The Perfect Tattoo

          So, a few years back in the middle of my “storm”, I got a tattoo… I gave it a lot of thought because, well, it was going to be permanent.  It would be a sunflower because sunflowers represent happiness for me… It would have a bee flying into the sunflower to exemplify the obvious, Be Happy!  I wanted my sunflower to be a hybrid of a sunflower and lotus flower.  I love lotus flowers…out of the murky water grows this magnificent blossom!  And…I wanted there to be an Om symbol incorporated in there somewhere – very yogi. Oh, and I wanted it to be small.
          I met with the tattoo artist and we talked about my ideas while he created a rough sketch. When I left, I was satisfied with the design.  But when I arrived for my tattoo, he’d come up with something entirely different and much larger than we’d discussed.  Well, I was, I’ll admit, a little freaked out, but then I realized that it would be the perfect tattoo, a theme for my life going forward!
          Because, divorce was certainly not what I’d imagined for my life.  Meet high school sweetheart, check.  Fall in love, check.  Go to college and get a degree, check.  Get married, check. Get a Job, check.  Buy a home, check.  Have kids, check, check. That’s how it’s supposed to go, right?  It’s the natural progression.  But Divorce, not a part of the plan.  So, the tattoo was perfect, not at all what I had planned for or expected, but absolutely perfect nonetheless!  Because life doesn’t always work out the way you imagine.  There are NO guarantees. 
          We all have our own path with detours along the way and I’m discovering that it’s the detours that give us strength and build our character…make us who we are meant to be.  Divorce is one of those detours and I am left to figure out where I want to go from here.  And the good albeit terrifying news is that there’s no road map.  I get to create my own!