What major historical events do you remember? That’s the site prompt for today and it’s a very good one. This topic is endless. Where were you when the Challenger exploded? How did you feel when the wall fell? What were you doing on that September morning in 2001? Were you afraid? Were you hopeful when (insert name here) was elected? Kennedy, the Boston Red Sox, the moon landing (assuming it wasn’t filmed on a sound stage), Vietnam, the list could go on and on. Sometimes, these events change us and provide the knives with which we use to carve up our lives. Did we become different people on September 12th? Or the day after Hurricane Katrina?

The events of our lives aren’t what the hosting website means, aren’t “major historical events,” but maybe they’re even more important to us as a means of delineation. I changed when my dad died, my wedding day, when I had my first son, when our house was swallowed up by a flood. The transformation seems immediate and inevitable now. At the time, I only felt confused and rudderless. Who knew where I would eventually surface, and who would I surface as?

These prompts are sometimes silly and not worth our time, but others, like today, can lead us by the hand into the stories of our lives. We get so busy, so distracted, so overwhelmed, we can become so focused on today that we forget to stop for a second, breathe and look around. Staring at the individual puzzle pieces, we can forget the entire picture we’re creating.

I think we forget a lot. (A lot = often AND many things.) Our purpose, or the meaning of it all, can get forgotten in the day to day, and it is integral that we ask ourselves the question, “Where am I?” Who am I?” “What is happening here?”

These major historical events, as well as the major personal events, give us reason to pause. Maybe we regressed in moments, maybe we lost ourselves, maybe we fell and couldn’t get up. Or maybe we grew, discovered something about what mattered, maybe we did get up. Probably, these events have some component of everything. We are lost, afraid, hopeful and inspired. We are broken and healed. These lives are complex, complicated, they aren’t ever easy to stuff in just one box.

Where is all this coming from, and why am I writing about this today (I hardly ever use the prompts)? In the circles of my life, the rings of people that surround me, right now there is quite a bit of pain, suffering, uncertainty, fear, loss, frustration, and confusion. These are words that can feel like cages, words that shrink our perspectives, words that close us off to ourselves and others.

But if we remember these major events in our pasts, we find that these words, if they can be integrated and transcended, have provided the soil for the most important transformations. And if it happened then, it might just happen again now.

At night, I lay next to the Angel and reach my foot out to find hers under the covers. Usually my feet are cold and rough and she is cozy warm and smooth, and she feels nice on my skin. But I think the much more important thing I find is that she is there, that I am not alone. These events cause us to stick ourselves out, and finding another’s foot, hand, heart, presence, finding we’re not alone, we have not been abandoned, is the most wonderful reality – and that reality can give the comfort we need as the storm is happening.