Worm Holes, Dog Holes & True Tragedy

We live a blessed life, even if it is as imperfect as a beautifully picked apple with a worm hole right through the center of it.  I look around at the weeds in the garden, the holes both of our dogs have dug in the yard that I have tried to keep looking so nice for The Yankees arrival home, the paint chipping off our charming southern front porch and I think, even with all that is imperfect, we have rooted ourselves in this place and life is blessed beyond belief.

I have spent the past five weeks battling one thing or another, the devil pretty much bent on stealing my peace.  Our daughter became frighteningly ill at the beginning of July.  So ill in fact that, I, the avoider of all doctors at all costs, rushed her to the emergency room at midnight one night because I literally thought her appendix was going to explode right on the spot.  Well, thankfully ,it wasn't her appendix. And thankfully some of those doctors I try  so hard to avoid are very dear friends of ours and they took really great care of her, even though we never truly figured out exactly what was happening to her over those five weeks.  Now that she is back in school, she calls this "the summer that I lost"...oh the drama of a teenage daughter in the house!!! But I ended up being so grateful for her attitude during the whole thing.  Frustrated as can be, she never lost track of keeping a positive attitude and knowing she would get better.

The end of summer also equals the true ramping up of football season.  Though the guys have been training since spring, they technically couldn't put their pads on and hit until this past week.  Oh the excitement of it all!  There is a short list of things I love in this world more than football.  Which is why a bunch of us moms (and to their credit, there are a handful of dads out there too) still sit and watch football practice each and every day, even though our boys are in middle school.  If I am not planted next to that field between 330 and 630, you can bet it is because our daughter needs to be with her tennis trainer because that is THE only other place I would be!

Well, this week we had a special guest come to visit, my husbands cousin surprised us from Georgia, but they were only able to visit us for one hour during a break from a golf tournament about sixty miles away.  I was so thrilled to see her as we made plans to meet at the house, visit for about thirty minutes, then, I would drag she and her husband along for the last 30 minutes so she could see her little cousin, and her fathers namesake, practice a little bit of football.  But before we could get twenty minutes into our visit, I received THE DREADED PHONE CALL from my dear friend, "Your son is on the ground and he is not moving."  Frantic frenzy ensued as I rushed the five miles to the football field, hubbies cousin trying to keep up with my speeding car, then off to the emergency room.  Again, note I said emergency room, not a decision I make lightly, I was really scared that he had hurt himself horribly.

Luckily it was only a cervical sprain and nothing a couple days off football hasn't already cured. But we had only enjoyed one week of our daughter being well before we found ourselves back in the emergency room.  A place we have only seen twice since we moved here, I have now been to twice in one month.I started to get really mad at God.  I had been praying for weeks and weeks for the children's new school year to go safely and smoothly and already we had been faced with the possibility that our daughter might not even get to start school on time, and safety went out the window on our sons third tackle of his first practice in pads. It took a friend to remind me to find something to be grateful for..maybe his smaller injury had kept him from practicing during a time when he might have gotten hurt worse, or maybe us going to the emergency room kept us from a car accident going home at our normal time...just something to praise God for during all the commotion.

For more about gratitude, please visit www.aholyexperience.com

I finished my five weeks of stressfulness dotting my i's and crossing my t's with the towns Historical Society...all because we are putting a basic, architectural shingled, black roof on our 100 year old cottage. It can not be done without their approval, which we will not know if we have gained until the day before the contractor (whom we have already hired) is slotted to do the work!  Yikes!  I suppose finding out that our house was technically in the historic district of town was something we might want to have looked into before purchasing the house! Since we aren't asking for a purple metal roof with shag carpet accents, my expectations are high for this to all work out! I balanced out my frustration over this task with gratitude that the woman at City Hall was so nice and helpful, and that the hardware store literally handed over the sample of the roofing shingles I needed to show the historical society with a quick "Just return them when you can"....they didn't even take my name or anything! Sometimes small town living still blows me away with its ease and comfort!

All of this to say, there are people all over our town who are truly hurting.  Friends who are dealing with children that are really sick, not just dealing with some quick emergency room visits as I have had to do over this past month. I saw a request today for furniture needed for a family that has NONE and yet I have the nerve to gripe about dealing with a Historical Society over a roof that will cover our heads and protect all that we DO have?

There are people all over this country who are having to live through unspeakable things.  Just this week, a Mother and Father in New Hampshire sat on their living room couch and watched a video of the beheading of their precious son by ISIS.  No one should ever, EVER have to witness something like that. I would be completely lying to you if I said that my husbands work in that part of the world and these types of things do not bother me, that living each day and thinking "Usually he has emailed by now, is he ok?" isn't my way of life.  But when peace is no where to be found, I battle it the way I try to battle anything negative, big or small...with gratitude.  In this scenario, I always find myself grateful that I have my husband...grateful for his ever growing faith, so, so much stronger than my own, and grateful for his willingness to follow Gods will for his life,no matter where it takes him.

Gratefulness is the only defense I have against a world that seems to be turning more and more upside down by the day. It puts my "problems" into perspective.  It hopefully helps me to have a heart for those who are dealing with huge issues.  Gratitude helps me to see that there is still beauty, there is still good, and there is always God.