“Oh the places you will go!” Dr. Seuss nailed that one. What a creative guy with thought provoking nuggets of wisdom for kids and adults who read to the kids. Who knows where we’ll go? We make our plans and God laughs. I’m sure I’ve kept Him in stitches.

Retracing their steps, everyone has a story of unexpected turns in their journey; a job loss, a sudden death, a divorce. If we were scripting our lives, no one would ever write those things in. But there are also some good, strange turns we might not choose on our own that end up in wonderful places for specific reasons.

When our friend Kyle told Jim he wanted to buy our house we were a little confused, especially since it wasn’t for sale. As we were packing boxes, I had no idea why we were uprooting. Jill, my last baby, was weeks away from graduating from high school so we were facing major change without moving from the house she grew up in. There was a little comfort in knowing friends would be living there. It was kind of like giving the family dog away to people you know.

Our friends Gary and Norma offered us their guest log cabin while we were deciding what to do next. I’m not one to go without knowing, so this change was not only confusing, it was scary.

Moving wasn’t only a change, it was just the start of a challenging 18 months. Jim and I both had surgery. His mother was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s and his dad with dementia and they had to be moved to a nursing home. And, one of my best friends, my mom, died. In the middle of all that, where I lived was the least of my worries, but I still couldn’t figure out why we moved when we did.

One afternoon I came home from a trip to town to find the cabin wrapped in snow. No where on my list of things to do during my life was to live in a log cabin overlooking a lake, but there I was. It was one of those moments when blurred vision suddenly clears up. The peace, solitude, comfort and retreat the cabin had given me during that time wasn’t anything I could have chosen and planned for myself. Ah ha! It was then I knew why Kyle asked to buy our house.

“Oh, the places you will go!”