EPISODE 48: APPRECIATING THE HERE & NOW

Jordie finally had his friends from school over today to visit and play during the holidays. He was so looking forward to them coming. Their mum brought them to our place today. We'd never met before so we chatted for a bit and got to know each other a little. During the conversation, she revealed to us that her husband was dying of cancer and probably only had a few months to live.

I really felt for this woman -yet she looked so strong. She just had to take what she had and go with it, get the income, manage the household, bring up her kids and make sure her husband gets taken care of. She told us she was glad the boys had their own network of friends to play with to take their mind off the family crisis. You may look at your life, think it stinks, think your problems bigger than others till somebody comes along and flashes a bigger bin of problems and then suddenly, yours seem to shrink to mini proportions.

It dawned on me how short life is. I mean, we go thru life with its motions of things, waking up, grooming, cleaning, cooking, eating, minding our business, getting the kids to school, nod off to bed, and then what?? Certainly, there is more to life than this everyday replay. There comes days when people or situations jar you and wake you out of your normal deadpan mode of comfy predictability and scream out to you, make your life count!! It could be an accident, death of someone you knew, a very unusual incident, or even a stranger just coming into your lives with extraordinary situations like in this case. And then you realise you had been selfishly moaning about your poor tired life and all that moaning energy needs to be channelled outwards because elsewhere, someone is always in worse shape than you.

During the day, one of the boys kept telling me in his straight, serious demeanour, "My dad's gonna die, He's gonna die, you know, by this year, it makes him sad and then it makes me double sad because I know he is gonna die and I'm sad because he's sad about it." SIGH! Wish I had a healing wand to go around zapping everyone back to health, but only God can do that.

But the boys had such a lot of fun together today and you know what, there was no sadness in that. I heard their laughter playing in the tiny drizzle outside with some water guns and light sabres. So, I realised, life may be short, but we make the most of it whatever we have and enjoy the here and now, the fun, the sun, (yes we had heaps of rain and even flooding in some areas of Queensland, really bad but today was nice weather to play outdoors) the food, the friendships, family, and then take everyday as it comes.

We told her that if at any time she needed for the boys to be away should she have a difficult time coping, that they were welcome here. Sure, it is inconvenient, privacy intruded, house messed up, but as Jordie puts it, " Its okay, at least we have fun together." So, yes, I thank God for family, for health, for joy, laughter and the blessings we have each day.