Blog Your Heart

Okay, just me, my soldier, and our 4 little chicks is one of my favorite blogs.  Stephanie is a military wife, mom to 4 beautiful little girls, and someone with one of the biggest hearts I've seen in the internet world.  She's raising 4 future phenomenal women and she has a strong, faith-filled, love-filled marriage and home, and I love reading her blog.  I found this Blog Your Heart idea on her site. Here's how it works:

1. blog whatever is authentic. whatever is truly on your mind and in your heart.

2. it can be serious, silly, short, long. note:no one said it has to be serious. but it should be authentic.
3. no judging allowed no snarky comments, no making fun, no passive agressive digs.if you are going to read the blogs linked below, don't be mean. nothing here is whining. it's me honestly sharing my feelings. if you feel that it's whining, then you don't have to read. :)...

So here we go...  Sorry if the first few sound like whining and complaining on my part...  But I'm going to get a couple of things off MY chest and out of my heart...

-- I grew up thinking, believing my life would include children.  I would be a mom, no matter what.  Well, life works in mysterious ways and I fell in love with a man who didn't want more kids; he had two from a previous marriage.  Thankfully, I now have two step-children.  I may not have birthed them from my loins, but they are the children of my heart.  And it hurts me that there is someone very important in my life who refuses to acknowledge that I am a mom, a mother, that I have kids even if I didn't give birth to them.  This person does not acknowledge me on Mothers' Day, and it hurts.  And it makes me mad.  I can't understand how this person can totally ignore the fact that I HAVE two children, children who love me, children I helped raise, put through college, support now as adults.  Would it really kill you to wish me a Happy Mothers' Day once a year?

-- We go to two churches, one at home, the parish which both my husband and I attended as young children, and another near our vacation home which we attend 1/2 the year, if not more; we're there almost every weekend.  Lately I've been unhappy with the lake church.  I'm very traditional, and I don't like changes to hymn lyrics to accommodate political correctness ("Let us walk with each other" instead of the original "Let me walk with my brother").  I don't like the new music they're using for the Alleluia before the Gospel.  It sounds like a polka.  Where's the accordian?  And I don't need a tambourine keeping beat while we sing every song or prayer.  It's not presented as a folk music Mass - get rid of that tambourine and stop playing carousel music in church!

-- Okay, let's admit that I don't like change much in any aspect of my life.  I guess it all tracks back to loss of control.  There's so little you can control in your life; why does something have to change all the time?  What happened to "if it ain't broke, don't fix it"???

-- I am the luckiest person in the world.  No, I didn't win the PowerBall lottery - that would make all of YOU, my family and friends, very lucky!  I'm lucky because I'm married to the best guy on this earth!  Yea, yea, yea, I know you all think your husbands are the best, but, sorry!  J is awesome!  He has the biggest heart of any man I know.  I have no doubt, not for one second of the day, that he loves me and cares about me.  He loves his children totally and completely.  He will do anything for anyone.  My biggest regret about my marriage is that my Dad isn't here to be father-in-law to this man I married.  That would have been a great relationship to witness - they knew each other superficially, so I draw comfort from the fact that my Dad at least met the man I married, even if it was years before we ever started dating.  And I SO regret that I wasn't able to have a FIL/DIL relationship with my father-in-law, who died after hubby and I got back together but before we got engaged or married.  I had THE BEST mother-in-law; I know my father-in-law would have been equally wonderful.

-- Speaking of my mother-in-law, I miss you, Mom!!!

-- I love my neighborhood.  It's the very definition of "neighborhood" - we all know each other and watch out for each other...  I know we're not meant to stay there forever; we're starting to think about relocating after retirement.  We're going to be taking some weekend trips to scout out different states and neighborhoods - DE, MD, VA, FL...  Mom is the dealbreaker, of course - she's either going to have to come with us, or we're not going anywhere for the next 25 years or so, 'cause I plan for her to be around for at least that much longer!!!

-- I want to retire.  I want to take cooking classes, photography classes, I want to take my mom out to lunch, keep my house clean, do my laundry when it's not dark in my basement 'cause the only time we have to do chores like that is at night...

-- Speaking of the lottery...  IF we were every lucky enough to win "the big one," our lives really wouldn't change much.  I wouldn't move, or change houses.  I wouldn't buy a new car.  Admittedly I'd be traveling more, but I'd be coming home to the same house, the same clothes, the same husband...  Oh, I'd have a dog.  But my family?  Ah, THEIR lives would change so very much!  Their mortgages would be paid off, their children would have money to go to college when they're ready, their credit cards would have zero balances and their bank accounts would have a LOT more zeroes before the decimal point!  Okay, my life would change a lot - I'd be able to be much more generous than I am now...  I guess that's a really nice way my life would change, and I'd be so very happy to see that change come my way...

-- I've been lucky in my work life.  For the most part, I've had jobs I loved, or worked with people I love, or been lucky enough in one of my jobs to have it both ways, so I can't say I'm miserable getting up in the morning to go to the office.  I'll admit I wish my day started later - I've recently become less of a morning person than I was before - I've always been a "stay up and watch TV until midnight" kind of girl, but now it's getting harder and harder to get up before 6am to get ready for work.  NO, I'm NOT getting old...  I'm just more tired...

For an unplanned Blog Your Heart post, I've really hit a few big ones...  Well, it's off to work...