Time Warp Tuesday: Luck

Let’s do the Time Warp again!

Welcome to the twenty-ninth installment of my blog hop/writing exercise called Time Warp Tuesday!

For those not familiar with Time Warp Tuesdays, which I host on the 2nd Tuesday of every month, here is the background of how and why I came up with the idea. If you are here to participate and link up, you can do so with the Linky Tools at the end of this post (or if you have any difficulty, you can share the link to your post in the comment section).

The gist of Time Warp Tuesday is to revisit and share some of our favorite blog entries from our archives and reflect on our journeys since we wrote them.

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The theme for this month’s Time Warp Tuesday is: Luck

March is a month that includes St. Patrick’s Day celebrations, especially in the “South Side Irish” neighborhood where my family lives here in Chicago. The symbols associated with the holiday, including shamrocks and leprechauns, are often thought of as lucky. Choose a post from your archives in which you wrote about your experience with or perspective on luck. Then write a new post on your blog about why you chose the post that you did and what has happened in your life since.

Participants can write about whatever you want in your new blog entries. However, for those who might have needed some help and inspiration to get started, here are some questions to consider:

Why did you pick this post? Has your perspective changed since the day you wrote your original post? Do you think you would still feel the same way if you were writing your post today? What have you learned about yourself, your family and your life since you wrote your original post?

Note: If you have an idea for a future Time Warp topic, theme and/or writing prompt, please feel free to share it in the comment section or send me an email. If I choose to use your idea, I will give you credit and link to your blog that week.

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Time Warp Tuesday: Luck

I am gambler.

Throughout my life I have been willing to take risks, including playing penny poker with my family, betting on the roulette wheel in Vegas and trying to have another living child after losing three babies to early pregnancy loss and one to neonatal death.

I also have a bittersweet relationship with luck.

When I look back on my 38 years I can think of so many times when I felt very lucky and also a lot instances when I felt extremely unlucky.

I imagine that many people can say that when they reflect on their lives.

I actually haven’t written much here on my blog about luck and when I did it typically was in reference to my lucky number 11 or my sister’s lucky number 27. On occasion I wrote about odds, which is related to luck, and how they don’t seemed to apply to my family and me, especially when it came to trying to build our family.

The blog entry that I chose to revisit this month is one I wrote four years ago, in January 2009. It was inspired by the Facebook meme that was going around at the time, encouraging people to share “25 Random Things” about themselves, including facts, habits and/or goals. I recall back then how much I enjoyed reading other’s lists of 25 things and was inspired to make my own. Here is my post, which includes an explanation of how eleven became my lucky number: 

25 Random Things

It was fun and interesting for me to reread this post and reflect on my life when I wrote it. At the time I was newly pregnant with Abby and we had not shared the news that we were expecting again, just nine months after Molly’s birth and death, with many of our friends and family members. We were excited and anxious about how our pregnancy might go, after all we had been through trying to expand our family. We knew that our luck could easily go either way that time around, as sadly we had experienced what seemed like more than our fair share of being on the wrong side of the odds when it came to our pregnancies over the previous four years.

I am fascinated by what I chose to share about myself in my list of 25 Things, especially knowing how hard it must have been for me to write it knowing we were pregnant again and not feeling quite ready write make our little secret public yet.

One of the things that I love about my 25 Random Things is that I recall how easily my writing flowed as I came up with each statement. I like how I shared serious, comical and truly random tidbits about myself. I remember friends who read it at the time (both on Facebook and my blog, as I cross-posted it) giving me feedback that they learned new things about me.

In some ways I felt my post was almost poetic in how I moved from one thought to another sharing about traveling around Europe, my favorite flavors of ice cream, meeting my future husband, things I learned from my older sister, how dealing with secondary infertility and loss has effected me and my outlook on life, parenting a boy, playing legos with our son and the way I feel that God sometimes speaks to me to my favorite television shows.

You could even say that luck was a factor in how and what I wrote about for my 25 Things, as in some ways each statement on my list seemed completely random, as our lives feel when we experience instances of either good or bad luck. But in other ways my thoughts and writing felt inspired, almost as if I wasn’t doing it alone.

I used to believe that everything happens for a reason and that our lives are part of God’s big plan for us. Though I don’t believe that anymore, I do still wonder how it is that certain circumstances in our lives play out they way the do. I can’t help but think that we are supposed to try to learn something from every experience we have and person we connect with, regardless of how our luck falls.

Do you gamble (not just with money)?

What is your relationship with luck?

How do you try to make sense of and peace with luck in your life?

Thank you for reading and for doing the Time Warp with me this month! I look forward to your feedback about this post, as well as reading and commenting on all of yours.

Please feel free to comment even if you didn’t write your own Time Warp Tuesday post. It is not too late to participate if you are interested, click here for the details.

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The topic for the next Time Warp Tuesday (on April 9th) is: April

April represents the beginning of the second quarter of each New Year, it is filled with rainy days and all things blooming. Some years Easter and Passover fall in April, bringing forth important and special events in many faith traditions. Choose a post from your archives that you wrote during the month of April. It can be about any thing or topic that speaks to you. Then write a new post on your blog about why you chose the post that you did and what has happened in your life since.

Participants can write about whatever you want in your new blog entries. However, for those who might need some help and inspiration to get started, here are some questions to consider:

Why did you pick this post? Has your perspective changed since the day you wrote your original post? Do you think you would still feel the same way if you were writing your post today? What have you learned about yourself, your family and your life since you wrote your original post?

Note: If you have an idea for a future Time Warp topic, theme and/or writing prompt, please feel free to share it in the comment section or send me an email. If I choose to use your idea, I will give you credit and link to your blog that week.

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For those new to Time Warp Tuesday, here is a quick recap of how it works:

1) Browse through your old blog entries to find one that fits the topic for the given month. The topic is shared at the end of the previous month’s “Time Warp Tuesday” post here on my blog (see above for next week’s topic).

2) Write a new blog post in which you introduce, link to and then reflect on your journey since you wrote the older blog post and put it up on your blog on Tuesday. Please include this link https://bereavedandblessed.com/projects-regular-series/time-warp-tuesdays/ in your blog entry, so your readers can find their way to my post with the list of other participants, in case they would like to read more or participate themselves.

3) Share the link to your new post here on Tuesday and then visit, read and comment on the other blogs.

4) After you have done all of these things, you are welcome to grab the code for the Time Warp Tuesday button by clicking here and put it on your blog. The link will take you to a Google Doc where you can copy the code. If your browser does not allow access to your computer’s clipboard, you can use Ctrl-C for Copy and Ctrl-V for Paste, or use your browser’s Edit menu.

5) Check back here on the 2nd Tuesday of the month to find out the new topic, theme or question for the next Time Warp Tuesday (I welcome your ideas and suggestions) and then return to Step 1 of this recap to participate. Please let me know if you have any questions and I hope to see you back here next month: Tuesday, April 9th (the 2nd Tuesday of the month), when we’ll “do the time warp again!”

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Thank you again for reading, commenting and participating in my Time Warp Tuesday blog hop. Link up below and click through to visit others who are doing the Time Warp! (If you have any trouble with Linky Tools, please share the link to your blog entry in the comment section. Also, please don’t forget to comment on my post here, as I do not have a link to this (my own) post below, but I would still really appreciate your feedback. xoxo

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PLEASE NOTE: I am having some technical difficulties with what appears to be our router blocking my access to the LinkyTools website, which is effecting my ability to use it for Time Warp right now. So until I get these issues resolved, please share a link to your post in the comment section below. Thank you!

UPDATED (3/18/13): Problem resolved! I added everyone’s posts to the LinkyTool! 🙂

1. Feeling Beachie

2. LavLuz

3. LIT

4. BabySmiling

5. April

6. Amy