The Mystery of My Life

The word for today is mystified. There have been more than a few times in my life where a huge obstacle is put in the way of what I perceive to be my path and it changes me forever. I could just be humming along my merry way when, BOOM, the rug is pulled out from under me. I tend to be one of those people who does most of her processing internally so the next thing that happens is that I think and ponder and question and in all honesty obsess about what has just happened and the purpose it has for my life. Then within a very short time it becomes abundantly clear why it has happened and all is made clear. Usually I am way off base on the why of it or the purpose it serves for the future of my life.

I was raised as a Presbyterian, whose strongest tenet is the belief in predestination. The questioning years of my adolescence was the beginning of the break for me with this religious idea. Why would God plan out my life and then sit back and watch it happen as if it was a movie whose script you yourself had written? Of course there is always free will and with someone like me that would certainly shake things up a bit. My recent years have had a stong focus on questioning. What do I want to do, why, who are the people that have the ability to lead me forward, how and with whom do I want to spend my time, what is the quality of life that matches my beliefs about the world? I work hard to be sure that the answers to these questions are the guiding force in decisions I make. Up until this year I had a pretty solid definition of my beliefs about who I am as a teacher. It had been tweaked a few times along the way but for the most part I "knew" that I could reach on some level every kid who ever walked into my room. All that came crashing down on this year. I spent all of Friday and most of Saturday realigning my thinking and redefining who I am as a teacher.

Last night Maria and I saw Jeannette Walls, the author of Glass Castles. This book was one of the most difficult memoirs I've ever read. At the end of every chapter I told myself, "It's OK, I know she lived through this horrendous childhood because she grew up to write this book." So here was this amazing woman standing before the audience telling her story and what she has learned. Her rate and expressiveness of speech was something to behold. She bears no grudges whatsoever against her parents nor the experiences she endured. They all came together to create her view of the world and the end result is that she sees similarities in people and their expereinces as opposed to the differences. The bulk of everything she said spoke directly to my heart about who I am as a teacher. She has achieved everything, everything, she has because of those experiences. No one came along and plucked her up to save her. That was up to her. She had to become a survivor because of the challenges she faced. She was the one that to stand up and fight for herself.

Driving out of the parking lot it all hit me like a ton of bricks. It had happened again. An obstacle had appeared in my path, I had thought and thought and thought about it and now it had been made clear. The question for me became do I have the ability to take events and apply them to what I need to figure out in my life or are those events put in my life to clear up my muddy waters? I believe the latter is true because it has happened so often. Given that belief, how did the universe/God know I was going to need this on April 25 at 8:00 PM. Why did a teacher at Sutter put that book in my hands, why did Maria's book club decide to read it, why did Maria tell me about Jeannette Walls speaking at the Marin Center and how did I come to accept her invitation? The series of events that had to happen for me to be sitting in that seat and accepting what I needed to hear at exactly that moment is overwhelming.

Yes, I am just a bit mystified.