IT'S NOT THE
PLANNED DESTINATION,
BUT IT'S JUST FINE

Journal of Healing – July 9, 2003

By Mary Koch

Writer Anne Tyler, in her novel "Back When We Were Grownups," grabbed me immediately with this opening sentence:

"Once upon a time, there was a woman who discovered she had turned into the wrong person."

I identified with Tyler's protagonist, Rebecca, who is in her 50s and reflecting on her life, which hasn’t turned out as she’d planned.

I guess we do that in our 50s. As I near the end of that decade in my life, I find myself looking around with some amazement at where I live, with whom I live and what I’m doing. I ask myself, "How did I get here? This wasn’t part of the plan!"

Another writer, Anne Lamott, suggests: "If you want to make God laugh, tell her your plans."

* * *

I'M NOT SURE I had plans for my life as much as visions: Wispy kinds of visions filled with damp, salty Puget Sound air; the rich green of mossy trees, the vibrant energy of many people in a big city.

So here I am in a sun-filled, arid, earth-colored valley, populated by more sagebrush than people. I’m a cedar shake, A-frame cabin kind of person, but I live in a white stucco, flat-roofed, pseudo-Spanish-mission style house.

I love live theater, symphony concerts, museums and galleries. I like to worship in churches so large my voice gets lost amidst a vast congregation singing hymns. Here I worship in a small church, and sometimes I wonder if I’m the only one singing.

My visions included a long career in the noisy, bustling, sometimes contentious bump and grind of a newspaper office. But here I am in a quiet house on a quiet street, gently helping my husband move through the day, from bed to wheelchair, wheelchair to bed.

I’m living with the "who" I’d planned, but even that doesn’t fit the vision. I imagined John gracefully sweeping down ski runs well into his 70s, maybe even his 80s.

Every once in a while I ask myself, "Do I really fit here, or am I some kind of stranger in a strange land?"

* * *

LAST WEEK, John and I drove the 30 miles to Brewster for a concert at St. James Episcopal Church. It’s a lovely building, a Tudor cathedral in miniature, constructed around 1914 as the railroad line was being laid up the Okanogan Valley.

There’s romance to this church. Members told us the stone mason came to town on his honeymoon and stayed for months to build the church.

The concert was intimate, not only because of the small church and audience. Singer-songwriters David Boman and Paul Mannino, through their music, revealed much about their lives, their families, their struggles and their faith. The lowering sun poured through stained glass windows, bathing both singers and audience in changing patterns of color more creative than any human technician could devise. When had I ever been to a more splendid concert?

We drove home at dusk, a fading light silhouetting the solid, comfortable strength of the mountains that line the Okanogan. A refrain from one of Paul’s songs echoed in my mind and heart as I drove: "I wouldn’t be here without you."

The last line of Anne Tyler’s book also grabs me. Rebecca is watching a home movie of her family and suddenly sees herself: "On the screen, Rebecca’s face appeared, merry and open and sunlit, and she saw that she really had been having a wonderful time."