Unexpected

Last night I got yet another unexpected curveball thrown into my life. A good one - but a curveball nonetheless.

After FHE I checked my email, and my eyes welled up at the name of an email sender - a dear guy friend / former flame who had been a big part of my life from fall 2000 until June 2007, when he saved me from my ill-fated road trip (the one when my car died in the middle of the desert? Yeah, he and his girlfriend just happened to be moving to Utah the next day, so I rode up to Provo with them). I haven't heard a peep from him since he dropped me off that night - par for the course when guy friends are in serious relationships, but I've missed him nonetheless.

I had to laugh when he kicked off the short email with "Not sure if you remember me, but we used to be good friends." I was like, not remember you?!?!? Not possible! You don't become close friends with someone for that many years across that many adventures (in the course of our always-long-distance relationship he moved from Utah to Iowa to California to Nevada, and then back to Utah again, while I did my own shifting among Utah, California and Washington). And, being the sap that I am, I seriously shed a few tears of joy. I absolutely love him and am just beyond thrilled to hear from him again. I get like that with pretty much all of my dear friends, though. Losing touch with my friends is like losing a limb, seriously.

Anyways, it just makes me bemusedly shake my head. My life has taken so many unexpected twists and turns in the last several years, but in the last year in particular. People drop out of my life or drop back into my life in ways I've not anticipated - but somehow it seems to be a good thing.

It's humbling and yet liberating to realize that I can't control my life any more than I can control the weather. All I can do is to be happy in the sunshine and the rain, because they all bring beauty and joy in the long run. It's all about appreciating the dark colors and the bright threads in the tapestry that is life.