Maybe it's because I'm getting older. I seem to be a lot more relaxed about...well...about just about everything!
The bills pile up and I sort of just say "Meh". The kids fight, and I initially yell, but then I get yelled at by one kid who says that I am not yelling enough at the offending child.
I seem to have a case of pickyourbattleitis.
It's not like life is any less busy, or that things aren't stressful. Our little nephew is due to come home from the hospital soon. I do have anxiety about how he'll do once he's home and away from some of the safety that being at a renowned children's hospital affords. I still get shivers of loss and sadness when I think about our sweet little niece, born and died on the same day, buried within jogging distance but etched in our hearts forever. School is going haltingly, at best, with a baby/toddler who eats EVERYTHING SHE GETS HER GRUBBY LITTLE HANDS ON and has now taken to screaming fits when she doesn't get her way (and she's not even terrible two yet!)...BUT, even with all of this weight, I seem to have a calmness I can't ever recall having. It might be the start of a withdrawing depression about the impending winter, but I don't think that's quite it.
Perhaps it's just that I've developed a common aspect of middle age (no, not an urge to go buy a sports car or wear leopard prints and mini skirts in a pathetic attempt to bring back youth) that I just didn't know about or care about until I was dragged into the 40's last year? I don't know. Can any of my 40+ aged friends out there tell me they felt/feel the same thing?
Maybe it's the fact that this past year has been the year from hell? It started out with the winter that never ended and the spring that changed everything: we found out about Laurencia. It continued on with what should have been a joyful reprieve from the sadness that would be Laurencia's birth and death: Benedict's birth, but he was born not breathing correctly and eventually suffered through one of the scariest birth defects and a lot of the complications that come with it (he is due to come home this weekend, thank GOD!). These are not my children but they are my nieces and nephew and our lives revolve around family and it affected us all so profoundly.
I just did it again, I sighed. I have to catch my breath when I think of everything my family has been through but I know we can do it because we did it, together.
Maybe that's where the peace comes from: from knowing that bad things happen but that we can get through them...with a lot of help from friends, family, neighbors, all of them, gifts from GOD, to help us get through the really awful, terrible, horrible, frightening, devastating times.
If you prayed for our family, I want to thank you. I think a lot of the peace I feel now is leftover prayer peace, brought to my heart from your words to God. I hope it flows into my family, siblings and their spouses too.
God bless us all and I look forward to a better year.
