Along Came Then

Sometimes people like to tell me how enviable my current set-up is. I don’t disagree but after while it grates on me.

Our current circumstances aren’t the result of us winning life’s luck lottery, although there was certainly a fair amount of that involved (and an unmistakable amount of providence). But in many ways, we spent our whole lives preparing for where we are today. We just didn’t know that’s what we were doing.

Many years ago we were fresh out of college and green at marriage. My husband’s dream internship was supposed to turn into a dream job. But it didn’t, not for anyone.

Instead he took a job in retail. As it turns out, he turned that filler job into a successful career.  At the time, we were sure that job, the one we thought not worthy of his not-yet-hung college diploma, was a temporary place holder. It wasn’t, it was a stepping stone. Little did we know that he was working for a company that years later would be one of the few remaining to offer an employer adoption assistance program.  Or that we would use it, more than once.

Five years ago, if you had asked me for my five-year plan, I would have rattled it off to you. It wouldn’t have included speech therapy, a wheelchair, or petitioning Congress to change disability laws. Yet here we are.

What I didn’t know then was that my job was teaching me skills I would later use to advocate for my kids. Yet here were are.

It’s beautiful here.

That boring meeting at the thankless job you’re sitting in today, that dinner out that you’ll forgo this weekend, in favor of leftovers in, that coupon for two quarters or less off that you’re clipping when it seems pointless – it all means something.

It’s not just for the here and now, but also for the Then.

Because, when you least expect it, along comes Then.

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Have you read Jeff Goin’s new book, The In-Between: Embracing the Tension Between Now and the Next Big Thing? If you haven’t, you should. It covers this very topic.