Alphabetical Order

There are 26 letters in our alphabet. How many combinations can be made with these 26 letters. 403,291,461,100,000,000,000,000,000 different combinations. That’s way past Billions into the Quadrillion range.  To write out each combination would take far longer than the age of the universe. Overwhelming if you think of all the possibilities, luckily we only need a few.

Sing along with me abcd-efg-hijk-lmnop-qrs-tuv-wxy and z.

I can still see the letters of the alphabet presented in capital letters and lower case running along the top of the blackboards and bulletin boards. The teacher using a pointer to draw our attention to each letter. We learned our alphabet song and then moved on to two letter words: i.e. at, in. Eventually most of us learned to read and write. It was all very orderly, step by step and building on what came before. We learned our vowels and letter sounds and off we went to literacy.

Why don’t life’s lessons come in alphabetical order? Wouldn’t it be nice to know the order of each lesson, and know there were no surprises?  Many times I  haven’t been ready for the lesson/painful experience facing me. I had the “abc” covered only to be confronted with “hijk”. There are some life events which have to be faced on their own timeline. There is no order, no reason why, no escaping the timing of things. Life gave me the death of my husband before I had fully grasped how to live my own life. I was at “z” and had skipped over lots of letters in the middle of life. I had to go back and learn who I was and how I wanted to live. Being loved by Roger gave me the courage to return to the lesson plans written by my higher power. It was the”lmnop I needed to learn. My sister’s death this summer has again scrambled my alphabet. I’m not sure where I am at.

I use alphabetical order to organize my files at work. Without this kind of order, I wouldn’t be able to locate the information I need. “ Line up alphabetically for lunch.” was a frequent directive from my elementary teachers. Those poor souls with last names that began with w,x,y or z were always at the end of the line. Probably this caused some inferiority complexes, but there is no flexibility in alphabetical order.

I will end here because I am starting to worry I may be too wordy!