Thursday, August 21, 2008

I'm 45 today...I think

I have trouble keeping up with how old I am. It might have something to with all the dead brain cells from delivering 4 children. And I'm pretty sure some got killed during the adoption process of Callie. But, anyway, I'm pretty sure I'm 45 this time around.

Twenty years ago we were living in the adorable little town of Norwalk, Iowa. Haley had arrived three days before. I was three years into what turned out to be twelve miserable years of depression. I finally got help. Now the depression rears it head and slaps me down about every five years or so. Thankfully, now I don't mess around about getting help to climb back up.

The last twenty years have been filled with lots of good stuff. My husband has continued to love me. Most of the time I'm not too lovable. We've added four wonderful, crazy, obnoxious children to our family. I've been to China three times for a total of 9 weeks, Morocco for two weeks and the South of France one week (not nearly long enough). I've volunteered for some amazing organizations, gone on some moving mission trips and been paid to do some really fun things.

The last twenty years has been filled with a lot of crap too. As I've already said, depression kept me down for a good bit of time. I bought into the stupid American dream. I bought into the Plano dream even though in the back of my head I always knew it was wrong, wrong, wrong. I've made choices for which my family will pay a long, long, time. I waited too many years to sponsor children from Compassion International. My priorities have been twisted and bent.

I don't know if I have twenty more years. If I take after my grandmothers, I do. If I take after my grandfathers, not so much. My prayer is that I do better with whatever I have left.

2 comments:

Compassion dave said...

Pretend you got 45 minutes left.

Steve said...

Very interesting to come across your blog! Hang in there - we are all going through this together. Some just hide it better or are better fakers!