Life Happens Here

There's been an awful lot of life happening for the past few years. It's been happening the way a flash flood happens, whipping your feet out from under you and sending you cascading down a rushing river where flowers and pavement and dry land had been only moments before. It's been happening the way an earthquake happens, with shaking ground and yawning holes making your home and your world feel unsafe and bruised and threatened.

Someone once said (I believe it was John Lennon?) that "Life is what happens when you are busy making other plans." Of course, I took that to mean "sensible reality happens to dreamers whose plans are lofty and grandiose and fantastical". I've always been a dreamer, but not grandiosely so. I have dreams and aspirations and wishes and ideals, but I also I also have more "realistic" plans. "Ordinary", achievable plans for the future that were mundane enough to border on dull. I had plans, as a mother, to share my favorite books with my son. I had plans to teach him how to cook all sorts of things. We, together, had plans for camping vacations and taking wilderness classes and building up enough stamina to take the bike trail all the way down to the beach for a picnic and back. I had plans, as a daughter, to help my mom fix up her house - not in any drastic way, but to just declutter and decorate and help her start her garden again. Simple plans that still left time and energy to pay attention to real life. Nothing that would tempt fate; nothing fraught with danger; nothing demanding a miracle. Safe plans. Safe plans that could be achieved no matter what life had in store. And yet...Life still "happened" and made those plans obsolete. Life happened in a way to make my roles as both mother and daughter unlike anything I could have imagined. The free will of others and the nature of illness are the "Life" that happened while I made my mundane plans.

As it turns out, there are no mundane plans. I had no idea that all plans are lofty. I had no idea that all plans are just dreams where life is concerned. I had no idea that real life is composed of tiny blessings strung together and that all of my plans were counting on big blessings staying in place. When Life happens, it happens both like we expect it to and like we could never have imagined. It happens microscopically and astronomically. It happens in a trickle and a raging wave. Life just happens, plans or not. Life either makes sense or it doesn't.

But here's the thing...In the rush and flow of life there are constants. The sun still rises in the east and sets in the west regardless of whether you can see it or not. There is order in the makeup of things. Specific atoms and molecules in specific number and configurations continue to form the same things. Lasting love will always take work. Hate will always destroy - even if it is only the hater who suffers. Those constants are miracles of order. The other constant is that miracles are always happening and blessings are always present. This is a very important constant. Life is composed of miracles. Look for them wherever you can. Hold on to them and share them with others. I believe in God as the source of life and source of order and, of course, the source of miracles and blessings; that life, with both its order and miracles, is our providence. In other words, these 'constants' are provided for us as huge, but seemingly mundane, gifts. They are always there, to be acknowledged or ignored as we choose.

Even with the malicious free-will of another person working to destroy a huge chunk of my world and a fatal and undignified disease infecting another part, there are blessings and miracles floating around like snowflakes. They seem small and insignificant - and sometimes even pesky - but they're there; free for the acknowledgment. And as I gather them up I find that they are part of the Life that Happens Here. They won't fill the holes or right the wrongs, but they will buoy me and strengthen me and help me move forward on ragged turf. Sometimes they are just big enough to help me take another step, but sometimes they are big enough to build a completely new path. They remind me that I am loved and not alone, that I am a child of God.

Life happens whether you make plans or not. Life happens even if your plans are ordinary. But life, no matter how crazy or ruthless, also includes order, miracles and blessings. So make big plans, dream big dreams. Life, with its miracles, is happening here and now.