Pondering "LUCK"

I've been pondering the concept of "luck" and had some sort of epiphany that I'm was dying to share. It came to me during a stream of consciousness conversation I was having with my husband. ~And by "conversation" I mean I was talking and he was nearby. {I'm pretty sure he was listening. :) }

Anyway, I had a little patch of what I was calling bad luck and having a small "woe is me" moment when BAM, an epiphany. What if what I was calling bad luck was really GOOD luck?

Huh? Bear with me...it may make sense in a minute.

So, here's what happened. First of all, you know I have the cutest car in the world (right?). I've taken great care of this little car and it's given me so much joy I can't tell you. The mileage is ultra low on the car...because since I've owned the car I haven't had to drive more than 7 miles each way to work. {I know...that's lucky.}

Anyway, recently Jordan and I have been driving to work together. That is, he had been driving me to work so we could have some time together before it was off to the races (so to speak). I really enjoyed that time together. When he drove I invariably arrived at work at least 15 minutes early. That gave us 15 minutes of people watching and chatting. Loved that! Anyway, of course, I became spoiled and really enjoyed not driving.

So, after maybe a few weeks of not actually driving {I know...again I'm lucky}, I had an early morning dentist appointment. Of course, it didn't make sense for Jordan to drive me to the dentist. Especially since I had to go to work after and the dentist office is relatively close to my office (the job I just left). But, on the day of the dentist, I gave Jordan a pouty face and said something like: "You sure you don't want to chauffer me around today?"

Of course, we all know that I was going to be driving that day. So I'm driving towards work and saying..."Don't forget to turn to go to the dentist instead of work". Then I'm saying, "Wait, was that my turn?" Of course, it was.

I missed my turn. But, it's getting into the downtown area, which means that the roads are basically a grid. So, I should be able to take the next left and then another left and I'll be headed back to the road I missed. --I would just be coming to my road from the opposite direction.

The next left turn was maybe 3 blocks down. I took it. I turned left again onto Main Street. Once I was on Main Street I entered a construction zone. The asphalt had been demolished and there were traffic cones preventing getting off the road to take another route. My poor car was bounced around like I was riding on train tracks. There were DMV trucks and workers and chaos. I remember thinking this is MAIN Street people! You can't have Main Street like this!

I was going fairly slowly to try to reduce the jarring when I came to an obstacle. It was asphalt that looked like the beginnings of a speed bump. But it wasn't going across the whole lane. It was more of a mountain. There was a DMV worker there and there was no choice but to continue. Cones to the left, nowhere to get off on the right. (Not to mention that the left side of the road was a mess as well). I looked at this and thought I have to straddle this. I don't want to go over this with my tire. Straddle was the only choice. So I straddled. Next thing I know, my car lifts in the air and bounces down. Huge loud noise and I've clearly hurt my car.

I pull off in the university driveway a few feet up and walk back to the road. The DMV worker said: "You have a low riding car". We examined the road and saw that there was a pipe that was being hidden by the asphalt. The pipe broke and so did my car. We watched several other vehicles straddle the obstacle. (All of them were either vans or SUVs.) "What should I have done differently?" I asked Mr. DMV guy. He said there was nothing you could do. You couldn't go over it with your tire. You had to straddle it.

Long story short, husband had to come to get me and take me to work after my dentist! And he took care of getting the car towed for repairs.

Yadda, yadda, yadda, the car is still in the shop (1 month later).

So, I was pouting about the string of events that led me to the accident and summed them up like so:

1. I missed my turn! If I hadn't missed my turn I wouldn't have had to backtrack and get on the Hotel California road called Main Street.
2. Husband didn't drive me to work (in his SUV). Plus, if he had driven, I'm sure he wouldn't have missed the turn.
3. I'm not sure what three is...but I'm sure there were even more things that led to this unfortunate chain of events. Perhaps the moral of the story is don't go to the dentist.

Now, HERE'S THE EPIPHANY. What if this wasn't "bad luck". What if it was "good luck" that I wasn't hurt? What if this was somehow a detour that saved me from some other more awful accident that we can't predict. What if there is another lesson in this experience that I need to learn?

I'm actually pretty sure there was at least one lesson that was made clear to me. --But I'm not ready to share it yet. --I will though. (Soon).

Hope you are having more good luck than not!