#Winning

I hit the jackpot. Beat the odds. And to my pleasure, no one is knocking on my door for a piece of the prize.

This lottery stuff is crazy. The fact that the $900 million jackpot has now climbed to over $1 billion is just absurd. My head can’t even wrap itself around that dollar amount. So much money! My ten year old and I were chatting about it on the way to his basketball game this past Saturday. I was trying to explain that a dynasty for multi-generations of our family would be built if we won that kind of money. Dad would be so tan because he would golf every day until the sun went down. For real. {This kid knows his father all too well}. Then we talked about the charities that we would want to donate to. The places we would travel to. The people we would want to gift. And the kind of dream home we would build. Then he so earnestly replied But I would still go to college. You know, to get smarter. And also get a good job. At least a part time one so I could take care of my family. Just in case. Love this kid. He gets it. He embraces life at face value. He knows that while hundreds of millions of dollars would be life-changing, he also realizes that some things in life just can’t be bought. {Okay, so the college tuition would be paid in full but in the mind of a ten year old, getting smarter doesn’t come with a dollar amount}. I must be doing something right.

Chances of winning this past weekend’s jackpot were 1 in 292.2 million. Odds that are stacked far against you. And while we hardly play the lottery, I sometimes feel like I know what it’s like to go up against those kinds of odds. It’s called life. Am I right?! I walked through a period for six years fighting the odds. People telling me I was a statistic. That my son was a statistic. And it would take a lot to come out on top. Those kinds of words are powerful in the wrong kind of way. They’re meant to knock you down and remind you that you won’t flourish. But then, like every Powerball winner, you wake up one day with a life changing moment.

We ventured out into the deep Minnesota freeze yesterday, for brunch. {Only because we had a Groupon that we left until the very end of its expiration. No surprise there}. On the way there, the lottery came up again. And my husband made a comment that affirms I walked away with far more than $900 million can buy. You see, our odds were stacked against us. We have a story that doesn’t get categorized as a conventional union by any stretch of the means. And despite the uncalculated odds, we both know that we overcame some pretty remarkable circumstances to end up where we are today. So in jest, he thought maybe we should play the lottery since the odds have worked in our favor before. And I argued that we already got our lucky stars so I didn’t think the universe had it in for us again. Later, I took one quick look in the backseat. And then glanced over at my husband. Yep, I already hit the biggest jackpot. And these winnings won’t ever run out.