Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow

So one day I woke up and nothing was the way it was supposed to be. When did that happen? I didn’t dream of a life in my thirties surrounded by children, living in this house (which we bought from my parents), with a dog, laundry piled to the ceiling and having to run out to Walgreen’s with children at 9 pm because I have a child with a headache and married to a man who is still at work at 9 pm when he left at 7 am.

Really? How on earth did this happen? Somehow in the midst of this very long day that really wasn’t that bad, I just want to cry! I keep writing what’s on my mind wanting to post it to my blog, and then I don’t. I just keep writing. I tell myself it’s good therapy, but the truth is I want to share. I’m just scared.

Scared people will judge me. Scared no one will care. Scared that I really am alone and I’m not just feeling alone. Scared to put myself out there, yet I feel compelled to do so. So here is goes…

Most days I sit back and admire my life. It is nothing I would have dreamed for myself and yet so much better. But then there are quiet moments when I realize the only reason I have this life is because of the life I already lost. One I actually miss quite a bit, even the bad stuff. I often ask myself “Why is this the life I have?” and of course I do not want an answer. No answer would help or change anything.

The truth is that there is rarely a day that goes by that I don’t think of my first husband. Some days I think about of life together. Some days I think about the pain of losing him. Some days I think about the long hospital days that seem so far away and don’t know how I got through them. Some days I wish he were here to see his daughters do things and experience life. When it comes right down to it, he is apart of just about every day in some way.

Yet I feel confident in saying I live in today. I love my life, my husband, my kids, my dog, my house, oh and my family and my friends and my church and, and, and, and… I have a very blessed life. I feel like it is my perfect miracle after a perfect storm: the larger the storm the larger the miracle. I’m living in a BIG miracle and thank God daily for all of it.

So I guess this is a REAL as it gets. I try to find the balance every day in living today’s miracle but missing yesterday’s possibilities. I don’t push yesterday from my mind and forget it happened. I feel the pain of yesterday. I also don’t live in the pain of yesterday till it takes over and spoils today or even tomorrow.

Balance. It’s a long hard balancing act. I ask God to give me grace when I fall and I get right back up again. I need to live in today, but realize yesterday is part of me. Tomorrow will come but I cannot control it. Today is what I have. And today, I’m really sad. I am having a “bad” day. Nothing happened to make it so. I just am sad.

I see people around me finding different ways to move through different pain. I watch and marvel as I remember my pain. It does lessen and so does my memory of the pain. Every new mom is told that their memory will fade as to the labor pains. So many moms say that will never be, how could they forget, it was the most painful thing they have gone through and they must just tell you that. But it’s true. The pain and the memories of it fade. Women go on and have more children. If the memory of the pain was strong, people would shy from it. But it fades. We still remember, but not enough to avoid all pain again.

So in the distance I know it hurt and sometimes it still does. But not like it did and that’s why I can live today, feeling blessed, loving my life and still sad. Ah the beauty of the complexity God created us to be. I am glad for my memories, even the painful ones. I am grateful I feel all the gambit of “stuff” all at the same time. And I thank God daily that no matter how alone I feel, I’m really not!