Loving Life and Planting Seeds

Loving life, loving life, loving life.

I have several friends going through relationship issues. I truly feel for them. I've been there. Most adults have, right?

I look back over life and there is only one relationship I regret and that is the last one. But every other relationship in my life meant something. Whether I was blessed with a marriage, a child, a memory, a lesson, a friend for life, they were all worthy of having.

Today I am still a woman. I am still a mother. I'm a wife again. I'm a grandmother. I proudly stood up in class this year proclaiming my age and the story of my stroke. I received applause.

I won't lie to you. I know I'm close to 50, I'm 47. I'm not a spring chicken but I do get told I look much younger that my age. I'm working, I'm writing, I'm walking (again). I love walking in the fall and winter.

Date nights are those spent watching the Rangers make history with my son or slow dancing with my husband. Early mornings are filled with writing and working on the final stages of a huge dream of mine that takes off by the end of the week.

Having my husband's young nieces run up and hug me brings back memories of another girl that age, my beautiful Force of Nature who recently married the love of her life. I don't talk much about my kids online anymore. That last relationship cured me of that. No, he wasn't someone from somewhere else. He was someone local who hacked my family from his work while we were living together.

God really does bless us in the end. He gives us the ones we are meant to be with. When you are truly happy in life, you wish the same for others, past relationships, people of opposite voting opinions, people who spout off stuff you disagree with, whatever the case.

I look around and what I see are three adult children living their lives as a combat veteran, a college student and a military bride. I see a man I lived down the road from as a teenager looking into my eyes and telling me he is the lucky one. (He's wrong, I am the one who got lucky.)

If you are worried about something, take heart. Things turn around, they get better. A little girl with cancer teaches me that every day. A strong husband with his arm around me shows me that every morning and every evening. A son with a brain injury and constant VA nightmares are dealt with because he DID come again. A teenager on the street thanking me for picking her as she sat crying by the road lets me know that yes, life comes with risks but in the end it is so very much worth it.

Love is a rose...and yes...sometimes you CAN pick it. Just make sure you pay it forward and replant the seeds.