On A Roll!

We are on a blogging roll and I can't stop!

I was browsing through my blog the other day, as I often do, trying to see what Jack was like at Hank's age. As always I got side-tracked.  Is it weird how FASCINATING I find my own life?  Haha.  It is weird. I know.  But I learned something so very valuable reading about my life.  I realized that my life is so beautiful.  All of it.  My marriage, the birth of our children, raising our children, the three ear surgeries, the hearing loss, the daily mundane tasks, the miscarriage, the tiny two-bedroom duplex, the sciatica nightmare, the back surgery.  Life is just hard and beautiful and such a gift.

I've also learned recently that life does not get better.  This is as good as it gets.  And that reminds me to go ahead and be happy.  When I gave my valedictorian speech in high school I based it on this quote by Alfred D. Souza:  "For a long time it had seemed to me that life was about to begin--real life.  But there was always some obstacle in the way, something to be gotten through first, some unfinished business, time still to be served, or a debt to be paid.  Then life would begin.  At last it dawned on me that these obstacles were my life."  I still haven't the faintest idea who Alfred D. Souza is.  In fact, I think it might be Alfred D'Souza.  But D. or D' the guy said something wise.  Life will not get better because this is life.  More money, a bigger house, a better wardrobe, living in a place with no winters, those things will not make life better or me happier.  It will still be the same beautiful life.  But while life is not going to get better, I know that I can get better.  And the more I become like Jesus Christ the more abundant my life will be.

I've been thinking a lot about being "poor" lately.  Poor is a relative term of course.  For the sake of this conversation poor will mean: a family of five living in an old two bedroom duplex, with internet but no cable, enough money for healthy food, and enough money to buy kids clothes if extremely clearanced but the adults better hope to find something at garage sales or they ain't getting nothin', no money for eating out, or babysitting, or dates or anything extracurricular, and no savings and not a hope or a prayer to own a home, but, hey! no credit card debt.  Well, I've been thinking about our state of poorness.  And I've realized it's not so poor after all.  I mean I have seen poor.  And we are a far cry from poor.  When I think about my friends in Ghana and how they would view my life as so abundant, I remember that things are good.  Really, really good.

And since I am on a roll with the quotes, how about this one from Pinterest.  You know, because Pinterest is an entity that can speak and say profound things like this: "What screws us up most in life is the picture in our head of how it is supposed to be."  Truer words were never spoken.  Except for all the words Jesus said.  And prophets.  And Mother Teresa.  And all other wise people that aren't a virtual pinboard, but you know what I mean.  Back to the point--I've been trying to get rid of the picture in my head of how life is supposed to be.  And I like it.  Life is more than home-ownership. Life is more than having a bedroom for each kid.  Life is more than having enough bathrooms that you can lock the door without kids and adults crying that they need to use the bathroom too.

I have these moments of clarity and gratitude.  And then I leave my quiet moment and the kids start whining and needing things and fighting and complaining and I want to lock that one bathroom door and cry.  But all that whining and needing--it's beautiful, too.