lilly blog header REVISED

Friday, January 29, 2010

Guess What?

Today I actually have to pick out paint samples. Emphasis on the word have! I met with the sheetrocker yesterday and in just a few short days he will be done with the first coat of primer upstairs and I will be able to start painting colors. My children's new bedrooms! I have dreamed about this day for so long, the four years since we started building this house and every year that came before that - if math is hard for you that would be 20 years - 10 x 2, two decades, 10 x 4.....a long damn time!!!
Somebody pinch me!
For those of you who don't know I LOVE to decorate. I think about it with my most of my spare thinking time, I fall asleep decorating my new house in my mind, I adore paint samples and at any given time will usually have a random assortment in my purse..hey you never know when you need to have a paint sample handy! When I was in middle school my friend Michelle and I use to go through magazines for hours on end. We had lots of pocket folders labled living rooms, dining rooms, bedrooms, kitchens, kids rooms, bathrooms, exterior etc. We would cut and sort and file appropriately all the design ideas we would come across. We drew floor plans and dreamed of the lives we would someday have inside these houses we would create in our minds. I am embarrassed to say we even named our children and picked our future husband's professions....let's just let that thought alone. :)

 Many of the wonderful things and all of the terrible things that have happened over the last twenty years I never really dreamed of. I didn't know adopting a baby would be one of the greatest joys of my life and completely change me from the inside out. I didn't know we would live through 3 years of a financial storm that threatened my husbands life, our marriage and everything I thought I understood about life. I didn't know that traveling to Arizona with my spiritual soul sister would peel back a layer of myself that I didn't even know existed. I always thought the desert would be dry, dusty and boring...who knew I would find God there. I didn't know that my parents would divorce and leave my family in shambles. I didn't know that even though you never really get used to divorced parents it does get easier as time goes by. I didn't know that my mom would eventually meet a man that we now can't imagine not having as part of our family. I didn't know that going to massage school was really God's way of leading me to one of my dearest friends. I didn't know that the best dog I have ever had would live to be 14 and be hit and killed by a car and die alone on the side of the road without me holding her and telling her how much I loved her. I didn't know that I would lose a friend to an anuerysm with no warning just twelve hours after I made lunch plans with her. I didn't know that when I went on a giant road trip for my 40th birthday that I would stumble upon my some of my original dreams from almost 20 years ago. I also didn't know that while 'killing time' one day on that same road trip I would follow a sign to a cafe' that actually led me to an art gallery where I would find a friend I didn't even know was missing from my life. I didn't know that I would have three biological children and then 15 years later want to start a whole new family through adoption. I didn't know when I stood before the Grand Canyon that it would take my breath away. I didn''t know that my Uncle Dick, one of my favorite people in the world, would get a sudden cancer diagnosis and leave us all baffled and lost when he died just five months later. I didn't know when we went to China to adopt our daughter that we were about to become part of a whole new family that we love so much. I didn't know I would eat dinner at the top of the World Trade Center at Windows on the World and six months later it would crumble to the ground. I didn't know that when I held my sister's first baby for the first time that the baby would already have passed away. I didn't know that my first boyfriend would lead me to a lifelong friendship that has endured every up and down you can imagine and we would still be laughing together all these years later. I didn't know that my dream house would pose so many challenges and heartaches and JOY. Thank God I didn't know all the joy or all the heartache that lay before me or I might have found it hard to participate in life. I remember hearing a quote by Arthur Ash (the great tennis player) before he died...it went something like this "If I ask why me about my sorrows, then I would have to ask why me about my joys."

So I think I will just say thank you, put on my warm scarf and winter coat and brave the single digit temperature all in the name of paint samples. And joy.....

1 comment:

Jeanne Oliver said...

What an incredible post!!! What amazing joys and heartbreaking breaking sorrows. That quote is amazing too!!!

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