10/05/2024
This ❤️👇
I am here to tell you the pivotal moments in our lives often do not come with any sort of fanfare. Rarely are there snapping flags or warning trumpets or foghorns informing us of impending changes. They usually come, to quote a wiser source, like thieves in the night - a postcard from the lab: please contact your physician- an intersection at the wrong moment, an egg colliding with a s***m in a miniature cosmic explosion, a quarter in a slot machine, the turn of a steering wheel, a trigger pulled, a lover saying no, a child walking away, a voice over the phone - I regret to inform you. . . In an instant, your life is forever altered and you think the rest of your days will become an agonizing before-and-after until you realize from the measured, thoughtful perch of old age that life is simply a series of before and afters, a long line of them, and each one can either harden your heart to sunbaked leather or turn it pliable and welcoming, into an organ of infinite capacities, a dwelling place for compassion, a vehicle for grace... I now know that human hearts don't break, they either stretch or turn to stone. I've learned it is not the afters themselves but how we handle them that shapes us, that decides our happiness. I discovered that we all hold the key to joy in our own free will. My journey to that discovery wasn't easy, but every heart-rendering step was worth the pain.
_ Earlene Fowler
