Appreciating what you have before you lose it

Morning!

It’s been a pretty hectic past week, let me tell you that!  I’ve been flying solo now for the past 6 days; the husband returns from a week-long  business trip very shortly and it’s not a moment too soon.

Think "4 kids!", add to that "homework monitoring", include a dash of "dealing with clients who shun email yet then wonder why updates I sent 2 months ago never got thru", tack on PMS that oh so thoughtfully coincided when my kids were in "must velcro to the Mommy mode" (sometimes I think I’m the only person who, ahem, enjoys PMS twice a month – middle AND end of each cycle.  And to think my kids will follow in me footsteps!), and you get a weeeeee bit of the utter bliss that is currently suffusing my very being.

But I digress.  🙂

Yesterday, I had a very fascinating discussion with my youngest.  He had wanted to scooter down the hallways; I gave him permission SO LONG AS fragile valuables (read: Mom’s breakfront) were left unmolested. 

3 minutes later, I hear a happy-go-lucky BONK reverberate thru the house.  "Mom!" he called, to reassure me – "Look, it’s okay!  Nothing broke!"

Mom was NOT a happy camper, let me tell you.  So Mom explained that because he chose NOT to follow the rules, Mom is choosing to implement the consequences of causing the scooter to self-combust.

"But I WAAAAAANNNNNTTTTT IT!"

…my youngest intoned with the gentle whisper of a PMS’ing homocidal warthog.

After I explained consequences once, I reiterated "Consider this a character-building experience – you choose not to appreciate what you have and treat it well, chances are….you’ll lose it quicker than a angsting teen can compose extraordinarily bad poetry snippets like so:

Angst.  Embraces.  Me.  But.  Not.  My.   iPod.

Anywhos!  This brings me to the topic near and dear to my heart:

Do you truly appreciate what you have?

Consider your family.  Perhaps you’re a neat-nick, and your spouse is a slob.  Or maybe you’re a Mormon and your one true love is a Buddhist.    Or it could be that your friends help you out whenever possible….and you accept it as your God-given due.

Ever wonder what would happen when what you took for granted….no longer is by your side?

I confess; I never do that anymore, because when I was 19, I lost the ability to walk without pain.  Something so obvious, so common, so NEEDED….and one day, whomp, it went byebye until I got fitted for a brace that enabled me to walk once again.

My gosh, was that ever a lesson to internalize!!

Human nature being what it is, I think we all have the potential to focus upon the trees instead of seeing the glorious forest about us when it comes to our personal self-growth and relationships. 

I’m pretty certain my husband learned the above during the past week.  While I’ll admit to being an utterly magnificent woman, wife and mother who can single-handedly run a business, the household, deliver soul-searingly melting massages and evoke mind-blowingly creative sensual activities…when it comes to "neat", I kinda sorta was born MINUS that gene.  And our kids….they could happily live in the wilds of the Sahara without noticing any stray sand or dust.

Before he left, that issue was, ahem, discussed.  We did get over it, and I did give him my blessings to go bananas during his trip (my 15 years of marriage has shown me that our martial strength lies in our emotional love for each other; we do not feel threatened by other people at all).  So he’s now had 6 days minus the chaos of our household….and our kids….and me.

After the second day, he did call and express his boredom with the surroundings.  Now that I and our family was taken away from him, methinks he started appreciating the superb goodness that’s at the heart of our family environment…to hell with the neatness!

Like I said:

You never appreciate what you have….until you lose it.

Thus, whenever you’re tempted to hark on your partner’s lack of skills in one particular area….do yourself a favor and judge them against the sum total of positive love you receive from them!  Certainly, you can work out issues together and really try to meet each others’ needs to the best of your ability. 

But!  In the cases where your partner simply CANNOT internalize what you crave…you have to compromise. 

I’ve written about this in the past, most notably in When YOU can’t meet your spouse’s or partner’s needs…is all hope lost?.  Really understanding the above and taking it to heart can free you to focus on why you choose to marry your spouse in the first place….and put truly in perspective.

Remember…the one thing you DON’T want to gain is your nit-picking heart’s desires….at the expense of your soul’s heart’s desire. 

And THAT is something to remember for all eternity.

Enjoy,

Barbara Ling