life

A couple of years ago I visited my mother in Florida to celebrate her birthday and I took a couple of extra days by myself to soak up the sunshine and relax. You know how sometimes you look back on a time in life and realize it was magical but you didn't appreciate it at the time? This isn't the case here. I loved every minute of those 2 days, I was so happy, relaxed and carefree. When I returned from that trip I pulled into the driveway and thanked God for all the blessings in my life.

And that was pretty much the last carefree moment I've had in the past 2 years. Just a few days later life started changing and those blessings started dropping like flies. Good thing I didn't get too specific with names of people I love in that prayer or they might not be around today.

Safe to say the last couple of years have not been the best of my life. I have a lot of questions and doubts and I've spent more than a few hours feeling sorry for myself.

But today something happened to change my perspective. I spent time with 2 people who are each losing a loved one - 1 woman is losing a daughter to lung disease and a man I work for is losing his wife to cancer. Each have been fighting for some time but both have been told it's only a matter of time.

I feel so helpless watching this man come to terms with the fact that he's probably losing his wife of 30 years and if I feel helpless, I can only imagine what he's feeling.

I was thinking about all of this on my drive home from work today and suddenly I had a revelation - I am sick of feeling sorry for myself. Life changes and sometimes it's crappy but it's all we have and there's no time to waste feeling bad about things that can't be changed. It doesn't really matter what life was like 2 years ago or that I've missed out on events that meant a lot to me. I had no control over that but if I miss out on happy moments from here on out just because I'm wallowing in self pity then shame on me. I may not have complete control over destiny but I do control how I respond.

So from here on out life is a magical gift...except for Monday mornings. All the positive self-talk in the world is never going to make me like Monday mornings. ;-)