perspective

I'm having one of those reality check weeks. I'm in an airport in Denver on my way back home to Boise after being in Connecticut for four days. I had a really good time but I'm so ready to come home. 

Two days ago a good family friend suddenly became very ill and then had a stroke. He and his family live a few doors down from us and our kids play together weekly. He and his wife are in scouts with me. Our kids are in the same classes at school. They live a healthy, active life style and in a week their whole world changed. My heart is breaking because I have small idea of the rollercoaster of grief that that they are feeling.

I have often wondered how people managed back in the day with out anti-biotics or cat scans or medical sedation. I have wonderered how mothers could survive when it was almost expected that they would loose a child or a husband or both. That time seems distant sometimes and then I have a reality check and realize that sometimes things aren't so different now.

In the last few months we have had friends who had a young husband pass away, a four yr old daughter go into liver failure, a premature baby, my sister finishing her last surgery to be put back together after brain surgery, not to mention our friends and family struggling to make ends meet financially, passed the three year mark of the loss of our son, and now our friends who's husband in on a ventilator while they try to find out how much damage was done by the stroke. This is reality of life, I just forget that sometimes in the course of an average day. It is these kind of weeks that makes me pray harder, kiss my kids more, appriciate my husband and take a little extra time to sit in the sunshine and appricate the quiet moments because who knows what tomorrow will bring.