I truly believe that everything happens for a reason. It would be nice if that meant you could count on everything that happens to you being positive. Unfortunately, life doesn’t work that way. I know some of my best lessons, and “nuggets”, have come from my darkest days. Of course, hindsight is 20-20 and, after you get past what you view as something horrible happening to you or even something just annoying, there is a chance to look back and discover the reason why something happened. Even better, you can learn that what happened was just what you needed it to be. My adult son was a perfect example of something happening for a reason.
In 1995 he still lived in Oklahoma City, but the rest of us had moved to Atlanta. One day I was with my adult daughter and her baby at a doctor’s appointment when the tv in the waiting room showed the OKC Federal Building after it had just been bombed. My heart stopped. I knew that my son, who was a FedEx driver, delivered to that building every day. I also knew that I was not going to be able to check on him easily since cell phones weren’t in use then. I called the local FedEx office, explained who I was and that I was trying to check on my son. They patched me through to their OKC office. I was so relieved and grateful when they told me that he missed his turn that morning and decided to take care of a different customer first before he went to the Federal Building. When I talked with him later, he told me that they felt the earth shake when that bomb went off. It was very difficult for him because he knew most of the people who died in that bombing. I felt very sad for the families of all the people who lost their lives that day but was also happy to know that my son was not one of them.
I didn’t have the easiest of childhoods and the beginning of my adult life had some major ups and downs as well. I married way too young and wound up divorced at the age of twenty-five. My two children were the best things to come out of that experience. However, being a single mother for seven years was very difficult.
About the time I thought things were finally turning around for me and was set to begin a new job and life with my new husband, something horrible happened to me. I was on my way to the second day of my new job as a secretary in a law office when a car hit another car then went airborne and hit me head on. My seatbelt held long enough for me not to die, but it finally came loose. I broke both my knees, my ribs, and my head hit the windshield. My soon-to-be husband told me that he and my then twelve-year-old son saw my hair dangling from the windshield when they went to see the car. I was so frustrated after that accident because my head injury caused me to lose the ability to read for a while and I couldn’t finish my sentences. I knew what I wanted to say but I couldn’t get it out. It was as though I had experienced a stroke. After I returned to work, I parked in an open parking garage near my new office, and normally parked on the top level. One day, I felt so helpless about my life and recovery that, for a moment, I thought my family would be better off without me. I was in my car when I had that thought and decided I could punch the gas, go over the edge, and die. Thankfully, just as quickly as that thought happened, I said to myself, “No. I’d probably just get injured again”, changed my mind and drove home.
Years later I noticed a book in a local bookstore entitled Everything Happens For a Reason by Mira Kirshenbaum and bought it. I wanted to get her take on why everything happens for a reason. She discovered in the research for her book that people who had experienced incredibly difficult things would almost miraculously discover the real meaning about what they had gone through. No matter what happened to them, they discovered something valuable that came out of that experience, and it was just what they needed at the time but didn’t know it. Life was moving them to become the best, most authentic person they could be.
None of us will forget 2020 I’m sure. We’ve gone from the COVID-19 pandemic with businesses closing and people losing their jobs, to protesting and, unfortunately, rioting and violence mixed in with that. I’m beginning to possibly see some reasons for these difficult things happening. Staying home due to the pandemic has given us an opportunity to get our priorities straight. We have grown closer to our friends and family and have hopefully decided what is most important to us. We’ve listened, maybe for the first time, to problems parts of our country have experienced that others of us could never imagine. Hopefully we will all learn to listen through love and truly come to understand the experiences and feelings of others. I am hoping that we will learn to be responsible for the things that we do and say as well as show respect towards others as we would want them to show respect towards us. The Golden Rule had it right a long time ago.
I finally figured out the real reason I went through all my difficult times. God had a better plan for my life. I believe it was to become the best therapist I could be to enable me to help others in the best way possible. I can’t tell you how many times over my years of practicing that I have had clients in my office and could totally understand how they felt about what had happened to them. I had been there too. Sometimes I wish the Lord hadn’t decided I needed so many difficult things in my life to learn my lessons. It certainly would have been easier if there were only a few. But I wouldn’t change anything I’ve gone through that’s gotten me to where I am today. They all helped me learn lessons that I couldn’t have learned any other way. I’m still learning, as are we all, and hope to keep doing so for as long as I am here. Why don’t you look at your life and see if you can find those “nuggets” you’ve received from the things that have happened to you. The reasons are connected to those nuggets.
-Janice