One Year Later

So if you'll remember with me a little more than a year ago, my family situation was in the thick of a terrible predicament. The night before I got the news on a Saturday afternoon, I had gone to a baseball game with several friends, watched the fireworks show, and then stayed up late with Dave playing a soccer video game. The thought actually entered in my mind at that time that I couldn't be more content with how things were progressing at that point. Dave and I stayed up until about 3am, and then I woke up at 11 the next morning wondering what it was that I was going to do with my Saturday. I had nothing on my plate that day; quite literally, I hadn't a care in the world. And then right at about noon, I got a call from a police officer that would start a series of conversations that alerted me to what I initially thought to be one of the most desperate situations of which I had ever been a part.

What was kind of crazy was that about a year to the day later last weekend, I went to another baseball game with a different friend, watched another fireworks show, and woke up the next Saturday with my only concerns being, a) when was I going to get my run in, and b) how much was I going to love The Dark Knight. I guess what felt crazy was that I had similar thoughts of contentment that I had previously, but the sky didn't fall, and never did fall since that time.

If you would have asked me a year ago if I would have ever imagined that my own personal life would have remained largely unchanged from that point to this one now, I would have never believed you. My mom somehow still has her store; we haven't had to sell the house; and I think for the most part we're doing okay. I know that it's still an awful burden that she's carrying, but through it all, I think things are going to be alright. I don't think her situation will resolve itself for another few years, but I just can't believe how some things turn out sometimes. We've had some scares, really serious ones since then, but somehow we're all still here.

And it's not to say that there haven't been a lot of sleepless nights since then, bigger phone bills, extra days taken off, or just hundreds of hours thinking about how to take care of her situation, but through it all it just makes me so grateful for a Father in heaven that watches over my family. I think the weight of the situation hit me the hardest the morning after when talking to Dave's dad, and when he first saw me he walked up and embraced me and I just lost it. At that point I really thought that my mom had lost everything and that she had to go back to Brazil and that I would never be able to see her again unless I traveled down there to see her. That was really the only solution I could see working at the time.

I don't really know why I'm sharing this. I don't have a clearly defined lesson that I've learned, and I can't really say that any of us are any better off in any way because of what happened over a three month period about one year ago. I guess more than anything I'm just amazed at how things can turn out, that when things seem so completely bleak, with sustained faith and trust in God, I can still manage to endure, and I think do pretty well considering. It's cliche, but the night is always the darkest just before the dawn. Sunday does come. I don't know that it's necessarily here, but I've learned since then that that is a real statement.