Loving My Life …

Lov­ing my life …

I don’t know if it’s nor­mal, but an eval­u­a­tion of my life is always run­ning in the back of my mind.  No, I don’t live the life I’d envi­sioned as teenager.  Yet, in all honesty, my life is not all that far away from the life I’ve always wanted.  Because, really, I’m very happy.

I know that a lot of peo­ple face much tougher cir­cum­stances that I do.  Still, my friends tend to walk on eggshells around me and the typ­i­cal greet­ing of “how are you doing” seems to carry a lit­tle more weight (or trep­i­da­tion) when asked of me than other friends.  Still, the truth is I’m doing very well.  I love my life and I feel incred­i­bly blessed.

My Hus­band is such a source of strength and sup­port.  It does take daily and some­times hourly reminders to myself to feel grate­ful instead of fearful.  But in gen­eral it’s quite easy to give thanks for the over­whelm­ing grace we’ve been given — for every sec­ond he is here with us, pro­vid­ing for us, show­er­ing us with his uncon­di­tional love, demon­strat­ing his gen­eros­ity of time and spirit.  He keeps our house­hold run­ning smoothly and bears the bur­dens of his dis­ease and treat­ment with­out a sin­gle complaint.

The Daugh­ter has a level of inner beauty and strength that defies descrip­tion.  Despite the fact that she’s deeply in the throes of being a smart-aleck almost-16-year-old and hates every­thing that I do, say, and stand for, we enjoy a solid mother-daughter rela­tion­ship filled with love and humor.  She works very hard at her school­work and has adjusted to the social and aca­d­e­mic rig­ors of her pri­vate high school like a champ.  She is a con­stant source of worry for me and I fear she has some tough real-world lessons still to learn (don’t they all?).  My prayer is that I will con­tinue to have the strength and resources to be there if and when she needs me to be.

The Son has got to be the sweet­est 13-year-old on the planet.  But, quirky kid that he is, he exhausts me with the stress and worry he causes and the extra work he requires.  As I do more research into Autism and Asperger’s, how­ever, I’ve begun to under­stand just how much I don’t have to deal with.  I sin­cerely hope it’s not offen­sive to be grate­ful for hav­ing a merely quirky kid and not one who’s offi­cially on the spec­trum.  Again, I pray for strength, guid­ance, wis­dom, and patience.

My health is so much bet­ter than it was three years ago that a woman would indeed have to be an ungrate­ful fool to not wake up feel­ing blessed every sin­gle morn­ing.  I’ve fully regained my speech.  Gone are the palsies and the awk­ward gait.  Although my mem­ory is not back to full-speed, I’d esti­mate a 95% recov­ery of cog­ni­tive func­tion.  The chronic pain of the Fibromyal­gia – yeah, some­times it gets me down.  But over­all I expe­ri­ence fewer pain-filled days than pain-less ones and for that I am truly grate­ful.  I really should make an appoint­ment for that surgery I need and just get it over with but I’m a skilled pro­cras­ti­na­tor.  It’s what I do best — well, that and worry.  I just can’t seem to find a block of time on the cal­en­dar that shouts out to me, “here’s a con­ve­nient time to be incapacitated!”

Our house has truly become a home.  It’s a hum­ble lit­tle abode lost in a sea of sub­ur­bia sur­rounded by super churches and peo­ple who actu­ally con­sume Rain­bow bread and Twinkies.  But it’s my hum­ble abode — well, it will be in another 24 or so years     So far we’ve remod­eled the kitchen, replaced the orig­i­nal car­pet and linoleum with 3/4″ oak floors, remod­eled the two main-floor bath­rooms, and replaced the orig­i­nal 25-year-old refrig­er­a­tor with a sleek, new french-door, bottom-freezer Amana.  The next steps are to refin­ish the deck, replace the garage door, repaint the exte­rior, and do some landscaping.

But I will be the first to admit that lov­ing my life …

 … is eas­ier with money.

I can’t even begin to imag­ine the stress of deal­ing with the curve­balls of life with­out a solid finan­cial sit­u­a­tion.  We’re not rich but we’re doing pretty well.  We have a mort­gage.  And a car loan (at 1.9% financ­ing it was in our best inter­ests to leave our cash in the bank where it will earn higher inter­est until needed).  But we have no com­sumer debt.  When emer­gen­cies hap­pen, all of our energy and con­cern can go to our child with none of our energy siphoned off in worry about how we’ll pay the bill.

Related posts:

1. Honest-to-Goodness No-Spend Day
2. $$: Gas, Water, & Food
3. $$: Quick Gro­cery Run
4. $$: No (Direct) Spend­ing Today
5. Day 189: Shop­ping Frenzy