Wednesday, October 8, 2014

Adventures and Counting our Blessings...

2014 was the year of illness and injury in our families.  I won't go into all of the mishaps and suffering.  This is a post about adventures and blessings.  Everyday I thank God for putting such amazing people in my life, our lives to help us through the tough times.  I just hope that I can be just as good to them as they are to me.

It was also a year of travel, adventures and counting our blessings.

This year we traveled to Minnesota in February and March for one of my best friends wedding.  We traveled to several places in Montana, Chico Hot Springs, Billings, Havre, Flathead Lutheran Bible Camp, Whitefish, Kalispell and Bozeman.  I hope we can make a trip to Missoula to meet up with a few friends of ours who live in Plains.  We traveled to New Hampshire at the end of June and made day trips to the beach in Maine, the White Mountain region of New Hampshire and Boston.  I traveled to Minnesota by myself at the end of August and visited with friends and family.  It was a great trip.  

My son turned 2 this year.  My little nuclear family grew closer to each other through our trials and adventures.  We are blessed to have each other.  We are blessed to have such amazing, strong people in our families, who inspire us to be strong, better people.  We are blessed to have such wonderful friends, who are such a blessing to me, to us.  I have found a sense of peace about where I am in my life because of texts, facebook messages and phone calls to/with/from friends.  You guys kept me sane this year.  I love you all!

Finding peace about being a stay-at-home mom and not working has been a constant struggle since we left Minnesota.  Not working has been one of the hardest things I've done in my life.  But staying home with my son and raising him has been one of the most rewarding things I've done in my life.  Becoming the token church lady volunteer has been such a blessing too.  Someday I'll get back to work, in a job that I love that allows me to use the gifts God has given me to share with others.  My friends and family have continuously told me these things for 3+ years now and it is finally sinking in.  It is a blessing to be okay with my lot in life at the moment, finally.  There is sometimes pressure from people that I should want more, that I should be able to have and do everything I want to now, but that is just not the case.  Someday I will go back to work.  But for now I am blessed to be a mom to my son and a wife to my husband; a volunteer at our churches; a daughter, sister, friend.  These are great things to be and I know when I look back I will have no regrets.  I suppose I have learned to live my life in a way, that when I am on my deathbed, I will look back and have only a few regrets.

And I've completely digressed from my original intent for this blog post.  I suppose that happens sometimes.  The main point is that through our adventures and travels and the people in our lives, we have found many blessings in 2014 that have overtaken the hardship and struggle that have come in the form of illness and injuries in our families.  Thanks be to God!!! :)