The fogs...and snows...of life

I had the pleasure this week of being in sunny Florida. Please don't start off your reaction to the post being too mad at me...I know the weather in Indiana has been massively wintery and everyone is sick of it, but I had the chance to go and I went. Try not to hold it against me. We met some friends of ours for dinner one night and ate and laughed late into the night. On our way to dinner, it was a beautiful evening so we were surprised when we got out onto the road for our drive home and found that it was majorly foggy. Like majorly! We were barely able to see the road in places. I drove, white-knuckled, for the 60 miles or so back to where we were staying while Melissa read the map to tell me where a turn was coming - that's how foggy it was(I hate to read the map was her most common saying for the trip...). Did I mention that we had rented a car that is roughly the equivalent of a matchbox car - a Mazda 2. Pretty sure it failed all crash testing they did with it, including the crash testing with Amish horse and buggies! We made it home in one piece and fell into bed. We woke the next morning, ready to get ready to head home to Indiana, with bright sunshine streaming in the windows. I walked out of the bedroom and looked out the windows and it was a clear as you could imagine. Not the slightest hint of fog anywhere! It was gorgeous. We scooted around, cleaning up and getting ready to go, and headed out for the airport - a little over an hour drive away. We were buzzing along in our speedy matchbox when we came to this place where the road goes across water for a couple miles - a super long bridge road - and out of the blue (literally) there was this giant fog bank over the road - we slowed down of course and crept our way across the bridge. One thing I noticed about this fog was that it was much easier to deal with than the fog the night before - because it was daylight and all around the fog, and above it, it was super bright. The fog was still thick, but it was much easier to navigate because of the sunshine. We actually had one more of these odd bridge fog-banks on our way to the airport and on the other side of the road there were multiple accidents we saw - people who had driven into the fog and been shocked by the slow moving car ahead of them... We were glad to make it to the airport after all this, needless to say. We caught our plane. Then connected in Atlanta. Then on to Indiana. Well, I have to tell you the day we landed in Indiana was yesterday, the 4th, at 520 pm. And yes, it was snowing, like crazy. The roads in Indianapolis were a snarl and so we took backroads to Lebanon and caught US52 home. It was terribly hard to see and we saw multiple wrecks and cars in the ditch - one being almost vertical! We crept our way along - the worst being next to and behind semi's - the amount of snow they kicked up was nasty and made it so hard to see I had no idea where I was sometimes! Eventually we did make it home, safe and sound - thankful once again this winter for a big 4x4 truck. So here's the point: Life is a lot like our past 24hrs. Sometimes we are just enjoying life, having fun with our friends, laughing and living and then all of a sudden, totally unexpectedly, we get slammed by some major fog. We can't tell where we are, where we are going, or what the deal is. We are freaking out and we fear for our safety. We hold on tightly to the wheel and try to survive. Our life fogs have names like broken trust, divorce, job loss, foreclosure, addiction, abandonment, abuse, cancer, heart disease, death of those we love - you know them - they mess with our ability to see life clearly - suddenly it is all foggy! Then, seems like we start to clear that mess and we wake up one day and all is clear and sunny and then without warning another massive patch of fog - and we see other people wrecked by it - and then snowstorms and ditches and accidents. We feel the instability and unpredictability of life so painfully! We want it to all be the fun nights with our friends, but it just doesn't work that way. I am sorry to say that at 43 years of age I have yet to find people who do not regularly encounter the fog and snowstorms of life. We all want to avoid them. None of us can. A few things to notice though: First - if we are going to go through the fog and snow anyway, it is much better to go through it with sunshine and a 4x4. What is the sunshine and 4x4? Well, I suppose there are a lot of things that might bring some help in the midst of fog-banks and snow storms, but to me the very best is a group of people who actually care about me and are going roughly the same direction in life as I am. We have this in Morethanmore. We are not fancy people. We are aged from infants to late 70's and represent all different jobs and lives. We do not claim to have all the answers. What we do is journey through life together. And when the fog comes, we do not run away - we are like the marines - we run toward each other. And what I have found in the midst of my fog-banks is that that makes the fog much easier to navigate - it does not make it go away, but it makes it better. Second - if we are going through the fog anyway, we want to become someone new out of it all. Somehow to grow and learn. Maybe even be in a place so that someday we can share some sunshine and 4x4's with someone else in the midst of their fog-banks. We also do this in Mtm. We want to continue to look for ways to become the best people we can be - to make a difference in our world - we are sick of the lip service to caring about other people that we see and hear all around us - we want to actually do it! Now i do not want to paint the wrong picture of what our Mtm times are like. They are light and fun and involve tons of laughter and very little that is serious. But then again meeting people who you might want to journey through fog and snow with is something that is likely to take some time. Mostly we just get together - and the rest happens mostly on its own. No pressure. Now, if are looking for some people to hang with and laugh, to be silly, to begin to look at life differently and maybe to find some people to journey into the fog and snow of life with, you should join us at Mtm. We will be hanging out next tomorrow night, February 6th, 6:45-8:00 PM, at McAllister Recreation Center - just off 20th and Schuyler Ave, Lafayette. As always there will be fantastic, fun, free and responsible activities for kids and youth. We would love to have you join us!