Chapter Seventy: Reflective Moment or PMS? Your Call

The rain is pouring down outside my bedroom window. It’s October. I suppose it shouldn’t be snowing yet, but it seems odd that it is raining.

Sheets and sheets of water are billowing in the skirts of light draped off the streetlights, over and over again, putting on quite the dance before winter transforms raindrops to snowflakes.

I figure I have another month. Possibly two before I have to worry about things like snow.

In the meantime, the rain will do what it always does. It will fall. Then. It will stop.

And when it does, autumn will take hold of the time she has left to wrap her colorful sweater around our world, one last hug before winter turns time to ice and nature slips into its frozen slumber.

Early this morning, before the rain began in earnest, I hit the trails for my standard three mile run.

I love nothing more than running in the fall.

I ran along the river in a ticker tape parade of leaves, the remnants of summer falling like confetti, carpeting my route. Everywhere I looked was a breathtaking view of orange and yellow and red. And every stride I took was buoyed by the sheer fact I was actually in this world magical world, not just watching it through a window.

It might have been endorphins, or it might have just been the sheer beauty of fall’s color explosion, who knows, but halfway through my run I felt utterly and completely . . .

. . . happy.

I felt blessed in unimaginable ways. As I ran I began to think of my life as an endless series of blessings. They effortlessly filtered through my mind with each step I took. My children. My health. My friends. My family. My job. My home. My health. My faith.

I am not sure if it was really an epiphany moment or just the chorus of Coldplay's “Viva La Vida” dancing through my iPod, but regardless, I ran smack into a realization on this particular run.

My life.

My life is what I am most grateful for.

And that includes even the less than pleasant things that, at the time, did not appear to be so great.

My divorce. My losses. My sadness. And my heartbreaks.

I realized that the complex and unpredictable labyrinth of it all is exactly what makes my story, my story.

And how could I not be grateful for that? It is a cumulative result after all. And that is what at that moment, on that run, that I stumbled into. And honored.

So bring on the rain.

It always stops eventually. And therein lies the cyclical and profound purpose of it all.

One blessed journey through the ever changing seasons of this blessed, unpredictable, and surprisingly beautiful . . .

. . . life.