They say there are an infinite number of versions of our lives.
When my son was small, he fell out of a window. He was only fourteen months and it was a second story window.
Maybe there is a version of my life where I ran down to find him broken, and I was never well again. Maybe I never had another child. Maybe I took my own life. I was so young.
Maybe there is a version where he died, but I healed and went on to champion safer windows in apartment buildings, so no other young mother had to go through what I went through.
Time flew, and life rushed forward, for better or worse. Places and times I’d rather forget. Maybe there is a version where I had to live in that hell hole of a trailer for the rest of my life. Maybe there is a version where I took the kids and ran.
When I was fifteen, I wanted to be a missionary. I had found a place which would pay for all of my training. I almost went. Maybe there is a version of me somewhere, with a covered head, humbly bowed, wearing skirts to my ankles. Before I discovered dragons and the Internet and a world that didn’t fit neatly between the pages of a King James Bible.
But this is the world where angels took my son and guided him safely into the grass. There wasn’t a scrape on him. I cried more than he did, and put him to my breast and had three more children.
This is the world where the neighborhood around me is beautiful and the kids and I can walk to the library and there is forgiveness and grace for the past mistakes.
This is the world where my husband looks and me and nods seriously and says, hey, you’re doing a good job taking care of the new place.
Maybe there are infinite versions of the universe, and many, many versions of my life.
But I get to choose which one this is.