion, love, career.... Not exactly what I dreamed it would be.

Other realizations: Beauty and charm-- limited. One's ability to affect meaningful change in one's own life let alone the lives of others stricken by injustice or cruelty-- limited. This can be denied until our dying day, or we can do something entirely more productive: take it in stride and allow it to shape a more true and gracious way of living.

Someone asked me this week, "What is the most amazing thing you have learned lately?" Like a cursor blinking on a blank page I looked back and thought, "Amazing? Unless you are talking about babies or nature, amazing is hard to come by." But then I thought longer and harder. This week I had dinner with a man in his early eighties. As I listened to him reminisce and make plans for the future two lessons came to the fore in a new way: one, we humans do not stop wrestling with our identity EVER. And two, life rarely turns out the way we expect. Most importantly, neither of things are one of life's tragedies. Amazing.

Foiled plans sometimes pave the way for unimaginably good gifts.

As this man's stories unfurled like the cigarette smoke he gave up decades ago, I was reminded that foiled plans invite resilience, creativity, regrouping, and a whole lot of humor. Dry bones resurrect. Some old dogs learn new tricks. And God continues to stitch and sew and hem us in. Amazing. And more amazing. And hopefully, probably, rest-assuredly more amazing some more.