Set backs

(I want to dedicate today's post to my dear friend Pat. Right now she is feeling pretty punky with her cancer. Everyone please send her healing thoughts today)

This morning I woke up early and my brain started off and couldn't be stopped. I got to thinking about all the set backs that we have had. The big ones are obvious, of course, like Mac getting leukemia, the old house not selling, the high cost of not being able to keep building on schedule, Iowa's new found monsoon season..... the list goes on.

Financially, set backs pretty much have defined our lives. It has been one thing after another. We are living proof that "trickle down" economics should have been called "trickle on" economics. Most of our married years have been taken up by two massive recessions. The first was with the farm crisis and Savings and Loans establishments. But the young pups didn't remember all that stuff so they went out and did it again, but this time they did it with home mortgages, and since we didn't want the banks to go the same route as the S&Ls, they bailed them out.

Living in a small town was tough during the '80's recession. One by one the stores closed up. There was almost no where to go except a few restaurants and the grocery store. Getting a job was about the same. After a farmer in a neighboring county hung himself in his barn, farmers coming off the farm got preferential hiring and most of the "women's jobs" that had been in the stores downtown, were simply gone. When Mac became a teacher, he stepped into a $6,000. per year pay cut.

Emotionally, the set backs were even harder. Three kids and not having the where withal to care for them. They certainly didn't get all their wants. They didn't even get all of their needs. That is a regret that I will take to my grave. But the thing with going through set backs with the ones we love is that we can't stop. You have to build a life. You have to find fun. You have to make memories. You just have to keep moving... some way or another. It's like plopping a big rock down in a flow of water. You might stop the water for a bit. But the water will find a way around it's own set back. It will over flow or flow around or build up enough pressure that it finds a flow farther back, but it will find it's way. Just like that trickle of water, I'm going to redefine my flow. I won't be stopped. I'll just be a different me.

louie
(Pat, love you gobbers and bunches)