Have you ever planned ahead of time about something and it didn’t go like you thought it would?
Maybe the weather was different than what you expected.
Maybe you fell short of the goal you set.
Maybe you thought that the new house or job or town was going to be different than it was.
Maybe it feels disappointing or hard or sad when we think about how it didn’t go as expected.

Or maybe it’s even better than we had imagined.

I’ve had in my head an idea of what the book will look like.
A fuzzy image. I imagine it will look nice. But there is also a lot going on in the book – Jason’s stories, my stories, my Facebook posts about grief and the photos that go with them.
I wonder how we can organize it in a way that makes sense to the reader.
Will it be clear that Jason and I are going back and forth, creating a whole message from each of our parts?
I wonder if the photos will look scrapbooky or out of place.
And I also think about how cool it is that Jason and I will live together forever between a front and back cover.
I think the book will look a certain way. In my head.

Chris wanted to show me what was happening with the actual formatting of the book. To make sure she was on the right track.
She showed me her computer screen and my breath literally caught in my throat.

It was so much better than what I had imagined.

It was clean.
It was organized.
It had white space like I wanted it to.
The first photo and Facebook post was designed beautifully. I was a little stunned.

Sometimes things don’t go the way we thought they would.
But sometimes they’re even better.
So much more than we imagine.
I like staying open to that possibility.
That maybe just because it’s different than what I thought it would be, it’s not necessarily bad. Or even wrong.

This is not even close to how this book was supposed to end up.
It was going to be a business leadership book that Jason could sell when he spoke to companies.
It didn’t look anything like this book.

But what if the way it’s going is exactly the way it should be?
What if it’s exactly right?
The right timing. The right message. The right format.
It’s different than we imagined.
What if that’s exactly right?