Reflections

Time has been flying lately.  It has been such a busy week.  Work, home, everywhere.  The workouts have been kicking butt.  I was even lucky enough to get an outside run in last night with the time change and the slight increase in temperature.  The kids and dog got to go run, too, and had a great time.  I think it was definitely healthy for us all to get out and get some fresh air.  And I, for one, am definitely thankful for daylight savings time, even if it means losing an hour of sleep.

It's been a time of a lot of reflection, also.  Some of you already know that it's getting very close to the one year anniversary of Kruex's death.  It's very hard to imagine that one year ago at this very moment I was sitting in my living room, rocking my baby to sleep.  I can even smell him after his bath, with his clean hair lying in my lap.  I'm sure you can all imagine how horribly I miss him.  How I would give anything for one more day, hour, even minute of rocking him and nursing him to sleep.  

But something I never could have imagined was how I would feel one year later.  I had an appointment with my therapist (shrink :P) this morning and, as she will do from time to time, she asked me to rate how I'm feeling on a scale of 1 - 10.  Surprisingly (and frighteningly considering how close I am to this anniversary), I answered that I was probably somewhere between a 7 and an 8.  I don't, and never have, felt like Kruex was taken from me as a punishment.  I honestly don't believe that God is cruel in that way.  I think He has a much better sense of humor than that and would prefer to make it more interesting than just completely breaking people in one fell swoop.  If I had to guess, I would say that, if anything, my relationship with Payton and Kruex's father was probably the pay-back for past regressions, not Kruex's death.  

I know that I have talked to some of you about this, but I believe our lives are a series of lessons.  Lessons we have to learn before we are allowed to move on.  I also fully believe that we keep repeating the same lessons over and over in subsequent lives until we finally grasp the meaning of what we have been through, a higher knowledge if you will.  And it is my full intention that if Kruex's death was meant to be a lesson for me in this life, I fully intend to learn it and will not risk going through this again.  Because honestly, I don't think I could survive the loss a second time.  And there is nothing for my other kids to gain by watching me fall apart.

Kruex's loss has changed my view of death, but it has also changed view of life.  And I think that is the most important part of this lesson.  I have a lot more compassion for people now than I ever could have before.  Not the ones who obviously deserve it, but the bitter, angry, even hateful people.  From the bottom of my soul, I am just really sorry that they can't understand the lessons that life is handing them and learn from them.  It pains me to watch people let their lives slip away because they feel they are "owed" something.  We are owed nothing in this life.  Everything that we want, or get has to be earned.  It is also my belief that nothing worth having is anything that money can buy.  I would prefer to have children that are healthy and happy.   Ones who had a childhood filled with memories, as opposed to filled with things.  It was certainly my dream and desire to have three children with those memories, but apparently that isn't what God had planned for me/us and that is something I have to learn to live with.

There is much more peace to be gained from seeing the metaphoric silver lining than there is to focusing on the thunder cloud.