L is for Lucky

"Today is the luckiest day of the year, astrologically," my sister read from her iPad over breakfast yesterday. "Jupiter is in alignment with the sun," she continued. "But you have to lean into it, it won't just happen," she finished.

"That sounds great!" I said, and our conversation wandered on to other things.

Later in the day, though, it felt for all the world that good luck was the opposite of the prevailing vibe when my sister got stuck in gridlocked traffic just a mile from home. (Afterwards, we discovered that it was the president here in the neighborhood to meet with Atlanta voters ahead of his commencement speech at Morehead University.) When at last she arrived from the grocery store, it seemed impossible that we would be able to make it to the graduation ceremony on time. 

My brother-in-law and his mom had gone on ahead, and my sister dashed upstairs, threw on her dress, and grabbed her cosmetic bag. I punched the address into my phone and took the wheel. Heidi navigated while my sister did her makeup in the backseat and my niece handed over the jewelry she had gathered. 

At first, our route on the map app was crisscrossed with red and yellow lines of congestion, predicting that we would be 14 minutes late. But as we drove, the road cleared before us and our arrival time ticked earlier and earlier.

"It says 4:10 now," Heidi reported as we made it through a light without having to stop. "4:08," she updated us seconds later as we rounded a traffic circle. "4:05 now."

"Is that the church right there?" I pointed ahead of us, and it was. One more traffic circle and a left up the driveway. Courtney and Annabelle leapt from the car just as they were closing the doors to the vestibule. It was 4:02. 

We had made it. 

And that was lucky.

Life Lesson: You'll know how it was meant to be, hear the signs, and know they're speaking to you, to you. ~10,000 Maniacs "These Are the Days"