Discovery: "What took you so long?!"

"As I sit here contemplating our new school year, the changes in our

lives, and our family goals...I can't help but wonder; what took you

so long?"

I am the type of person that will analyze everything to death!  From my thoughts, to our relationship, the way we are raising our kids, our finances, and even the problems that are brought to me that are outside of our little family.  However, by being a constant analyzer, it allows me to really focus on an issue and eventually I get it solved.  That's not to say it doesn't cause me grief from time-to-time, but I can usually find a solution.

I spent years fighting the inevitable.  I may not have always been a country/farm girl, but that is who I have become.  Like it or not, and much to family and friends disgust.  I have really become a person that I am beginning to like.  I am a work in progress, but I am getting better everyday!  That's not to say I don't have setbacks, or doubts in my abilities.  I still have a daily battle to accept that I am not who I once was, and I'm not sure I would ever want to go back to who I once was.   I like who I am, and I like what our family stands for.  

As a girl, I grew up outside of town, but still pretty much a city kid.  I had most of the conveniences, opportunities, and even the pitfalls a kid growing up in a town/city had.  As a young adult, I experienced life on a whole new level.  I was introduced to a great life, and many options that I had never had previously.  I thoroughly enjoyed that life.  However, in my mid-20's, I was introduced to another great life, and one I really hadn't spent any time around.  It's since then that my life began changing and molding.  I was introduced to a country/farm life.  I have spent the better part of 15 years with that life.  The first several years, I fought it with all I was worth!  I didn't want to change, I didn't want to be a farmers wife, or live on a farm, or in the country for that matter.  A break through came in 2006, when I realized the thing I was fighting for was the very thing that was and had caused me so much pain and kept me disconnected with the very person I wanted to be.  It was at that point, I began considering that the very person I was fighting to keep...was no longer there.  That person, the one I thought was who I was, really wasn't me.  It was the spectacle of a person I had invented just to get through life as a child, and even a young adult.  It was the person, that I now dreaded having to pretend to be!  

I was always a confident person, and did what I felt was right at the time.  However, during the span of 1999-2006, I went from that confident, self-sufficient person to a bumbling mess.  I had my first baby, battled with post-pardom depression, faced cancer, had a marriage that spent more time on the verge of divorce than not, had no idea who I was or where I wanted my life to go.  I knew that I no longer fit in my former life, but I didn't fit with the life I was living either.  I was in a horrible holding pattern just trying to find a place to land.  I had always prided myself with being able to adapt to any situation, but it was that point in my life, I couldn't adapt.  Life wasn't going the way I wanted it to go, I couldn't focus, I was an emotional nightmare!

It was late 2005/early 2006 that a break-through of sorts occurred.  It was during that time, that I realized that the life I had fought so hard to hold on to, wasn't MY life anymore.  That within itself, was a powerful break-through.  It was at that exact moment in time, that I began re-assessing not only myself but also what I wanted for me, and at the time...my only child.  I wanted the best possible life for BOTH of us.  I never wanted him to feel unloved, or unstable. I wanted a life for us that was drama-free, lie-free, and never a feeling of being unloved, unwanted or "in the way!"  It was from that point on, that I began my own journey of discovery.  I began focusing on our family more, on my child more, and on the life I wanted for us.

I am here to tell you, when you begin to look within and make discoveries and changes within you, you WILL be met with some major challenges and backlash!  I began withdrawing from people that made me feel inadequate, unwanted, unloved, and unstable.  I started changing my priorities, and finding an inner spiritual person that had nothing to do with religion, but more to do with faith.  I began building myself back up to be a person more positive and optimistic than negative.  I began learning the lifestyle that I had already spent 5/6 years fighting.  I devoted my life to my marriage, and my child.  Within 3 years, we were blessed with the biggest surprise of our lives...my 2nd baby.  I can't tell you that the devotion hasn't been met with plenty of trials and arguments in my marriage, but through it all, I have grown to be a person I like and I try daily to grow into the person I want to be.  I have learned a lot about the life I have now been living for 13 years, and I continue to learn everyday.  I can honestly say, even through the pain and hardships I have experienced in my life, I have become a strong person.  I have walked away from my former life, with not much more than a backward glance on occasion.  I have dealt with those from my past criticizing my current life, and the way we live, and even some of those in my current life that have criticised.  I have grown and in the course of that growing, I have learned so much.  As my husband tells me on a regular basis: " those that criticize are the ones that are insecure in there own lives."  

Although we still face trials, we still have very differing opinions, my husband has become one of my best friends.  We now share everything; from our goals in life, to our ideas on our home, to raising our kids, and even our thoughts and fears.  I'm not saying our life together is perfect, but it's pretty good-most of the time.

It's at this point in my life that I can say, without a doubt "I have found my home!"  It's not where I once was, who I once was, but it's who I am now.  Agree or disagree....either way, it's OK!  I now know me, who I am, who I want to be and just as important....where I am going!  It's such a tremendous feeling being comfortable in your own shoes.

May you all find "Home!"

~S~