Tuesday mornings, I meet with members of the Deer Isle Writers’ Group. We gather at 9:00 am at the home of one of our writers. We chat and catch up with each other for about a half hour and then spend an hour and a half writing, often in response to a suggested “prompt.” At eleven, we regather and read aloud what we have written, inviting comments and critique. The prompt for this last Tuesday was “if only …”

This what I wrote …

If only she had placed her foot just a little bit to the right …
If only she hadn’t been wearing the Birkenstocks …
If only she had agreed to switch places after she told me she couldn’t see her feet …
If only I had waited until our son could help me move the bridges into the woods …
If only COVID had not meant she was teaching her last semester remotely here in
Maine instead of in person in Iowa …

If only I had not built the bridges in the first place …
If only I had not the built the trail that required the bridges in the first place …
If only we had not bought the home in Blue Hill with seven acres on which to build a
trail in the first place …
If only we had never lived in Maine and would not be drawn back to it …
If only we had never lived …

“If only” is a rabbit hole of despair. Each “if only” wishes away a little piece of my life, a little piece of me. And as the “if only’s” multiply, gratitude gives way to bitterness, anticipation is overshadowed by regret, and my once hot-blooded life turns colorless and listless while my soul feeds only on itself.

She had the better idea. Almost immediately, she began making a list, a long list, of all the good things that resulted from her accident. It was not to ignore the loss or deny the grief, but to embrace her life as it is, as it now is, because of the accident. Her list includes Jeanine, the ICU nurse who lives on our road, and Jeanine’s parents who live on our road, too, and who are now, because of Jeanine and because of the accident, counted among our friends. Her list includes tangible expressions of care from new friends in our Deer Isle church and the Deer Isle writers’ group. Her list includes a September retirement party in Iowa with both of us now able to attend which would not have happened had the accident not cancelled her May Iowa trip.< And her list includes me, shopping and cooking and washing dishes, doing laundry and prepping her shower and managing her meds, loving her in new ways because this is what it is.

“It is what it is.” It’s one of our favorite phrases. “It is what it is” is an antidote to “if only,” said not with begrudging resignation, but with clear-eyed honesty and bold acceptance. “It is what it is” embraces the here and now because it is here and now and because it is the only here and now we will ever have.

“It is what it is” is a conscious and even joyful choice for faith over despair, for hope over resignation, for life over something that may resemble life but is mere emptiness.

It is what it is … and it is good!