I’m pretty sure every one of us has experienced this: Life is going along normally, everything seems to be in its rightful place, we’re thinking about the normal things to worry about and to expect, then *WHAM*. Something happens that completely changes everything and you never saw it coming. You get hit broadside by another car when you had the right of way. You catch your spouse cheating. Your child gets sick and its critical. You find out that all the money you had in the bank is gone. The police contact you because you seem to have been going on a shopping spree across the country and this is somehow connected to a killing spree they are investigating. Your child goes missing. Your sweetheart says “I’m leaving you.”
I could go on and on. I myself have had experiences like this. They leave you breathless. Like you’ve been punched in the gut or in the chest and you just can’t shake it off or figure out what to do next. It’s like being in shock, but it lasts for days, no hours, and you can’t quite figure out how to make the world right again.
One thing I do know, the world will be right again. Time will take care of that. The other thing I know is that your world will never be the same. These events change us in radical ways, whether small or large. And while it’s easy to black or white about it, the fact is they both damage us and give us an opportunity to choose the next step in our lives. We can’t choose how the damage was done or what damage occurs, but we can choose to heal, we can choose to take action, we can choose who we are on the other side.