Sometimes life just doesn’t go as planned.  Yesterday, on my way to a meeting, I got stuck behind a farm vehicle rambling along ridiculously slow with a fishtailing wagon on back, making it impossible to pass.  Why does this always seem to happen when I’m on a schedule and I have to be somewhere at a set time?  It’s part of living in the country, I guess.  At first annoyed—because who likes having their schedule interrupted?—I decided to accept my new reality and enjoy the slowed pace.

I’m the biggest bird brain around and I had never seen this one.  So I started going through my mental bird book and ruled out every Wisconsin bird I knew.  Nope.  None of those.  I wondered if it was a baby Baltimore Oriole because of its small size, black wings, and bright orange feathers.  But it had a creamy white belly, which orioles don’t have.  I just sat in the moment—life changed by cancellation of appointment—and enjoyed the bird perched with stunning song.  Later, I got out my bird book and identified it as a male American Redstart, a warbler type.  WOW!  A bird I’ve never seen with a gorgeous voice I’ve never heard.  All because of a little life change.

Here I am, looking back on altered life plans, some by choice, some by circumstance.  It’s true for most, isn’t it?  Either way, by choice or circumstances, change happens.  Sometimes we welcome it.  Sometimes we don’t.  It’s the unwelcomed changes—those that force us out of our comfort zone of familiarity or expectations—that tend to grow us the most, if we allow.  When circumstances like farm vehicles blocking our path or people canceling our plans come along, we are faced with fuming or accepting the change with open hearts and minds.  There’s always something new to learn—always something new to experience.  And perhaps, changes are exactly what we need to open us up to possibilities we would never have noticed or pursued otherwise.

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