Setbacks or Silver Linings?

A few weeks ago, I was on the Kitsap Peninsula in the middle of a stretch of time I had been genuinely looking forward to. A good friend had promised to come spend the afternoon. I had already mapped out the afternoon in my head, all the spots I had discovered, the places I wanted to share.

Then came the anticipated text. Plans had changed. Eye-roll!

This particular friend has a well-earned reputation for last-minute cancellations, and there was a time when that text would have sent me straight into a full-on spiral. Wounded. Offended. Ready to make a very thorough case for why this was completely unacceptable. But that version of me has been retired for a while now, and honestly, she was exhausting.

So, undaunted, I packed a picnic and headed to a beach I had been meaning to explore. I thought, let's just see how the afternoon unfolds.

It was a warm, clear afternoon. I found a spot, opened some bubbly, and was enjoying the view when I noticed the roofline of a house up on the bluff above. I recognized it. It sat next door to dear friends of mine who had been away for months while their home was being remodeled.

Well, I might as well go check on the progress.

I wound my way up the road and was peering through the windows of the remodel when a woman came across the expansive yard, understandably curious about what I was doing there. I introduced myself, explained the situation, and we started to talk.

Her name was Joni. She was 86, energetic, and sharp, with sparkling blue eyes and a quick wit that kept the conversation real. Before I had any idea how it happened, I was sitting with her on the bluff overlooking Puget Sound, a glass of wine in hand, talking the way you do when you have known someone for years.

She had, unexpectedly, lost her husband of 46 years the previous December. The neighbors around her were loving and supportive, including my friends who had been gone for months, but life without him was lonely in a way that visits and casseroles can only do so much to touch. She had not been out for dinner since last November.

I invited her to join me the next evening.

We found a little place near the water and ordered clams and fish and chips, split a bottle of wine, and talked for hours. She was funny, warm, and sometimes sad as she shared her true self. And I was entirely myself. No pretense, just two women sharing real-life stories.

On the drive home, I thought about how close I had come to letting the previous afternoon fall apart. How easy it would have been to stay in the disappointment, drag it around for the rest of the day, and miss everything that came after.

We are wired, a lot of us, to treat a setback as a verdict. The plan fell through, so the day is ruined. The door closed, so the story is over. And in that moment of deciding the whole thing is a loss, we stop noticing what is actually available.

The open afternoon. The beach we had not yet visited. The woman on the bluff, with 86 years of living and absolutely no interest in wasting a good bottle of wine on small talk.

That pattern shows up everywhere once you start looking for it. In relationships that end and feel like failure rather than redirection. In transitions that feel like loss rather than permission. In the closed door we stand in front of, staring, while the open window behind us goes unnoticed.

Joni did not know I was coming. I did not know she was there. Neither of us planned any of it. And yet there we were, on a bluff above Puget Sound, splitting a bottle of wine on a regular Sunday afternoon like we had been doing it for years.

I would not have traded it for anything. This was the silver lining in my perceived setback.

Is there a setback in your life right now that might actually be asking you to look a little further down the road? What might you be missing? I'd love to hear about it. Hit reply and share yours. Sometimes that's where the conversation begins.