Pretty much everything you do influences the next thing – each action sends out ripples or aftershocks that determine what happens afterward. So nothing is truly without consequence, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing.
It’s for this reason that, no matter how much I want to, I can’t in good conscience wish that certain things had never happened to me. As much as they hurt, as much as I want to forget them completely, change one small detail and my whole life as I know it may not exist. Not that a life other than the one I’ve lead wouldn’t have been good, just very different – it’s complicated and simple at the same time.
I desperately want to be leaving for the race in September and spending the next year with the iSquad, but that’s simply not happening, and it’s painful now because I’m right in the middle of it, and I am not yet able to look back and see how it all worked out in the end.
But I will move forward, and every single thing that I do this year would not happen without this change in plans. I’m sure I don’t want to wish away anything that happens between now and next July simply because they came as a result of something I wish I hadn’t gone through. Life goes on, and we have to remember that God is good.
This is not to say we cannot have strong emotions, or that we cannot grieve. (Quite frankly, we have to do the latter to move on – an important lesson I learned in one of the first days of Training Camp.) But it’s important to move on instead of concentrating on the alternate reality of what could have been. This also doesn’t mean we can live irresponsibly with no regrets – there’s a fine line to tread
I’m already seeing one side-effect of delaying the race: it’s making me a better writer. I’ve always loved to write, but I’ve also always had trouble getting started. Give me a prompt and I can go from there, but starting from scratch is a little harder. I’ve sat in front of a blank page for hours waiting on the right spark, only for it never to come.
But over the last two weeks, I can’t stop the words from coming. My imagination runs wild at breakneck speeds, hitting ideas and bouncing off to the next one like a game of mental pinball. I’ve had to jot down notes whenever the inspiration strikes, because I don’t know how long they’ll stick around before moving onto the next. I spend my lunch breaks writing rough drafts on my phone because I can’t afford to waste time. It’s certainly not the worst problem to have.
And this has all been in the past two weeks – after leaving Training Camp. Nothing like a little emotional upheaval to get the creative juices flowing, I guess.
Here’s the thing: I write for myself just as much as I write for the ambiguous audience of people who happen to stumble across my blog. It helps me think, organize those thoughts, and learn from whatever I’m writing about – seeing it displayed in front of me keeps me focused – my ADD brain can only stay focused so long without help, so this blog may be my one of greatest allies as I do everything I can to grow during the next year.
As I’ve said before, I do not yet have full perspective, but my goal is to move forward with assurance that his perspective is to come.
