Copyrighted by Lorna Tedder. Originally published in Third Degree of Truth.
Though most people I see who are given second chances somehow manage to blow them in a big way, one of my all-time favorite work friends isn’t one of them. I haven’t seen her in years—we no longer work together and her life is very different now—but her story has a happy ending, and it was all about priorities.
We’d crossed paths many times in the 90’s. She had been an employee at a medical firm where I tried to sign on as a patient but couldn’t. I vaguely remember that she and she alone tried to help me when I was in extreme physical pain. Everyone else just shrugged or stared.
She had a good life with all the material possessions and the career and everything was just fine until…someone smashed both her and her car. It was a near- miss, one that put her in the hospital and left her with a tangled mass instead of an automobile.
She didn’t die. But that was the moment that she was reborn.
When she got out of the hospital and the other driver’s insurance company had paid her hospital bills, settled on her car, and paid various other damages, she had a nest egg and a second chance at life. She paid off all her bills, quit her job, bought a home, and started fresh, which was when we met.
She worked for me for a year, and she remains one of the best employees I ever trained, and by far, the most positive-minded colleague I’ve ever had.
She told me once over lunch that her near-miss had caused her to re-evaluate everything in her life and leave behind all the things that weren’t working for her. She chose to live with intention after that.
Promotions. A new husband. A new family. A new home. Lots of loving friends.
Quickly excelling in our career field, she was poised to take over the whole organization (well, eventually) when she did something that most of our colleagues did not understand. She quit.
She decided to stay home with their small children and be a mommy. The opportunity came up and she took it. It was what she wanted. She didn’t stay where it might have made the most financial sense—she grabbed her priorities by the reins and jumped on for the ride.
She got her happy ending because she took advantage of her second chance at life, walked away from every- thing that had held her back, and launched herself directly at what made her happiest.
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