(illegal) conversations while driving...

i was talking on the phone with a friend today who has been having some trouble with her teenagers.  (she says as if this is headline news in ANY dimension).  she was very upset at a pretty serious turn of events of late regarding her kids. very upset.  lots of guilt and embarrassment and feelings of failure. again, typical - i think - for the average mother of teenagers to experience. the little bastards suck the life right out of you.  there is a reason God made us love them so fucking much...but, i digress.

so, back to HER story...she was crying and i was trying to put a positive, if not bright, spin on the situation, asking a few questions and getting a few answers in return.  between us we had established that this new situation was probably, ultimately a pretty good thing to have happened.  timing, location...all of it - seemed really shitty on the surface, but when we broke it down we both realized that it was not as horrible as it had at first seemed.  still not an ideal situation, but far from as bad as it could have been in the grand scheme of things. in fact, parts of it were actually going to work out rather awesomely.

having made her giggle at something stupid - yet visually hysterical, i might add - we were wrapping up our conversation and i said to her "i am such a firm believer that things really do happen for a reason - we don't always get it, but that doesn't mean that we won't some day" and she says to me in her soft, tear-hitchy voice, "i've been praying for answers lately, anything to help me help my kids before it's too late."

this may not seem huge, or revelational (is that a word?) or anything out of the ordinary to you, but i experienced a DUH moment that instant...this situation we had been discussing - this PROBLEM - was the answer to those prayers she had just mentioned as an afterthought.  not how she had imagined they would be answered, to be sure...but damn, i pert-near heard the tabernacle choir belting out a hallelujah right then. i literally got goosebumps.

now, you may or may not believe in a higher power.  maybe you believe instead in the power of positive thinking or maybe you think that faith is simply misguided desperation.  whatever, for me this was powerful shit.  so powerful that i'm still thinking about it 7 and a half hours later and it fills me with this...this...hope.  it leads me to think that perhaps my life isn't just a badly written soap opera...that maybe there is a path for me and that i just have to pay better attention to where i am being guided.  maybe i need to allow myself to BE guided.  maybe i need to toss aside my preconceived notions of where i think i should be going and what i think i should be doing, and what i think the answers are, effectively ending the constant struggle i have within myself to direct everything towards my idea of the endgame.  what if i just continue to do what i know to be the right things, but allow other things - things i really have no clue about - to just...........happen?
whoa.
is that lame? is that giving up? bending over? CAPITULATION?
i don't know.
i will tell you that it gave me the first ray of hope that i have had in a long while.  i even experienced a split second of clarity.  so that must be a god thing, right?
that was a total typo.  i swear i typed "so that must be a good thing"

so anyway - there's this

and, on that note...i think it's time for mr nyquil to tuck me into bed   :)