Finding My Purpose in the Most Unexpected of Journeys

Where are we going?  How do we get there?  Why are we going there?  Are we there yet? 

These are the questions I asked my parents whenever we were on a road trip when I was a child.  Truthfully, I don’t think they ever answered.  I’m sure most of us have asked these questions as children and heard them from our own.  We don’t think much of them because they are such a common part of travel.  So, why then, did this randomly pop into my head this weekend?

I began asking myself these questions late the other night.  I thought about how many times I had asked them as a child, and yet, late at night as an adult, they take on a different meaning.  These are the questions I have found myself asking at various times throughout my life.  Lately, they have been at the forefront of my thoughts, but I am not on a road trip…

I pose these questions because my life looks completely different than the one I’d always imagined in my head.  I’ve always been independent, footloose and fancy free if you will.  I’d always imagined that I would find my special someone to spend my life with, but we would be just two because I never really thought of myself as mother material.  If someone had told me that I would be a single parent raising my deceased husband’s daughter, I would have told them that they were crazy, and yet, here I am. 

Where am I going?  How do I get there?  Why am I going there?  Am I there yet?  Why am I here?  What is my purpose?  Do you hear them?  The faint echoes of childhood voices…  I hear them.

I don’t know what the cosmos had in mind for me, but I do know that the cosmos saw fit to bring me to my special someone.  We had a wonderful life together for almost ten years.  What started out as a friendship over cigarettes, frappes, and diving turned into the greatest love of my life.  What’s interesting is that that greatest love wasn’t what I thought it would be.  Grubby wasn’t the greatest love of my life, but he gave me the greatest love of my life when he left Abby in my care. 

Abby came to us in June of 2019, when her mother passed away.  She was twelve years old – a scared little thing, who had little life experience outside of the home.  She never walked to school, spent the night with friends, or rode her bike around the neighborhood until the streetlights came on – all things that I did often by that age.  Now, she was faced with moving to a new state, to a home that she had only visited several weeks out of every year. 

Grubby was terrified of being a full-time dad!  He was always the fun parent, and now, he had to be the responsible parent.  I told him I would help him, but that I wouldn’t do it for him.  He did amazing!  Abby began to play outside.  She began to smile.  She learned to ride the bus to school, and to do her own laundry.  She began to develop some independence of her own.  We always tucked her in at night and made sure she was up for school the next day.  After almost a year with us, Abby asked me to adopt her.  I told her that we needed to talk to her dad about it.  Six months before Grubby died, we started the adoption process. 

Today, Abby has a strength about her that amazes me.  She has been through more than any fourteen-year-old should ever have to go through, but she keeps going, even if she doesn’t know where or when, she keeps going.  She is wise beyond her years, but with the innocence of a child.  She is the very best part of her father.  She knows how to travel, how to enjoy moments, how to laugh…  She knows how to love…

Although I may never know my purpose in this world, or why things happen the way they do, I do know that for some reason unbeknownst to any of us, the cosmos put Abs and me in each other’s lives.  I know that I have a responsibility to keep going where her father left off, so I do… because she is the greatest love of my life and there, I find my answers.