november = character building month

a funny thing happened on my way to the call in san diego.

we had an appointment the night i left, and i didn’t get out of town until after 8 o’clock. driving alone, and knowing i had a long road ahead of me, i decided to pick up the pace a bit. i was clipping along close to 80 mph when I passed one c.h.p. and then 100 yards down the freeway –another one. seconds later the lights were flashing behind me. i made my way to the exit, but as i did the cop blared at me over his loud speaker “turn right at the first street”. at that i was upset and flustered. i followed his instructions but was thinking too much about the price of a speeding ticket and not enough about my driving. i turned right in front of an oncoming car. the driver swerved, horn blaring. "great"' i told myself, "not only are you getting a speeding ticket, but you pulled that one right in front of the policeman. brilliant."

i pulled over and rolled down my window. while opening the glove box to retrieve my registration, the officer approached the car and shined his flashlight in my face. sarcastically he remarked, “yeah. turning right means looking for ongoing traffic first.” i guess i earned that one. next he asked me, “ma’am have you been drinking?” and gave me a drunk driving test. me! i’m the one who always follows the speed limit - plays by the rules. my family likes to accuse me of driving like an old lady. sweet. “ma’am, will you take off your glasses? now follow my finger with your eyes – don’t move your head” (oh that’s perfect. i’m legally blind without my glasses, and i’m supposed to follow his finger, in the dark. what finger? i can’t even see it.) with everything in me, i struggled to follow what i thought was his finger moving back and forth in the shadows. i was probably cross-eyed. i passed, but the process was humbling to say the least. actually, the officer took pity on me. he gave me a stern warning and never wrote the ticket. but there’s one for the record books. my kids loved that the police thought i was drunk.

sadly that was just the beginning of the month. as the month progressed we managed to mess up the blogspot, and before we could re-post and fix our ills, our computer had a massive meltdown. i mean massive. we lost everything – nothing salvaged. after soaking hundreds of dollars into computer repair, both of our cars started acting up and needed fixing(more cha-ching, cha-ching). then our digital camera died (which accounts for the boring lack of pictures in this blog - sorry, we are working to correct that) . . . problems at the office . . . problems, problems, problems. what the heck? is there nothing working right? nothing going my way? you know what i’m talking about. we’ve all had those weeks . . . months . . sometimes years. it can become . . . well, laughable. almost like some cosmic joke and you somehow are the butt of it. you half expect ashton kutcher or allen funt to pop out from behind a camera – ha! just kidding. it was all a prank. until you realize that this . . . is your life.

in the middle of all of this . . . stuff . . . unexpectedly, one of our children ended up in the hospital. for awhile it was scary. really scary. but immediately that event put everything back in perspective. i didn’t care anymore about money issues, or work issues or computers. broken things meant nothing. all of our concern was for our loved one. suddenly it was about where do i stand with God, and Lord are You listening cause here i am and we need You now in a big way. are You there? and will You come here?

(this is a picture of the northern lights over yellow knife, canada. i know, kinda random, but panoramas like this remind me of how small i am in the whole big picture -and how big God is. it's a good thing.)

so what does this have to do with marriage? only this. life can be hard. and none of us will ever be perfect – not in this life anyway. stuff happens. gunther and i have decided that november has been “character building month”. does that mean i embrace trouble with both hands? hardly. when trouble comes do i always handle it well? no. it often gets messy. but i keep trying. mother teresa used to say “God doesn't require us to succeed; He only requires that you try”.

our lives are not perfect but we still have a lot to be thankful for - imperfections and all. i want to be constantly aware, not of what i don’t have, but of what i do have, however much or little there is.