I have yet to catch my stride in this new year, and after weeks, now, of feeling off-kilter, I’m finally chuckling at the fact that I continue to be caught off guard by…life. By the shiftiness of it. The movement. By how I can, repeatedly, have such clear, and what feel to me to be realistic, expectations that so clearly don’t get met. Or don’t get met in the ways I (clearly) expected them to be.

I could list so many examples, from job offers that were rescinded to schools that seemed perfect for my kids and then turned out not to be to friendships unexpectedly shifting or souring to holidays filled with hospital visits rather than play. The list goes on and on. And on. Surely your list is long, too.

My most current list item has been having way less time to work than I anticipated and the realization that the schedule I kept through 2011′s entirety isn’t one I’m capable of repeating: staying up late, getting up early, rinsing, repeating. I feel my body digging in at the thought of trying and my psyche shaking her head slowly. “Don’t do that this year. You can’t.”

Which is so disappointing from a certain point of view.

But see, I’m chuckling right now. Because this is so life. This. All of it. The longing, the disappointment, the wonder, the joy. The hurts and the heartaches. Missed expectations. The shifts where we thought we stood on solid ground.

And I’m noticing that even though I can’t be peaceful and content in all things, and even though I can’t always feel the hope or the goodness of this next thought: in ALL things, in every last one of them, there is the possibility of learning to trust.

And trust is what’s changing me in all the ways I want. Trust is what’s taking the roughest edges off my life’s game. Trust is what’s helping me recover so much faster from hurts and disappointments and punches in the gut than I ever could a year or five or twenty ago. Trust is opening me up to love, softening my cynical heart, helping me exhale more deeply and breathe in more fully and shift fear out of my driver’s seat so much more of the time.

So if trust can get grown and strengthened and fed and learned in all things… Well then.

Life? Dear shifting, untamed and untameable Life?

Bring it on!

I don’t even feel ready most of the time, but in this moment of what feels like lucidity, I say it with all my heart.

Bring it on.

Bring on the chances to learn how to trust.

______________________________

P.S. I just put the image above in my shop. If you’re interested, you can find it here.

P.P.S. I’m hard at work this month on a redesign of my site. I can’t wait to show it to you, likely early next week…if Life and I aren’t dancing some other direction. :)