Inflection Points

There have been many times that I've thought so, but I have the best boss in the world.

He is also one of the smartest guys I know. Not in a genuis, brainiac type way (though he is that too), but in a life kind of way.

Sometimes he likes to give me life talks. They usually come about as a result of discussing some project we're currently pursuing. He'll stop midsentence, look off into the distance for a few seconds, and go off on a completely different topic.

Today the topic was inflection points. Applicable both in math and in life experience, which I understood but let him explain anyway because that's how he likes to do things. And I enjoy listening to him teach.

He's sort of my own personal Grandmother Willow, if you will.

Anyway, he was talking about how life isn't always in a constant state. Sometimes you have good years, and sometimes not so good ones, and then sometimes, out of the blue, something happens that changes your direction completely. Without warning. You bend, but you don't break.

I'm having one of those right now. Those inflection point years. Back before I left for Scotland, I had my whole life figured out - at least I thought so. I was going to marry the guy I was seeing after graduation, we were going to find a house, and become missionaries in our own area. Try to find ways to be a light in darkness. This was his input too, just for the record. I'm not making this up. We were wild crazy in love, and we thought we had it all figured out. Then I wnet away, and things were fine for a while, and I got a promise ring in the mail for my birthday, and I was glowing in the reassurance of being loved and wanted and knowing where my life was going. Then in May something changed, and two weeks before I came home we broke up. I've heard from him twice since.

Talk about an inflection point. My whole future changed, and I had no idea what to do with my own life without him in it. I didn't understand it then, but now I'm convinced that God saw that we were putting each other before Him, and that it needed to change. I don't know what was, or is, going on in that guy's heart, but I've completely had to realign my own;  bring it back to God. My life isn't my own, or anyone else's. It belongs to Him, and forgetting that can bring a good deal of heartbreak.

I'm changing, now. Inflecting. Trying to be better. I don't have a life plan anymore. I'm leaving it up to God. In the meantime I'm trying to do the best I can with everything I've been given, and to give more than I recieve. And I feel more "me" than I ever have before. It is a good year.