Five Wishes

Normally, Tuesday is my day to vent about all the things pissing me off.

This week, though, I can't be bitchy.  I just can't.  Not after yesterday.

This happened, then it just kept going.


I owe a debt of gratitude to some friends right now, and I'm still a little giddy when I think about it.  I didn't sleep at all last night, mostly because there is a part of me that worries a bit when I pick up new fans.

I don't want to let my fans down.  I want to be funny and relevant and interesting.  I hope that I am.  I was chatting with a blogger friend, My Operation Rainbow, last night about how I think we all do this for a reason.  They're all different reasons, obviously, but there is something that drives us, that tells us to open ourselves up to other people, that says to us yes, share the crazy with the people.

Then, just as I was chatting with her, I got a message from another blogger friend, Modern Mama Dramas.  She refers to me as her online big sister, and it's a label that seems to make sense.  She tagged me in a post about wishes and urged me to play along.

Okay, fine.  Here goes.

It's a simple prompt, this one.  I am supposed to make five wishes for the holiday season, and tag five bloggers to participate.

Here are my wishes:

1. I wish for the motivation to clean.  I have been slacking lately, mostly because I know that cleaning my house is an exercise in futility with this many kids.  The OCD part of me wants to clean the house from top to bottom then forbid anyone from touching anything.  The ADD part of me lacks the focus to do it.  The mom in me just says why bother?  I need to be better about it.  Or I need to let it go.  I just need to make up my mind.

2.  I wish for discipline to write the things I should be writing.  I have four books, in various stages of process, right now.  Two I started long ago and dropped when life became chaotic.  One of them is whimsical and fun, one truly has lost it's relevance in my life entirely.  The third book, I am not sure I have the courage to write.  Someday that one will come.  Maybe.  There is such an important lesson in that story and it needs written.  With time.  The last, the one that my heart needs to write the most. The progress is agonizingly slow.  I think I need more perspective, more distance first.  I struggle with finding my voice in that one especially, with how to tell the story, with notions like fictionalized memoirs and pen names and the protection of the innocent.

3.  I wish for answers for my son.  He's in a holding pattern medically.  He shows some of the risk factors for developing Type 1 diabetes, but hasn't turned the corner.  He is occasionally hypoglycemic, he has stress induced hyperglycemia and tends to struggle with reactive hypoglycemia.  All three can be transient conditions, all three are things he could potentially outgrow, and all three could be the canary in the coal mine.  Only time will tell if he outgrows these issues or it eventually shifts into the full blown disease.  I don't wait well, but I have no choice.  Patience is something we only learn when we have no other option.

4. I wish for strength.  The past few years have been rough, to say the least.  Someday, if you're lucky, I'll write about all the stuff I don't write about here in those books I talked about up in #2.  I long ago stopped tempting fate by saying things like what else could go wrong?  Something else can always go wrong.  Story of my life lately.  You know what though?  I'm here.  My head is above water and I'm not curled up in the fetal position in the corner somewhere.  I'd love to handle less than I've been given, but that's not the deck of cards I'm playing with.  I can do this.  I've been doing it.  I wish for the strength to keep doing it.

5.  I wish for grace.  This is a tough one.  I think we all struggle with it just as a necessary part of the human condition, particularly those of us who are type A control freaks like me.  I want to help people, I want to fix things, I want to make it better.  I want to believe that I have some control, but I know that I don't.  I can only control myself and my reactions to the things that happen around me.  I have spent a lot of time working on accepting others, on letting go of the fights that aren't mine, on lifting what I can from my shoulders.  I can't do it all, and I certainly can't do it for anyone else.  It's the accepting it all that I struggle with.  I wish for faith, for forgiveness, for trust, and for the grace that makes all the rest of it possible.

Here are the bloggers I am nominating to participate.

1. It's a Dome Life

2.  The Musings of Munch

3. A Lot of Layers

4. Baking in a Tornado

5. World's Worst Moms