About six months ago I would have told you my life was heading in a completely different direction. Six months ago Eric was diving courageously into a new work project, literally working from home, celebrating a decade of marriage, coaching our son’s football team, we were balancing between churches and just beginning to get involved in volunteering at the kids elementary school, dance classes and karate classes… we were busy but together and loving life… the new life we were stepping into.
Everything was great. I felt like part of it was a dream! I waited almost our entire marriage to finally be together like this. Being able to plan weeks in advance and KNOW that he would be able to join us, being able to schedule doctor appointments and not worry about having to cancel because he leaves last minute, having dinner each night together and having him there to tuck the kids in and give them kisses…. It was a fairytale, one that my princesses were elated to experience and the glowing grins from ear to ear showed every ounce of their happiness. Haylee held on to him so tight whenever she could and announced to everyone that her “daddy was home and got a new job and isn’t going to have to ever leave again!”. I would feel a sharp pain deep within my heart when I heard her say this because I knew the reality was, the truth of the matter was he could leave again…
… and he did.
Suddenly we were back to the way things had always been… I was doing the bedtime routine alone. eating dinner alone. waking up to crying children alone. getting the kids dressed and fed alone. going to parent-teacher meetings alone…. the dream we thought we had finally begun living was stifled out. The flame still flickered softly tucked away deep deep down in our hearts now, but the dream was still there. Reality had sunk in, the cold hard reality that life always hits ya hard when you’re least expecting it. I didn’t have time to cry, I didn’t have time to come up with a plan B that would be less hard on us all. I barely had time to even explain it to the kids.
I took a deep breath put one foot in front of the other and just tried to keep up.
Just when I felt like everything was falling apart, the holidays came. The weeks leading up to our “vacation” were quite stressful between last minute school stuff, organizing a ‘farm sitter’, trying to figure out which (if any) foster dogs were going to new homes before we left, and attempting to plan out when we were leaving and which kid was going with who! It was SO much stuff I thought I was going to lose my mind! But low and behold, it all worked out and we had such a wonderfully relaxing time together as a family.
Coming into the new year I found myself yet again, alone. Family had gone home, we had gone home. Back to our old routine, back to school, back to dance and karate… back to our usual. I can’t help but do a little reflecting upon the last year. Reflecting on how I had believed and imagined my life, our life as a family was supposed to be coming into the new year.
Truth: it is incredibly hard to be motivated and excited about this “new year” when the reality of how its starting out is SOOOOO incredibly far from what you imagined, from what you felt was happening, you could smell it, taste it FEEL it happening right before your eyes… and then just as you started to believe it… it was gone. Is this really how my new year is to begin??
Well, hello 2013. Have I told you I don’t like odd numbers?