Sometimes Life sends you into a Ditch!

I was driving along on a snow covered road so I was a bit cautious when I suddenly hit an icy patch in the road. I let off the gas and tried to steer my car to stay on the road. I swerved left and right and slid all over the road until inevitably I almost slowly slid neatly into the ditch. I was stuck and could not open the driver's side door. In the moment my car slid into the ditch I actually said to myself "I'm going into the ditch." It was like an acceptance of what was happening. It was beyond my control at that point. As I sat there in the ditch I had the realization that sometimes life throws you into a ditch. It happens suddenly, unexpectedly. I didn't have the choice to go into the ditch but I did have choices on what to do next. I could sit there and cry and perhaps wait for someone to come along and help me. I could climb over the obstacle of the console to the passenger door and get out of the car. Maybe just leave the car in the ditch and walk home. I ultimately called my husband who knows someone with a tow truck. I also reached out to my sister who lives thousands of miles away and we talked about how life sometimes throws you into a ditch. How we can't always control the things that happen in our lives but how we can control how we handle things, how we react. Being in that ditch made me pause, made me contemplate why I was there at that moment. Maybe I needed to slow down in my life. Maybe I needed to lean on someone in my life for help. Maybe the tow truck driver needed the money. My sister and I joked about how we should write a book about dealing with this messy, scary, beautiful thing we call life. Now we have started this Artful Soul Sisters blog to share our thoughts and experiences.