A Box of Chocolates

You never know what you’re gonna get—almost

Note: You can click on the underlined words for more detail.

I think I might be Forrest Gump.

You know his iconic line, “Life is like a box of chocolates; you never know what you’re gonna get.” I can honestly say that metaphor is the story of my life. Very few of the major life changes in my past 70 years on Earth were my idea. Most of the time, they seemed to just happen.

My early teens were shaped by the death of my father, then a few years later by being part of a blended family when my Mother remarried a man who had two kids of his own. In college, I just happened to be at the right place at the right time to get into broadcasting. I spent almost thirty of my 44 years in radio and TV as an on-air weather forecaster, a career I never planned for.

In fact, three of the jobs during those four decades came without even applying for them; in each case a future boss simply happened to see my work and gave me a call. That meant several unintended moves to new and previously unknown cities. I ended up living, working and making friends in some places I had never even thought of visiting before—San Angelo and Austin, Wichita, Seattle and Atlanta. Upon retirement, my wife and I moved to Nashville, simply because that happened to be where our grandkids lived, and we wanted to be a bigger part of their lives. Their parents, our son and daughter-in-law, were adopting a deaf boy from China and were awaiting their turn to travel there and bring him home. In the interim we became involved in our new community and made numerous friends. Finally, it seemed, I might be able to live out the rest of my life according to my own plans.

Then something else out of my control happened: COVID-19.

My family was fortunate. Our encounters with the virus were mild compared to some. But COVID changed our lives; it is at least partially responsible for our next totally unexpected move. Before our grandson could travel here, China closed its borders to adoptive families. Now, the longer he stays in China and the longer he is without education, the more support he will need to acclimate to his new home here in the U.S. Our son and daughter-in-law began looking for deaf schools around the country with the intention of living near one that can provide the resources the boy needs once he arrives. Finding a good one in Vancouver, Washington, they sold their Nashville home and made the cross-country trek.

Washington isn’t foreign to our family. My wife grew up in the Evergreen State and her siblings live there. I spent 17 years of my life in the Pacific Northwest and our kids were born there. Our daughter and her husband live there and we vacation there every summer. So once again, our life plans have been overruled. We realized that it makes perfect sense for us to pull up stakes, and so we too are preparing to move to Vancouver.

But rather than becoming exasperated with a cosmos that apparently has a better idea than we do of how and where we should live, there is an element of excitement. That’s because all our previous moves have something in common. As unplanned and as upending as they were, they took us to better opportunities. Once on the other side, we could see that it was God’s hand guiding us, and there were never any regrets.

Will this time be any different? Honestly, we won’t know for sure until it happens. Moving is disruptive. It’s costly. It leaves behind what is known and takes a leap of faith toward the unknown. It gives up the seen for the unseen. Face it; it’s uncomfortable and I don’t like it.

But I guess I’m in good company. Recently I heard a story about John Kavanaugh, the famous ethicist, who traveled to Calcutta to find Mother Teresa. When he met her, he asked her to pray for him. “What do you want me to pray for?” she asked. “Clarity,” he answered. “Pray that I have clarity.”

Mother Teresa replied, “No, I will not do that. Clarity is the last thing you are clinging to and you need to let go of it.” Surprised, Kavanaugh protested. “I’m looking for the same kind of clarity you have,” he told her. Mother Teresa laughed and said: “I have never had clarity; what I have always had is trust. So I will pray that you trust God.”

I have no clarity about this next move. I’m nervous about it, and I have plenty of reasons to be. But I have more reasons to trust God—that He will be with us, that He’ll guide us, and use us, and eventually confirm, like so many times before, that we are where we He wants us to be.

Forrest Gump has another famous line: “Stupid is as stupid does.” I think about that one a lot, because frankly I’m often afraid of making a stupid mistake. But if I’ve learned anything from all my previous moves over the decades, it is this: there’s nothing stupid about trusting God.

So pass me that box of chocolates, will ya? We may not know what we’re gonna get, but whatever it is, it’s likely to be exactly what we need.

© Nick Walker 2023