Taking Things for Granted

I tend to travel down the path of self-reflection from time to time. Most often these trips are sparked by an event or circumstance in my life or the life of someone around me. I always realize very soon into my reflection that I take so many things in life for granted. I don't think about the lights turning on, the water coming out of the facet, my car starting, my eyes opening, or that I will always wake up next to my beautiful wife. For the longest time I assumed that being able to start a family was just something that everyone who wanted to was able to do. I know that is naive, but I truly wasn't fully appreciative of the blessing that it is to become a parent.

I have been guilty of holding many faulty views about life and how it is "supposed" to be. I'm not sure if I have ever looked at something so wrongly in my whole life. See, I used to look at life as a series of little battles. Each of the little battles had a dedicated topic and a identifiable goal. The first battle was growing up with a solid education. Then I went off to college to add to that education. A large part of college was preparing me for law school, so when I received my bachelor's degree I parlayed that into a law degree. At that stage the education chapter was closed. However along the way I started on the next battle frontier: marriage. So now I'm an attorney and I'm married, all is well. It had to be time to become a home owner at some point, so that is what we did next. This is when things started to detour from the plan a bit. I'm four years older than Karyn. When I graduated from law school and when we were married she still had three years of school left in year doctorate of physical therapy program. That meant we were each in different phases of our lives. That fact, coupled with my burning desire for knowledge, led me to reenroll in academia to pursue a master's degree in taxation.

My reason for mentioning all of this is to make one small point. I always thought there was a "better time" to start a family. I thought it would be better to wait until we were "settled down." I would routinely answer questions from friends and family with a variation of "we shall see." Then last year happened. I'm not saying that we experienced those losses because we tried to plan our life. I'm just saying that sometimes we need to let go of the wheel and let a higher power guide us home. I am not the most religious man on the planet by any stretch, yet I understand and appreciate the role that God plays in my life. I was angry and hurt for many months last year because I couldn't understand why God would allow us to lose two pregnancies in a span of 5 months. At some point I came to the realization that it wasn't His intent for us to suffer and that He only gave us as much as we could handle. The silver lining was that is provided me with yet another opportunity to appreciate all of the blessings that He has provided me. I do not take life for granted. I do not take love for granted. And I do not take having a child for granted. I believe that it will happen for us this time and when it does I will receive the blessing with open arms.

That reminds me of a poster I saw at the Syttende Mai festival in Stoughton, WI this last weekend. The picture above contains the same passage about the shortness of life. I'm not in the business of telling people how they should look at life, but for my money it is much better to cherish and appreciate all the blessing that we have.