Patience

I have never been good at being patient. When something needs to be done or happen, once the decision is made DO IT! What's the problem? What are you waiting for??? An engraved invitation? A Streetcar named Desire? DO IT already!
I have become more patient in certain areas of my life. I am very patient with my special ed students, my grandsons, and myself-only to a degree with myself though.
So I try to be patient when waiting for something to happen I know will happen that I am not involved in but will be impacted by the results. And that is where I find myself now.
I feel like I am in limbo and all life is just happening but I am waiting...waiting...waiting....
My life is not really moving forward because I am waiting for another. Not that I COULDN"T do things-just that I am not. Because I am waiting....waiting....waiting... It isn't how I want it, just how it is. Why I allow it is beyond me.

Think I will go do something.

A Change

It is said, most people do not like change. Well I like change in small amounts and when the change is for the better. Today's change was done to ignore the obvious: a missing family member at Easter dinner.

I love my family. They are what life is about for me. Family means everything to me. Today for the first time we did not share a holiday meal or a time during the day as a whole family. We were short one son who by his own choice spent the day with others. Not in service to them. Not because he was required to in the sense one would think. No, he spent the day with people who except for two are strangers. This was his choice.

No guilt was laid, no pleas made. He went. His family who has done nothing but love and support him for his entire life ate without him. A change was needed for us so that we did not focus on the missing but focused on what was. And so for the first time in my married life of 37 years I did not cook dinner or a part of one on a holiday. We ate in a restaurant. The meal was delicious and the mood light. The atmosphere fun. We ignored his absence. I hated it and loved it.

I hated the fact the meal was not in my home or that of another family member. I hated not having to plan the meal and assign dishes to those willing to bring something. I hated the fact I could not watch my grandsons play happily after dinner with their toys. I hated not being able to laugh heartily at my 3 sons bantering and childhood rememberences. I hate no having leftovers to munch and take for lunch this week. I hated the silence about the mised son. I hated missing his hearty laugh and keen insights on everything. I hated not waving goodbye to him as he drove away with packages of leftovers in tow. Mostly I hated that I missed my son. The whole purpose of a different place so his absences would not be felt as sharply. So that he would not be missed. I hated that it did not work.

I loved not having to clean up. I loved seeing my family that came. I loved the food. I hated that we did it.

I hope he did not miss us. Why? Because I do not wish him the pain I felt.

When Life Takes a Turn

Life is what happens while you are making other plans. Ain't it the truth.

You can control yourself and NOTHING else in life. Sometimes others decisions cause your life to spin out of control and while your world is falling apart you just spin and spin and spin. Then when you think you have stopped spinning-BANG! the spin begins again even more violently and the helpless feeling you felt before is nothing compared to what you feel now.

If you ever feel the spinning slow, you think one of two things: the end of the nightmare has finally ended-WHEW! or this is the eye passing by and soon the whirlwind will come back with a vengence and hit you from the opposite direction. So far I have only experienced the latter.

Sadly I do not even think I have seen the eye yet. While I will welcome it, I will use the time to prepare for round two because I know it will be coming.

Sadly.

When Children Go Astray

No matter what you do and how you raise your children they will do as they want. The Bible says, Train a child up in the way he should grow and when he is older he will not stray from it." I can tell you first hand this is a lie.

I raised my sons in an intact family with love and honest, with morality and morals and my oldest has strayed. I am choosing not to go into details but it is safe to say my son is someone I no longer recognize as the caring son we raised into a caring and loving father and husband. He is someone else. No drugs, alcohol, tabaco or other addiction has afflicted my first born. Rather it is the stress of having seriously ill infants. While they are now reasonably healthy toddlers my son has lost it from the stress and begun a life carefree of what he was raised to value. I have no answers, only more questions. The biggest question is this: where is my son? I know where he resides. I know where he works. What I do not know is the person inside that body? The body looks the same but when we talk it is like I do not know him.

I miss my son. I am not sure I will ever see that beautiful person again. I am sad.

New Year, New Decade.

Welcome to not just a new year but a new decade.

People always hope the next decade will be better and are suspicious it will be worse. I guess it is relative to which part of your life you are thinking about. Some areas will improve, others will become worse and still others will remain the same.

As for me... I make no predictions for my own life but I do make plans. In order to have a plan you must first have a dream. So here are my dreams....

• to live to 2020
• to have all my love ones live to 2020
• to try to improve myself everyday
• to try help another everyday
• to realize events occur that I cannot fix and move on

Thanks for reading this, although I doubt anyone will. That's okay-I am doing this for me and if you happen to want to read this and comment-fine. If not-fine, too.

Maybe more about me will emerge and maybe not. For now let's just say "Hello"