Life Rarely Goes As Planned, So Plan To Be Surprised

My life has been a series of unplanned events. Where my life is today is not at all where I expected it to be. I planned on staying married until the end, I planned that all my children would glide through life and somehow magically escape drugs, alcohol and strife. Well, I got divorced, and as a parent experienced everything from eating disorders to drug addiction.

When I was 16, I was in love with a boy three years older.than me. He went to Germany to study guitar making, and I was spending my spare time perfecting weaving and other various artistic endeavors. My plan was for us to eventually marry and live in a crunchy-granola world of perpetual bliss. We broke up when I was 17 and I have never seen or heard from him again.I eventually married someone else. The first of many changes of plans to come my way.

I was a stay-at-home mom for most of my marriage, but I always loved to write. I thought eventually I'd write a book and it would become a best-seller. That part of my plan I haven't given up on, but I never, ever thought I would end up writing for newspapers and magazines, or how hard writing and publishing a book would be. The hurdles were not part of the plan.

What I have discovered is we can make plans, try our best to adhere to them, but sometimes life has other plans for us. There's an old saying that goes, "If you want to make God laugh, tell Him your plans."

We don't know what life has in store, and it's perhaps a good thing we don't because we might not want to get out of bed in the morning if we knew the challenges that lay ahead.

But the thing is, some of the best things that have happened to me are the things I hadn't planned on. I've created a new career, made new friends, fallen in love and had a myriad of experiences I would never have had if my life gone according to Plan A. Not every detour has worked out as I thought it might, but I'm the better for each one.

So perhaps the best thing to do is make your plans, but be aware that life probably isn't going to go according to them,

I think the best way to survive is to plan to be surprised and realize that what you didn't plan on may turn out to be the the perfect plan after all.