10 years of being married to my love!!!

We have officially made it 10 years of being married. I had a few scares during those 10 years where I did not think that we would see this day. With John's health being poor I remember quite a few times being in the hospital with him or in the ER room with him and thinking of things like: who should I call first, what will I do now, how do to make funeral arrangements, what would like to have in his funeral service, he wants to be cremated am I ready for that, and so forth.....

Even this last week while he was in the hospital I had those thoughts and it scared me. But I also know that I have a wonderful support system that will be there when I need them, so really no worries.

We have been so blessed these past 10 years, we have 3 wonderful blessings that are healthy, well behaved most of the time, beautiful, smart, loving (okay I could go on because I am their mom) and they are definitely the joys of our lives. We have been able to get through the difficulties we have faced with our marriage still intact, our faith in Christ still strong, our dreams of eternity still intact, and still in love.

I went to a funeral of a dear childhood neighbor this morning and listened to all of the wonderful talks and memories shared about her. I sat there thinking I am sad for the family members left behind to lose their wife, mother, grandmother, etc., but having the understanding that she is in heaven it made it so much easier to handle. They only found out less than a month ago that she had leukemia stage 5 and were told that she would not being going home from the hospital, and so it was. I sat and thought about all the times I played at her house with her daughters, going on a few excursions with them, and how she was a great lady. She is someone that I have been able to look up to in the role of a working mom. She worked graveyard shift so that she could be home with her kids and be able to attend all of their school functions, and she did. But if you tried to call their house in the morning it would be off the hook and you knew that she was sleeping. If I was over there when she was sleeping you had to tip toe across the front room floor, because her bedroom was directly below and she would come upstairs and get mad if you woke her up. Now as a mom who has decided to work a night shift, I totally understand now what she was going through. I deeply respect her decision and am glad that she was an inspiration to me. She also had the opportunity to help care for her mother when she had dementia and was unable to care for herself well enough. I remember going over there many times and she was off to take care of her mom, or there would be grandma spending the day with the family and eating dinner with them. She was able to show me compassion for others and taking care of your family.

I hope and pray that one day when I look back on my life I can say that I am not ashamed of the way I lived my life and hopefully I made a difference in the life of someone else.

Now if I can just be able to get John well enough so that we can spend our 20th anniversary together.....