Had a funny thought run though my brain while taking a moment to breath, stretch and say "thank you" for all that is good in our lives.  As sappy (and truthfully quite awkward for me to say), as it sounds...it's what my experiences have brought me to at this point in life.

When I started this rag-tag blog that's more malfunction than functional, my top priority is to maintain my families privacy.  

Madeline in Yong Frankenstein

                 

For all that I'm out there for the world to see 

(channeling Lucille Ball and Madelin Kahn),

the rest of the household prefers to be supportive behind the scenes.  

With all that said, it's time to share a wee bit more of our story.  Only because many of my girlfriends--the majority, really-- are struggling.  Not just stay at home moms or single moms.  It's all encompassing. There's not necessarily a good guy or a bad guy.  It's called life and it can get very, very hard.  Marriages and families are struggling, crumbling and disintegrating for a various reasons.  100% of the majority of my friends has felt isolated, alone, bereft of emotion, stripped of dignity and self-worth.  We are emotionally and physically exhausted.  

So here I shout, loud and not quite so proud:  We are not a perfect family.  We have loud fights, say mean words, stacks stuff everywhere instead of putting it away, and I'm consistently late in spite of everyone's efforts.  We have hurt feelings and regrets.  There's drama at school and work and we wish we had more / better things.

In the last year, to compound all of life's little set backs, my husband became very ill.  The stay-in-the-hospital-for a week kind of ill.  The ambulance to the house kind of ill.  The mood altering and physically devastating kind of sickness.  

But he's here and we'd like to keep it that way.  So we go to great lengths to bite our tongues, use kind words, change our patterns of inappropriate behavior, for the sake of peace.  In doing so, we are becoming kinder and better humans.  There is more love, more easiness.  There are conversations, puzzles and board games.  And there are fights and tears and pain.  We are not perfect, but we're in our home, filled with food, clothing, heat and running water.  We are able to tithe and volunteer, helping out behind the scenes where we can.

Getting back to my original thought to share:  a little poem spoke in my head, and this is what is said...

Once I bent back to view the sky,

and there above me, flying high,

Was a bug of some kind.

Not a moth or a fly...

It's brain filled of thoughts of

where to dine (or be dined),

No sense of wonder, no other

worries in mind.

Not much of a life--

But at least he could fly.

~Yvette Elrod

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone.  Many blessing to all who burdened with life's struggles.