The plane should be landing right about now, and in a few minutes, the phone would ring. On the other end of the line would be the resonating voice that had come to be so comforting to her.

She hated the constant trips out of town, but he had promised her that things would be changing. This was the
last trip he had to take for training before he was promoted to be a trainer himself, and then he would be given a home office just ten minutes from their house.

Newly married, only seven months into the best relationship she’d had in her life, it was hard to let him go every month for his training trips. Tonight, she sat on the couches they had purchased together just two days ago, and looked around their home, content, peaceful, and eagerly awaiting the call that his plane had landed safely, along with his deep voice telling her goodnight.

She didn’t know how long she had slept, but when the phone did ring, the sound jarred her from a deep sleep on the
couch. Glancing at the clock across the room, it was now after midnight. She hurriedly answered the phone with a
sleepy, “I already miss you.”

The voice on the other end was not his though. It took her several seconds to clear the fuzzy confusion in her mind and answer the man’s question, “Ma’am, are you Mrs.Anderson?”

“Yes,” was all she said.

A few minutes later, the phone had fallen from her hand to the floor and there was a knock on the door. Two men were there to pick her up and escort her downtown to an office where they had some paperwork for her to sign, and then she would then be taken to an airport and flown to Seattle, Washington.

Nothing made sense. The world was moving by in super fast motion, and she was moving so slowly, almost without
thought, just going through the motions. Words bounced around in her mind, not whole sentences, just words,
“Robbery… gunpoint… taxi… hospital…” Today, she can’t remember ever getting on the plane, nor can she remember arriving at the airport in Seattle.

At the hospital, it was more of the same disjointed sentences reaching her mind, breaking through to her thoughts.
Nothing was clear. None of the words made sense to her until she heard the one word that she knew would change
her life forever, “Dead.”

And then she couldn’t remember anything past the floor rushing up to meet her just before the world went dark.

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She sat on the corner of the bed watching him pack his suitcase. Though she had helped pack suitcases for him
before when he was taking a trip, she would not help him pack this time. This time, all she could do was sit there, frozen, unable to think or breathe, hearing nothing but the sound of her heart beating, the blood rushing in her ears, the tears streaming down her face.

Neither spoke. She just cried, and he just packed. When the last zipper was zipped, and the bags were stacked, ready to be carried away, she stood, reached for him, and said, “Please, stay.”

“I can’t,” was all he said, before turning and walking out the door and out of her life.

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These are the pivots. Those emotional times in a person’s life where everything stops and turns around, swirling around  that one force, that one object, that one event, which completely changes the direction and course of a life forever. We have all had them, those pivotal moments in our lives where something changed, just one little thing changed, and everything else had to change with it. It’s funny, or ironic, rather, that one event can change the entire direction of one’s life.

Sometimes we see them coming and sometimes we do not. Always, we are surprised by just how much changes, even when we thought we were prepared.

Perhaps the pivots in your life have not been as extreme as the stories just told, but the profound impact these pivotal moments have had for you is no less important, just because they don’t seem as ‘bad’ as someone else’s. It’s easy to convince yourself that you should be happy, just because your life is better than someone else’s, but then you are not allowing yourself the necessary acknowledgment of the pain you have experienced.

There is no right way to experience pain, and change, sometimes even a good one, can create chaos in your life.
You have a right to experience the fullness of that pain. There is only one way past the pain, and that is through it—
dead center through the middle of the excruciating moments, and then and only then can you move forward.

I call these life altering events ‘pivots’ for two reasons. First, here are some excerpts from dictionary definitions of a the word ‘pivot’:

• The act of turning
• The act of changing directions
• To turn sharply
• The center point upon which everything revolves around

When there is a pivotal event in your life, this is exactly what happens. You may be moving along, and then, wham!
Something happens that causes you to turn and change directions, and then all the events of your life after that will
revolve around that one center point event, until the next time you encounter a pivot in your path.

I suppose pivots could be positive things too. If I were to win the lottery tomorrow, I would probably have to say that event would definitely make my life change directions sharply and things would then revolve around this new event of being unexpectedly rich.

The reason I focus on the negative things here when I refer to pivots though, is that it seems to me most pivotal things in a person’s life, those things that are a sharp and sudden change in direction, are not usually things one considers to be ‘good’ or ‘pleasant’ events.

See, getting married could be a monumental event in your life and it could change everything, but as a general rule, you know beforehand you are going to get married. You don’t get a phone call one day saying, “Hey, got some good news. Surprise! You’re married!”

For the positive, life-altering moments in your life, you usually are able to plan for them, see them coming, work for
them, and slowly integrate those changes into your life. It’s the negative things that make a sharp and marked
change in the direction your life takes, without being able to prepare beforehand.

Every painful moment is one in which we can learn something of ourselves. It is true that what doesn’t kill us can
make us stronger, but only if we let it. Today, a large part of who I am has been created more in those pivotal moments than in all the other events of my life combined.

It’s much like Captain Kirk said in Star Trek V: The Final Frontier,

“You know that pain and guilt can’t be taken away with a wave of a magic wand. They’re the things we carry with us, the things that make us who we are. If we lose them, we lose ourselves. I don’t want my pain taken away. I need my pain.”

It’s true. We all need our pain. Pain is what actually protects us from being hurt. Pain gives us our strength to handle the things that are not so painful. Pain builds our character and develops us into the people we want to be, by reminding us of the things we don’t want to feel. I’ve long said that God would never give me anything I
couldn’t handle. If there must be a balance of things in the universe, then there really isn’t anything good or bad. It’s all just a cosmic balancing/juggling act, and if I have had my share of pain, and that pain seems more than another’s, then I can be joyful in knowing that God knows I am strong and can handle my share of this delicate balancing act.

The second reason I call them pivots also has to do with the dictionary definitions of the word. When something happens in your life that changes the course or the direction in which you were moving, you have two choices.
You can stand still and do nothing, letting the world move around you and make choices for you, or you can turn
sharply, pivot, take stock of the things around you, and then move forward in a new direction and make choices for
yourself.

It all really comes down to choice. No, we don’t always get to choose what happens to us, but we always have the choice about what to do with the things that do happen to us. For me, I recall a time in my life where there was one pivot after another. I was spinning and turning and changing directions so many times and so fast I was dizzy from the experience. Round and round we go, and where we stop…well, eventually, the spinning did stop, and once I got
my bearings, I picked a direction and forged forward.

Are you in the middle of a pivot in your life?

What will you do now that you have been turned around?

Which direction will you go?

Guess what? The choice is yours. Life may have turned you around, but now you get to decide now which direction to move.

You get to choose.