Stumbling Towards Perfect

 So, I've been doing this 100 Happy Days challenge, which - let's be honest, I've become a pro at searching out the good. I have to. Without it, well, I'd end up in that deep pit of soul-sucking darkness with no hope of ever getting out. Anyway, the challenge is simple. Find something that makes you happy, snap a picture, share it using the tag #100happydays. You can sift through the happy images of others or even create a photo book at the end of the challenge. Go to 100 Happy Days to find out more. I really want to tell you about Day 16: Ruthie's Flowers Blooming Bright ♥ #day16 #100happydays Shortly before Avery passed away, my dear friend Ginger's sweet, sweet mother, Ruthie , passed away. It was awful and hard and heartbreaking. Ginger is quiet. She keeps things inside. She's intensely private both in her incredible strength and in her understandable anguish. Like polar opposites, Ginger grieves alone in the dark of her room; I'm wai...

Jadrian got in a car accident.   She's fine, physically. Well, aside from a fractured skull. Not skull. Forehead? That area above her right eyebrow where she hit the window. (You can't tell without having seen the hospital scans.)   She wasn't driving.   She was sitting. Talking. Looking off to the side. Not even conscious that she was simply trusting that they'd make it through the intersection without an issue.   Except that someone ran a red light and before she knew what was happening she felt the car she was riding in swerve, get hit and spin them around through the intersection.   And she lost it.   She panicked. Screamed. Yelled. Cussed.   And the driver boyfriend tried to tell her he was okay. His leg was stuck, hurt, but he was okay. And he tried to calm her down, but he couldn't.   A witness ran to her door, confused at her deafening screams. Manic. Absolutely manic.   She told me ...

There's a down side to losing your child. Besides the obvious, obviously. But that's losing people you thought would be in your corner, holding you up. Or at least holding up a box of Kleenex while you tear through them. See, we get sucked into this idea that we know who has our back. And this really goes for any tragedy: child dying, spouse dying, debilitating illness diagnosis, divorce, job loss, losing every single piece of who you are and where you came from in a house fire. We think, naively, before the bad things actually happen, that we could write a list of who loves us the most and who would always be there for us through thick and thin and that list would actually be truth. But it isn't. Because sometimes it just isn't. And I've read over and over people filled with anger because they thought their mom or their cousin or their aunt or their brother, their best friend or whoever else was on their list, would've, could've, should've but...

This life seems to revolve around countdowns. A week until my first day of kindergarten. Six weeks until I turn ten. Four months until I turn sixteen. Two days until I am a legal adult. Fifteen days until I leave for boot camp. Two minutes until I find out whether or not I'm pregnant. Six months until my due date. Three months. Two. And then I start counting down with my family. An hour until the guests arrive. Ten minutes until we sing Happy Birthday. Forty five minutes until we open the gifts. A year until we do it all over again. We countdown to events, tasks, goals, dreams, plans. We countdown to milestones like graduations and Sweet Sixteen's, proms and engagements, weddings and pregnancies. We countdown how many years until the mortgage is paid off and how many winters we can eek out the old furnace. We countdown how many days until we leave on vacation, how many years until we retire and how much money we need saved to finally buy that condo three blocks ...