Tuesday, January 24, 2012

What is happiness?

How often I have felt the pang of pain as I have considered where I needed to be or where I should be in life. Yet strangely now I don't have that now. I do have to say I experience a twinge once in a while but that is a far cry from the deep and palpable pain.

So what is the difference? I have accepted life as is and this is the best it can be. When I watch Tom so immobilized and in physical pain, I am still in love with him as he limps. Yet here is a person who loved me through out life no matter what! I tell him I only love him if he loves me. He always told me he loves me no matter what!

My pain was always involved with Tom's choice in forgoing a wonderful secular job to serve God full time. I have to say it was decades of on and off deep pain for me. All my dreams of having a wonderful nest egg for old age and life of leisure and travel has evaporated.

Now I watch my friends....one who is so happy she can go shopping all day while her husband is at a medical meeting, one who will go away to a beautiful place for several days to rest and refocus on life, a couple who will go away to Florida for a month,...list goes on. This week I am staffing a pharmacy while my friend and her husband is gone to Virgin Islands. And I am so happy to experience working at an Amish community.

I feel so full filled. So content. I have a new kitchen that I love. Tom and I were supposed to start renovating our old home one room at a time. Well, with Tom's back and hip pains that plan is in the back burner. Tom works so many hours in his bent posture on editing yet we must rely on my part time income. For that I am so thankful.

I also remember those early years when I could not let go of what I wanted and needed in life. (Wings to Fly...my memoir of those years). I was so unhappy and so often hated Tom.


Yesterday I came home from long day at work. At 7:30pm I was looking forward to a hot soup Tom was going to prepare. When I came home, things were chopped up but not cooked. I voiced my disappointment. He said the pain was too great and could not continue. So I finished up and we ate dinner after 9 pm. And I loved him and we totally enjoyed our dinner.

As I look at him helping me clean up, in his bent posture, forward like an old man and side way to avert the pain, I thought... Tom I am sorry that I never appreciated you all during the time when you were so handsome in stature and helped me so much in everything.