Underpaid and Overloved: part 1

By now you have noticed that life is not made up of one choice that sort of spreads itself out over many years. No one is given a hand written map that guides you through life, directing you away from every hurt and tear. The delivery room nurses aren't sending babies home with "Life:For Dummies" manuals. Most of us don't have life coaches that may help steer us in the direction of a right decision. No one has a little white angel sitting on their shoulder telling them the right thing to do.

But I....(yes, I!) am a very lucky girl.

Here is why I am lucky:)

I've had a small handful of role models in my wee bit of time on the planet.

I don't find my inspiration in great speakers. I don't have life altering moments thanks to Nobel Prize winners. I don't lie in bed at night thanking God for something Oprah said.

I am lucky to know, and to have known, some very inspring women during my wee
little lifetime.

From them I have been taught life is a series of choices {good and bad} strung together like dazzling christmas lights flashing off of pristine white snow, each one distinct in it's own right, but when strung together they make up a breathtaking display of beauty. From them I have learned how to love unselfishly. From them I have learned that a lie is the most viscious thing you can tell someone you love. From them I have learned that to judge swiftly and harshly is not only cruel, but also causes me to become like a bitter lemon. From them I have learned that sometimes life doesn't turn out quite the way we envisioned, but it is still LIFE....precious life, worth savoring every single creamy, tart, bitter, sweet, spicy moment!

Thank you for reading this blog today and sharing in my quiet thoughts~ and I hope you bear with me as I thank each of the 4 {{four}} people that inspire me every single day.

Beginnning with....

my mother.

Life was not easy for this woman. Her mother was murdered when she was a child of 12 years old. From that time on, she was tossed from house to house, not really wanted in any of them. She was abandoned by her father. She spent time in an orphanage when no one else wanted her. She was abused mentally, physically and emotionally by an exhusband. Her life was raked across the dirt before it really even started.

By all accounts, she should have been either a drug pushing whore or a cold, bitter hearted woman who blamed the world and everyone in it for her misfortune.

but she wasn't.
and she didn't.

My mother raised three kids in a single parent home for the better part of my life. She was told she couldn't (or perhaps shouldn't) do it on her own. But she did it:) I am not saying that she was perfect, nor am I saying that she didn't have moments when she WAS bitter or angry at the way her life turned out. She was human and I know she MUST have felt this way a lot of the time. I remember very few times when she did things that weren't very "mother like" and perhaps selfish. In those time I imagine that she was frustrated or angry that her life wasn't "fair" or that it hadn't turned out quite the way she had planned. She had every right to feel that and more, but my mom chose not to. She chose to be a stong woman even though life had not offered her much to hold on to.

:I learned from her life:

NO ONE and NOTHING determines your destiny. You make the most of what you have been given. Making crumb cake from crumbs. Lemaonade from lemons. The secret is finding the butter and sugar~then mixing them in just right.

This memory I share now is personal and pains to even write it.

I spent the last week of my mothers life with her in a hospital room. She moaned in pain most of the week, crying out during the night. I spent the week telling her she would get better, not wanting to admit to myself that she was dying. Somehow, in the stupor of being fed morphine to ease her pain, to this day I believe she held on to life that week so I woulnd't have to SEE her die. You see, I'd been there every single minute of her last week. But I left the hospital that afternoon and ten minutes (TEN) later, we were called back because she was gone. I believe in my heart that my mom's last act of love...of unselfish love...was holding on until I was gone before she let go of her life. Perhaps on some level she knew that I was not capable watching her take that last breath?

:I learned from her death:

how to love unselfishly and....
that life isn't always (or really...EVER) all about me. There are people in this world that I truly love more than I love myself and I hope that if there is ever a time to prove it...I will be as strong as my mother and love them as unselfishly as I know she did for me.

what a breathtaking LADY she was. and I am so lucky she was mine.

PART 2: to be continued tomorrow:) this is all I can handle for one night!