The Shift

This blog is meant to be funny and entertaining, with a dash of witty sarcasm. I know that most of my posts will be exactly that.

However, that being said, it's also a way for me to tell my personal story.  In some selfish way, I hope it helps somebody out there...

This past summer, I hit a low point in my life. My mom was sick, and my brother had life-saving surgery (in fact, as they were wheeling my brother into surgery, I asked the surgeon to wait for my mom and sister, who were at a clinic across the street getting my mom's cancer-filled lung drained).  His stern response was, "your brother needs surgery NOW.  I am waiting for no one".

In the exhaustive aftermath of all this stress, my knee-jerk reaction was to completely retreat.  I wanted to be by myself.  I asked my boys to quit sports for a while, and I decided to abandon the thing I love, the thing that gives me the most joy, and the thing that relieves the most stress.  I decided to stop writing.

Luckily, my boys have friends and coaches who are much wiser than me, and persuaded me to AT LEAST let them start the football season.

Payton, who had never really played the sport, met new friends and great coaches who mentored him all season. I saw a smile return to his face as he discovered a new-found confidence and showed me how "buff" (we can use this term loosely) he was getting from all the football conditioning.

Mason went back to football and had the best season of his life.  Not because they won the championship (although that helped), but because he had so much fun in the countless hours he got to hang out with a group of kids and coaches that he loves dearly.  When I gave a speech at their football banquet a few days ago, I got choked up when I thanked a particular coach who convinced me that taking football away from Mason during this difficult time would be a big mistake.

And as for me, in the month or two since I publicly declared I stopped writing, I've been asked to write for two different sites, got approached by an entrepreneur who wants me to help promote his new football app, and got invited to speak at the Shelton Rotary about my sports writing.

And then yesterday, in the strangest twist of all, I was notified that I was selected as the "12th Woman of the Week" by Star 101.5 and KOMO 4 News.  They want to do an interview with me to "share my story".

I guess what I'm trying to say.....is that you can't let yourself get so caught up in the sorrows and "what ifs" of life, that you decide to stop living yourself.  When I tried to walk down this lonely path, God (or my dad, or whatever force it was), gently turned my shoulders in the opposite direction.  

I hope when this happens to you, as it eventually does to all of us, that you will listen to the whispers of the universe, or feel the taps on your shoulder, before you (as I certainly would have), run yourself smack dab into the middle of a brick wall.