If / Then

On Thursday night we went to a Broadway show. Let me just pause to say that we hardly ever attend these kinds of shows and I am so grateful when we do go because I LOVE them. These tickets came available the day before and I was able to get them for us--I was very excited! 

We went to see If / Then and I'd only recognized the name because it had won a Tony (more than 1? I'm not sure!) and I thought I remembered hearing that Idina Menzel was in the NYC cast. Other than that I knew nothing. I crossed my fingers that it'd be good.

Well, it certainly did not disappoint and I'd highly recommend seeing it if it is being performed near you. I'd love to see it again sometime because I liked it so much!

The main character was Elizabeth and the show parallels two lives based upon if one decided A or B. It makes one think about what could have been if only ____ had happened or if only a particular decision had been reversed. 

For me, I am plagued by if & then scenarios. In terms of my freak ski accident, I often think what if we'd eaten lunch somewhere else? What if we'd stayed to relax our legs a little longer at lunch? What if we hadn't stopped to take that panoramic photo? What if I'd said I didn't want to go on that run? What if I'd skied faster and was away from where that out-of-control skier would land?

And while I've been able to accept every one of those, there is one that still haunts me almost 2 years later...why when my mother-in-law, who was scheduled to watch our girls more than half our time in Telluride that year, was discovered on 2/18/14 to have just fallen and broken her hip, did I scramble and beg others to fill in watching the girls so that I could still go? Why?? Why??? Why???? And why was it so easy to get them to say yes? If I'd had to stay back in Ohio, there's no way I would've been in the wrong spot at the wrong instant. God was whispering for me to stay at home. And I didn't even pause long enough to listen.

But it did happen. And I've conquered 2 years of hell. And I've become a better person for it. 

And how very ironic that exactly 2 years to the day from when those fateful plans were reconfigured, what are the odds I'd be sitting in a theater enjoying a show about what if...?

If? Then?

There is no doubt that every single second of our lives is pre-planned. Nothing that happens is by chance.