The silver lining….

Gotta love life.  You walk along and everything is fine…then one day, something changes that alters the course of your life.

We can’t always control what happens to us, but we can control how we react to it.  You can accept it and go with it, or you can fight it all the way and live in denial.  Either way, you can’t dictate every moment of your life.

About 5 weeks ago, my little dancer girl broke her foot.  Well…fractured.  And a good fracture at that.  Mere millimeters from a full break.

The news was devastating.  She was in the middle of her routine at her high school when she did a switch leap, landed wrong and boom… life altered…..

The first few hours were laden with tears.  She was in pain.  She was scared.  She’d never sustained such an injury before; not even by half.

She’s been dancing for twelve years.  This was a big deal.

By the end of the night in the emergency room, we were all laughing in resignation that there was nothing we could do with what happened.  We made friends with all the staff who passed us by.  Dad was calling the staff by name, and sister was taking “covert” pictures of the cute staff boys with her cell phone, and we were giggling that though she was “broken”, she only qualified for a bed in the hall…WHICH had it’s own bed number.

Such began our journey back to healing…..

If you have ever had an athlete, you know that their whole life and all their decisions are made based on their sport.  They eat, sleep, live and breathe what they have been groomed to do.

When that privilege is taken away… life changes…. and there is nothing you can do about it.

Over the course of these last weeks, our lives have been drastically changed.  My daughter comes home from school and does… well… homework.

I thought it would be much harder, but the truth is, she was at a crossroards and had been for a while.  She had danced so much over the years that she just wasn’t sure how she wanted to continue in the upcoming year.  Burnout was likely the culprit, but could be teenage angst.  Either way, when her option was taken away, her evaluative process changed.

She went from doing something she had to do…. to not being able to do something she realized she wanted to do!

And thankfully, she had the realization that she would indeed be able to do it again.

I write this today, because over the past few weeks, my life has been altered as well.  My regular routine, completely disrupted with Dr. appointments and new information.  Each appointment dictating our near future.  Over this last few weeks, we have spent more time in the car going from hither to yon… It’s been quite the journey.

I wasn’t totally sure how she was feeling about everything until we stopped for tacos on the way to her team practice (where she couldn’t dance but still needs to participate as a team member).  As we walked up to the restaurant, I was surprised to hear what my daughter said.  She told me that because of her crazy schedule over the years we were never able to really spend time together.  And she told me that she has really enjoyed this time with me and she likes hanging with me.

You could have knocked me over with a light wind……

My daughter LIKED spending time with me.  I tried not to overreact with insane joy.  But I have to say that I haven’t been totally heartbroken either.  Not that we don’t appreciate dance, because we do.  It’s made my kids who they are.  But I’m so grateful for this chance to reconnect with my child on a level that I thought I had lost.  And I realize now, that though she’s a teenager, she still needs and wants me around.

And she APPRECIATES me!

OMG…be STILL my HEART!

So, though we wouldn’t have picked what’s behind door number one to happen to us, we have seriously made the best of this situation and I dare say we have both learned from this experience.  Lemonade CAN be made with lemons.  As long as you focus on what you have been given, and what you have around you!

I’m so grateful and feeling so blessed to have this time to reconnect with my daughter.  And I’m beyond words that she wants to reconnect with me!

God is good…look for the silver lining!