Just yesterday I wrote about life never going the way we planned, except it was in the context of three individuals in the world of sports. It made me think about my own life, and absolutely no part of it is anything like what I dreamed it would be. Take the past year, for instance.

It’s been ten months since I left my job at our local community college where I tutored students in writing. Since that time I have been navigating the uncharted waters of being with my husband of almost 40 years, 24-hours-a-day. It’s been challenging for both of us, and I laugh when I remember a couple of sayings within my fellowship that help keep me sane: “The Steps keep us from committing suicide and the Traditions keep us from committing homicide,” and “One day at a time,” both of which are true.

I am, and will always be, ever so grateful that I was able to walk away from the ranks of the gainfully employed at a relatively young age. In retrospect, though, I should have thought things through a little more thoroughly before submitting my resignation. I just assumed that life would be pretty much like it was back in the day, before kids. My naïveté still surprises me.

Immediately after I retired last year, we took a month-long camping trip out west to Colorado Springs and had a sort of honeymoon period before launching full bore into living together again. We returned home just in time to welcome our daughter and her family back to Hopkinsville. The Army had kept them away for nearly four years. They were the reason we even settled in Kentucky in the first place (they both were assigned to Fort Campbell), and all of a sudden we went from being scot-free to having our kids and grandkids living just down the street. I am not complaining. I’m just saying it was no longer just about us.

A whole lot has happened in the past ten months. For one thing, our kids are in the process of establishing the first microbrewery in Hopkinsville, and the road (that we find ourselves on with them) has not been easy. First there was the daily anguish and gnashing of teeth of what turned out to be their very successful Kickstarter campaign. Thirty days of being on the “will we make it or will we not?” rollercoaster smack dab in between Thanksgiving and Christmas was something I would prefer not to ever repeat. I was so thankful when that was over!

And now, in addition to dealing with mounds of paperwork to satisfy city, state, and federal regulations, they are renovating and upgrading an almost-100-year-old building–doing a lot of the work themselves–and there have been twice many steps backwards as forwards. But that’s entrepreneurship. It’s an education. And actually, all of this is being done on the side… they’ve both got other things going on. He’s still full-time Army and she’s a full-time mom who homeschools, teaches yoga, takes graduate classes, and is a Girl Scout leader. It’s crazy now, but in the end, it will all be worth it. Hopkinsville Brewing Company will hopefully be open by early this summer.

Because they live just a few houses away and the fact that their parents are burning the candle at both ends, I see two of our three grandchildren nearly every day, and I love it! I lived in the same house as my mother’s parents until age seven, and to this day I still have the fondest, most loving memories of both my grandma and grandpa. Nothing compares to the love between grandparent and grandchild, and I love that I get to be a Mimi. I’m grateful that I have the wisdom and the foresight to know that these days will never pass again and to appreciate the time we have together. Bobby’s big double-digit birthday is coming up in June, and Maeby will be 8 in September. He’s already playing travel baseball. Pretty soon they’ll be teenagers, and we all know what happens then.

I expect by that time we’ll have traded in our 5th wheel for some sort of smaller, self-contained rig; the jury’s still deliberating on whether it will be what I want (a Class B) or what Dave wants (something bigger) and we’ll be on the road to somewhere, at least in the wintertime. The older we get, the less we want to deal with cold and snow and yuck weather. I prefer that things get easier the older I get, which is why I want a Class B. I want a smaller rig that would make it easy to explore national and state parks and he wants “comfort,” which comes with bigger units. There will be time to hash it out.

In the interim, we’re planning to spend the next few years getting away from time to time in what we’ve got, including wintering in Texas where our youngest grandchild lives. Our older RV is big and has got all the comforts of home, which is exactly what we wanted when we bought it in ’06 and thought we’d be full-time RVers for a while. That’s not exactly what happened; grandchildren did instead. So we just take them with us, and when we do we’re REALLY grateful for the space the 5th wheel affords.

It’s good to have plans, but it’s better to be flexible and accept life as it unfolds. Like most everyone, there have been certain unplanned experiences in the past that I wish didn’t happen, but they did. And there were probably at least twice as many—if not more—that were over-the-top wonderful that I also didn’t plan on happening, but did. Mine has been a fairly fantastic life.

I’ve finally realized that “acceptance” doesn’t mean we have to like a particular situation; we just have to acknowledge that it’s different than what we expected and go on. So what if my retirement isn’t exactly what I thought it would be? In actuality, it’s way better! All in all, life is, too, when I remember to live in the present, one day at a time, and enjoy the journey.