The Harsh Realities

I have been a bad blogger lately. The truth of the matter is that I really just haven't felt like it. At all. There's actually been a lot going on lately that I could be blogging about, but I just haven't wanted to. I posted something a week or so ago about a friend's husband dying and then promptly took it down. It was too soon. It seemed way too personal to be talking about something so horrific. It still does.

I will tell you this though. You can make plans for the present and the future and in a split second those plans can be forever altered, changed, ruined. It doesn't take much and that is scary. You can assume you will raise your children together, go on vacation, retire and travel and then grow old sitting on the porch together until you both peacefully pass from this world to the next. Then something can happen that shatters that illusion and makes that idyllic scene completely impossible. You can be left alone, raising your children by yourself. A widow or widower when you are still technically young.

Being faced with these thoughts lately has given me a much greater appreciation for the life I currently have, knowing that it is possible that at any moment that life can be altered. It makes some of the "little" things my husband and I bicker about seem so pointless.

I suppose my point is just that life can be unfair; it can suck and be painful and seemingly unbearable. But the possibility of these things happening shouldn't make us stop appreciating the positives simply because there is a *chance* something bad could happen. Sometimes fear can be paralyzing and we need to remind ourselves to live, to continue to enjoy life, and deal with the harsh realities when they occur but definitely not to live in constant fear of them *possibly* happening. And that is what I have spent these past few weeks trying to do.