RESOLUTE!

So, the new year starts over as they drop the ball. You have all of these grand intentions, and may or may not have follow through. I usually don't make resolutions. I really haven't since I have been a young child. I used to set pretty silly one's back then, and never seemed to take my intentions seriously. I just got out of the habit. As I got older I would take time to evaluate my life not necessarily when that big shinny ball would drop but periodically, through out the year to see if my life was progressing in a manner that I was happy with. I had found that things can pass me by so quickly and that some how I have gotten sidetracked with things that I really had not intended on doing. Some good and some bad. This past year, I feel I made allot of progress. I am certainly not on the plan that I had developed for myself and started myself out on years ago, but since I am on a different road than expected, seemingly held hostage while my dreams of my other life are put on hold or are going to be put to side permanently. I need to come up with a plan! That some how allows me to move further forward. Either toward the goals of my past, or toward some thing new. There is also the possibility of working on a combination of both, which I have been doing for the past 2 years. After the accident strongly for at least the first 2 maybe even 3 years, I was focused on getting my life back to the way it was. Can you ever go back? I have not found that to work so well. So onward I go.

I am finally to the point where I can think about other possibilities. Although I don't know what they are at this point for me.

Frustrating, I'd had my life all planned out! It was working out great! I was very focused and driven and passionfilled for my purpose. I loved it! I think that is why it has been so hard to let go of it and refocus on something else. I wanted the life I had with everything I was and I put all of myself into it! Jason did too! It is so hard to watch him see it all slip away. With our plan from before he should have been looking at retiring or at least having the choice to retire working as a firefighter at the end of this year. I don't know that he really would have, he really does love what he does. But be able to go to work with the mindset of really knowing he didn't HAVE to do it, he was really looking forward to.

I feel very guilty, that my promises to him are not being followed through on. That he will not have that choice, in fact that he has had to work every hour that is available to him at what ever job is available so that we can just make ends meet.

Please understand that these are not cries for sympathy! This is just as it is. The facts! The emotional facts of our situation. The things that we dreamed about and that both of us not just me put everything in to pretty much since we got married. For me it had started long before then when I first began my Mary Kay business. I had a plan.

I've never been one of those "hot shot" people who just start to do something and are imediately the best at it. I am actually one of those people who believed I could, I just put in the minutes, hourly, daily, weekly, monthly, determination and focus to get myself there.

Now it seems as if my age/physical condition will be preventing me from starting over and making it as far as I had intended. Not that I still couldn't do it, but the odds are now highly stacked against me. I've been trying to figure out ways to make it all start over, with a plan that might actually work with the resources that I have. I at this point not able to make it fit.

So now to realignment. I've done it before. It's not that I fear change, I actually welcome it, it brings growth, I was just so happy changing and growing in the ways I was before with the dreams and goals that we had set before us.

So this is the year for me of change. I am going to finally give up the dreams of my past and really figure out what it is that I can and want to sink everything I've got into. Figure out how Jason and I can come to actual terms with the adjustment and make the absolute best of what we've got.

This brings to mind the Beatles song, "All You Need Is Love". Hee hee! I feel as if that's what we've been living off of for the past four years. That God for that! Thank God for Jason! He is the biggest blessing to me, I know that it has taken all that he had and could muster to make it to this point. I am hoping that as this year progress's that he is able to come to terms with the loss of our dreams, and to help us create a new dream for our future.

So this year is not resolute. But is in flux as we are able to open our minds, and our hearts to something new. Something great! Something we haven't yet thought of or put into action.

The thing that is resolute, is my desire to finish up all that we have started on our house, to help it stop falling in on it's self! We've got a good start as last year the furnace and water heater failed on us with in weeks of eachother, the front of our house, the brick part started to fall off, and we discovered leaking windows, the day before Christmas new windows appeared in our home, so we will now just need to repair the brick and siding... and alot more but hey! It will give us something to do while we figure out where we are headed!

We do love our new windows! They are so much warmer and we can actually see through them, not to mention that the front of our home will no longer be falling off! Geesh!

So on to working on what's next for us, and that has lots to do with me! I wonder what I can do? I am going to continue working with my personal coach, I will also be checking in to more resources that may be available, maybe even some schooling...?? Yipes! Ok I am keeping my mind open! Everything is on the table!

Hey, over the past 4 years, I've hosted our 3rd exchange student, welcomed a grown family of four to stay with us for a few months to get resettled, I've welcomed another family of four with little kids and a mom who is deaf to live with us for over a year, I've learned sign language, I've fostered two dogs, taken in a teenage neighbor who is currently here, and I've begun to grow my client base back with my Mary Kay business and I have fought my best and worked my hardest to get my body and life back to preaccident conditions. I've come to accept that things will never be back to the way they were, and that my life now involves medication and procedures, a slower pace, less choices with more effort, and a service dog whom I do love and appreciate. While working hard at keeping my marriage strong with the man of my dreams who I've been ever so blessed by! I know that there's more and I know that I've been busy moving forward and helping those I can along the way. I used to do more! I want to do more! But now the question is how?

I am resolute in the fact that I am going forward! And no longer looking to the past for direction. Thanks Jason for staying on the ride!