by J. R. Practix

Accident: (n) an unfortunate incident that happens unexpectedly and unintentionally, typically resulting in damage or injury.

All four of my naturally born sons and three young men who I adopted and took into my home … were accidents.

At least, that’s the word I normally use, although when I look at the definition I find that I have been misstating the facts. These seven children were certainly not unfortunate. They also gave me no damage or injury, ide from a few nights of raised blood pressure over unkempt rooms and notorious behavior.

But they WERE accidents. I didn’t plan them. Some people take great pride in the fact that they plotted families, insisting that wanting to have a child is much more noble than acquiring one in the heat of passion, without awareness.

But I think the word “accident” is very important–because how we respond to accidents, or events beyond our expectation and control–really determines the depth of our character and in many cases, the extent of our success.

I learned a long time ago that life is not impressed with my plans nor intimidated by my energetic motivations. Life has its own agenda and pushes that forward to find out if anybody can survive the mold on their daily bread. Some people just do better with mold. Flemming, for instance, found a way to turn it into penicillin. I, myself, will not throw away a slice of bread because it has mold on it. I just cut away the green. (Yuk, right?)

But using that mind set, I have learned to take the good with the bad and salvage from it something worthy of proceeding.

I would not remind my children that they were accidents–but I’ve never lied to them, either. My first son was conceived on the grass next to a horse pasture after my senior prom. That has a certain amount of charm, doesn’t it? The exact locations of the other accidental impregnations are not clear to me–I’m sure none are quite as dramatic as the “horsing around” in the grass.

But none of them were planned. And the three young men who came into my house in later years, absorbed and adopted as sons, were just as bewildered by their presence in my home as I was in taking on my second batch of human cookie dough. Accidents are a good thing … IF we change the definition from “occasions of injury” to “our new reality.” The longer we resist change, the more devastating it seems. The sooner we realize that what has happened to us is not an accident, but a by-product of a whole collage of circumstances, the better off we become.

• No one was ever cured of cancer by denying it.
• No one ever became a great artist by refusing to paint.
• And no one ever moves forward until they stop looking at what has happened to them as a turn for the worse.

I had seven accidents in my life which are all now fine, grown young men. That’s pretty good.

Maybe that’s what the insurance companies mean by “accident forgiveness.”