My Life Is…

It has taken me 2 years now, but I noticed something about my life. I noticed that when I look at all I am dealing with in family, home, and with my kids… when I looked at it all or even a part of it, I found myself saying, “Wow, this is really hard!”.
I started to note each time I called my life “hard,” and when I told someone that things were “hard,” and I even noted when I thought that word. Calming Nate down from an episode is hard. Traveling was hard. Miscommunications with Nate were hard. Finding time for Neve was hard. Communicating with Aaron was hard. Findingtime to unwind and enjoy friends is hard. Organizing Nate's schooling and therpaies is hard. Getting Nate to and from all schools and tehrpaies with a little one in tow is hard. I also noticed that each day I was getting up later and later, making myself late I might add, over and over in a futile attempt to postpone getting up and dealing with my “hard” life.
Wow, “hard” was a powerful word and it was running rampant in my thoughts. It is almost a default word, a word I felt stuck with. I have decided to try a little experiment. It seems simple really. I will give up using the word “hard” to describe everything and I will find a new word or phrase to replace it with.
Is my life hard? There are plenty of people who try to agree with me that my life really was hard, because in their eyes they completely believed that what I had was much harder than what they had. I didn’t care. I just couldn’t stand living with that thought about my kids and my family any more. Is having Nate really hard? Is Neve hard? I am dropping the word “hard” out of my vocabulary.
Now, what could fill that space? What would best describe my life? And how exciting to stand in front of a blank sheet of paper titled “My Life Is…” and be able to choose the next word. It is a little daunting. What would I choose to call my life?
I don’t take the task lightly. I am looking from many angles. One thing I see is that I am managing a lot of unexpected circumstances. My life hasn’t gone the way I expected and I found myself wondering if anyone’s life goes the way that they expect. That would be so boring! I mean really! What if your life turned out exactly how you thought it would? My life could never be called boring. It is quite the opposite. Exhausting, yes, but never boring. That was it! I am writing the words I will now use to define and describe my life.
My life is an unexpected journey!
It was simple and true, and so much more empowering than what I called my life before.
Sometimes we get negative about things that we could look at as positives instead. We can choose to complain about how awful the fight was to get out the door this morning, or be grateful that we even have this amazing child in our lives at all. My children are the best things that ever happened to me. Autism and all.
I think this is a process- yes, giving up this kind of negative thinking is hard! But I don’t think that is necessarily a bad thing. Having a baby is hard too, but that makes it all the more rewarding.