{"id":344,"date":"2020-11-26T12:29:03","date_gmt":"2020-11-26T12:29:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/michelledevon.com\/?p=344"},"modified":"2020-11-23T22:27:42","modified_gmt":"2020-11-23T22:27:42","slug":"pivots","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/michelledevon.com\/index.php\/2020\/11\/26\/pivots\/","title":{"rendered":"Pivots"},"content":{"rendered":"

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.<\/p>\n

She hated the constant trips out of town, but he had promised her that things would be changing. This was the
\nlast 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.<\/p>\n

Newly married, only seven months into the best relationship she\u2019d 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.<\/p>\n

She didn\u2019t know how long she had slept, but when the phone did ring, the sound jarred her from a deep sleep on the
\ncouch. Glancing at the clock across the room, it was now after midnight. She hurriedly answered the phone with a
\nsleepy, \u201cI already miss you.\u201d<\/p>\n

The voice on the other end was not his though. It took her several seconds to clear the fuzzy confusion in her mind and\u00a0answer the man\u2019s question, \u201cMa\u2019am, are you Mrs.Anderson?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cYes,\u201d was all she said.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

Nothing made sense. The world was moving by in super fast motion, and she was moving so slowly, almost without
\nthought, just going through the motions. Words bounced around in her mind, not whole sentences, just words,
\n\u201cRobbery… gunpoint… taxi… hospital…\u201d Today, she can\u2019t remember ever getting on the plane, nor can she remember arriving at the airport in Seattle.<\/p>\n

At the hospital, it was more of the same disjointed sentences reaching her mind, breaking through to her thoughts.
\nNothing was clear. None of the words made sense to her until she heard the one word that she knew would change
\nher life forever, \u201cDead.\u201d<\/p>\n

And then she couldn\u2019t remember anything past the floor rushing up to meet her just before the world went dark.<\/p>\n

<><><><\/p>\n

She sat on the corner of the bed watching him pack his suitcase. Though she had helped pack suitcases for him
\nbefore when he was taking a trip, she would not help him\u00a0pack 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.<\/p>\n

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, \u201cPlease, stay.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI can\u2019t,\u201d was all he said, before turning and walking out the door and out of her life.<\/p>\n

<><><><\/p>\n

These are the pivots. Those emotional times in a person\u2019s life where everything stops and turns around, swirling around\u00a0 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\u2019s funny, or ironic, rather, that one event can change the entire direction of one\u2019s life.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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\u2019t seem as \u2018bad\u2019 as someone else\u2019s. It\u2019s easy to convince yourself that you should be happy, just because your life is better than someone else\u2019s, but then you are not allowing yourself the necessary acknowledgment of the pain you have experienced.<\/p>\n

There is no right way to experience pain, and change, sometimes even a good one, can create chaos in your life.
\nYou have a right to experience the fullness of that pain. There is only one way past the pain, and that is through it\u2014
\ndead center through the middle of the excruciating moments, and then and only then can you move forward.<\/p>\n

I call these life altering events \u2018pivots\u2019 for two reasons. First, here are some excerpts from dictionary definitions of a the word \u2018pivot\u2019:<\/p>\n