The Struggle to Stay Positive.
I want to be happy, I have so much in my life to be thankful for, I am truly blessed, but I’m finding it hard the past couple weeks to keep my spirit up. My husband was laid off from his job as an aircraft mechanic in Salem. So now he is home with out work and I made the tough decision to return to work full time to make sure we can make ends meet with his unemployment. I must now leave my beautiful 4 ½ month old son for 10hours a day to come to work at a job that is not the most fulfilling or rewarding. It literally causes me physical pain to walk away from that beautiful smiling face in the morning. To leave the warm comforts of our beautiful home we have created with love, and enter a cold world of rushing cars, cold florescent lights, impersonal computer screens, deadlines and ringing phones. I can’t help but wonder what the other drivers are feeling this morning. Did they leave behind their treasures of sweet little faces, maybe a furry friend or warm kisses behind to enter the day too? Did they want to? Maybe they find passion out in this world of work that I have not, or maybe like me they hurt too- with a longing to crawl on to the couch with blankets, footie pj’s and slobbery kisses. How can something so “normal” as going to work, feel like life’s biggest challenge, every morning?
I must remember that I do this for my family, so that we may eat healthy foods and continue to snuggle on the warm comfy couch. So that we can keep a phone and internet access to stay in contact with our families and friends far away I will go to work. I will remember that as I struggle with the bone crushing tiredness of interrupted sleep, that I was the lucky one that got to steal those quiet minutes in the early morning hours holding my sons hand and getting to stroke his fuzzy little head. Getting up early and going to work, means I get the first smile of the day-how lucky! As I grumble about using the “pump” at work, I will remind myself that God blessed me with the ability to provide my son with the food he needs to grow big and strong. I will ask for God’s patience as I struggle to relate to people in my office who have different values than mine. Maybe the customer who is unhappy had to leave his/her beautiful children behind today too.
I am still so lucky in this world. My son gets to be home with his loving father each day, he doesn’t have to go to day care with some one he doesn’t know. I’m lucky to have a wonderful husband who even though he doesn’t know much about cooking lets me call him and walk him through getting dinner on the table. I’m lucky that I have 4 legged kiddos too, that love me so much that it drives me nuts! I do wish I had more patience with them, they don’t know better and I have so much to learn from their love for life, each day is a new and exciting adventure to them. I could learn a lot about enjoying life from my cat, who thinks the best thing is to sit together and purr.
I feel lucky to have my faith. To know that God must have a plan for our family and that if we trust him and follow his path, we will feel the rewards. His plans aren’t always what I think they should be, but I know that they are far greater than anything I could have come up with. My son’s life is a testament to that. After 5 years of thinking we may never have children God gave us Alexander. The best blessing ever.
So for now I will try to remember my blessings when I want to give up. I know it is ok to be sad, but I must not fall into resentment. I will look at this as a temporary situation and a blessing that I never thought of, a chance for a father and son to bond. A chance for me to learn to let go over things such as house cleaning and child rearing. At the end of the day it won’t matter if the floor didn’t get swept, or if my son didn’t take his naps on a set schedule. What will stay with me and I will want to know 5 years from now is that I loved my family with all my heart. That I did my best to enjoy every day, that time was not wasted on pointless anger or worrying about things I could not change. As some one said the other day, there are always flowers from the rain, spring always comes after winter. So if this time of life is my rainy winter I will look toward my spring. A time when life calms down again and I will spend more time at home and less in this cold world of racing cars and computer screens.
