The Road of Life Has Many Turns

If someone had told me when I was 30 that when I was 60 I was going to be a pastor of a church I would have laughed in their face.  If someone had told me at 18 that I would be a high school teacher I would have denied it til I was blue in the face.  If someone would have told me at 21 that my parents would be living with me in my 50's I would have said, "No way!"...but I have discovered many things in my life and one of those is that sometimes the road of life takes us to a place we had planned.  (I love it when a plan comes together.)  Sometimes it shows us a surprise around the bend we could never have anticipated.  We make decisions based on the information we have...We accept the ups and downs as they come...We live "one day at a time."  But often we find it is only when we look back that we can see that what we had thought was a "wrong turn" has brought us to exactly the right place and every step was a right one after all!  My mom and I did not always have the idyllic relationship.  I loved her.  I respected her.  I just did not always understand her.  My mom had a type A personality....and I didn't.  She was not always healthy for my self-esteem....what little I had.  The last five years of my mom and dad's lives they lived with us.  It was only supposed to be for six weeks when they moved it....but things just went wrong from the get-go.  Now at 60, with both of them gone, I am glad this road went the way it went.  I had five years to understand....and fall in love with my mother....and the other woman she became (she had Alzheimer's).  I would take nothing for the time I got to share with them....and here at Thanksgiving it is something I am very thankful for.