On this, the last day of November, I go to bed with a heart
satiated with thankfulness. Not such a
very un-ordinary occurrence on the last day of the month of Thanksgiving, eh?
Well, for me it is.
I’ve spent November in a roiling storm cloud of discontent. Even on the days I didn’t feel like a hurricane
bottled up into a jar, a sense of unease, an absence of peace stuck to the windows like dirty smog.
I totally flunked my NaNo.
Not because I didn’t try hard enough.
Because I didn’t have enough time.
I burned the candle at both ends and then squeezed the wax drippings into
a bowl, but it wasn’t enough. On the
nights I stayed up late somehow I never got past the pile of dishes or the
mountain of paperwork or the stack of schoolwork or the gargantuan heap of
laundry dripping underwear onto my head.
And the mornings I got up before dawn had been invented, I somehow
couldn’t seem to get past the avalanche of emails needing to be answered and
doctors’ appointments needing to be scheduled and phone consultations with
college and my lawyer and Hunter’s insurance and the To Do list which stretched
from the top of the freezer to the bottom of the fridge.
It’s unpleasant living life at the pace of an cheetah-chased
impala running for life. Actually, it’s
more like someone sucked out my soul and said I could have it back in three years. I miss time
so much. I miss time enough to cook
healthy food for us and have time to sit
down at the table together and enjoy it.
I miss time enough to be spontaneous with Hunter whenever he wants. I miss that extra five minutes that I already
borrowed from the next half-hour when he wants to practice making kissy faces
in the morning and I need to get out that
door to work we’re late late late. I
hate the endless exhaustion and the nights when Hunter and I mutually cry
ourselves to sleep because I just cannot summon the extra energy and patience
to get up and rock him again.
I miss time to read. I miss fingering through books. I miss having the time to read friends’
stories and novels.
But most of all (after the time I miss with Hunter) I miss
the time I used to spend crafting, writing, turning ordinary bits of
nothingness into something brand new.
And right now, I don’t have the time. Life will continue at this breakneck
super-stress scrabble-to-stay-alive pace for the next three years till I
graduate school. And after that…?
Anyway. So last week I
went down to a meeting of my neighbors (all women in similar circumstances)
with this roil of discontent in my stomach.
The topic of Christmas came up, and one woman shared that she dreaded
the holiday because she didn’t have money for gifts for her kids. She didn’t even have money for bills in
December. Another had just started
working but wasn’t sure if they were going to keep her on because she
continually kept having to leave work to care for her toddler because she was
unable to find safe childcare for her upside-down work schedule. Across the street, the lights of the homeless
shelter blinked a reminder of how many people wouldn’t even have a roof over
their heads for Christmas. And in my
pocket, my phone beeped: an update from a good mom friend whose two year old
son is in the early stages of bone marrow failure and is going to have to
undergo a terrifying, risky transplant before a year is out. Right below that update was another from my
Down syndrome moms’ group: another family had just said their final goodbye to
their six-year-old daughter who wasn’t going to make it through surgery.
I sucked in a deep, deep breath and that ornery storm inside
me just shriveled up and went away.
Because I have so much
to be thankful for. I have a steady
job which, while it may not pay very well, is fulfilling, rewarding, and allows
me to spend all day with Hunter. I
rarely have to worry about childcare. I
have decent health. I have a son who is
amazing and wonderful and lights up my life every day and even though I may not
always be able to spend quality time with him I have the ability to spend so much more time than any other single
mom I know. And while he has plenty of
health problems, he is alive and
doesn’t have leukemia or a heart defect that can’t be repaired or any of the
dozens of tragedies that could have come along with his special genetic
makeup. We have a warm, clean,
comfortable place to live, fresh, healthy food in our fridge, money to pay our
bills, and a car that (in between periodic temper tantrums) starts up day after
day. I’m in school and moving steadily
forward to a much, much better future.
We see God working in our lives every single day.
Our life is hard. At
least one point every day I have to squeeze my eyes shut, breathe deeper than I
ever have before, and pray for just that last bit of patience or energy or
resourcefulness to not give up.
But our life is also overflowing with blessings. And in the face of so much tragedy and
hardship and sadness swirling around us, my complaints seem so very
trivial.
So, on this last night in November, I am thankful. I am so, so thankful, so grateful, and so
blessed.
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