{"id":648,"date":"2013-11-06T21:15:13","date_gmt":"2013-11-07T02:15:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/cindiferrini.com\/?p=648"},"modified":"2013-11-06T21:15:13","modified_gmt":"2013-11-07T02:15:13","slug":"get-a-life","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cindiferrini.com\/index.php\/2013\/11\/06\/get-a-life\/","title":{"rendered":"GET A LIFE!"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"color: #ff0000;\"><strong>Previously posted\/newly updated and posted on THIS our new website\/blog<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #0000ff;\"><strong>Reading Time @ 3 minutes<\/strong><\/span><strong>\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Get a LIFE!<\/p>\n<p>I\u2019m often tempted to say that:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>When things aren\u2019t going my way and I think, \u201cWow, if I could just get a life!\u201d<\/li>\n<li>When frustrated, I sometimes say, \u201cThis is life?\u201d<\/li>\n<li>As a young mom changing diapers I\u2019d catch myself thinking, \u201cThis is not what I thought children were going to be all about. I wonder when I\u2019ll get a life.\u201d<\/li>\n<li>When our son wasn\u2019t developing on schedule and we\u2019d be doing the same therapy for the trillionth time, I\u2019d sometimes say, \u201cI just wish someday he\u2019d get this, and get a life.\u201d<\/li>\n<li>When others don\u2019t get in line with our wishes we sometime say, \u201cI wish they would get a life!\u201d<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>I guess it\u2019s true that the grass is greener in someone else\u2019s yard, but do you ever feel stuck in yours?<\/p>\n<p>It would be such fun to be able to pick up and take off \u2013 to the other side of town for dinner \u2013 without calling on someone to care for our adult child with special needs. It\u2019s not an easy task to find someone to \u201cfill that bill.\u201d A teenage (boy or girl) would not be appropriate to watch our grown son. A \u201cservice\u201d to bring a stranger to care for our son (who would not be able to tell us if anything went wrong), is not a comfortable option.<\/p>\n<p>I\u2019d love to be able to travel with my husband like we had dreamed when we were younger. But if a night out is hard to accomplish, a week is not much easier. And it would be such a treat to say \u201cyes\u201d to friends who are going to see a movie or go to a play \u2013 last minute!<\/p>\n<p>Oh\u2026If I could just \u201cGet a LIFE!\u201d<\/p>\n<p>But, while the grass is often greener on the other side, I face the fact that life is different for us than for some of those around us and that we have choices to make. And for us (and you) choosing what we feel is right means choosing what we value. It\u2019s that simple and it\u2019s that complicated.<\/p>\n<p>In our society we want to fix things so life is not interrupted or inconvenienced. If we could take a pill to make everything perfect, we would. Because no pill can cure us from challenges and struggles, we have to decide what we value because that\u2019s how we\u2019ll decide what we\u2019ll do. For us the reality and choice was valuing and caring for our son, and the knowledge that doing so would last a lifetime \u2013 either his or ours.<\/p>\n<p>So how does that look today? As a woman who now has grown children and grandchildren, I thought I\u2019d have outgrown this saying, but sometimes I find myself seeing others in retirement doing what we\u2019d hoped, and hear myself saying, \u201cI wish I could get a life!\u201d But on good days \u2013 and most of them are, I realize that all of us have times when things don\u2019t go our way, and we all have to \u201cgrow up\u201d and learn to go with the flow. I occasionally get frustrated, or feel sorry for myself, but see many of my friends do too \u2013 their frustrations are just a different flavor. And, we all look back on those mundane days of childrearing \u2013 doing the same thing over and over again with much fondness, and sometimes with a secret wish to return to or re-do a few of them!<\/p>\n<p>I realize I do have a life. It\u2019s one that includes caring for our son who has brought so much to our marriage, family and life. It\u2019s about being tethered to home more than we thought we would, but being able to look out over our beautiful wooded back yard and say, \u201cI\u2019m pretending to be on vacation today,\u201d while reading a book and sipping my Caf\u00e9 Vienna, or actually traveling somewhere but keeping in mind the pace will be very slow with Joey at our side. It\u2019s about being thankful for a sweet handful of family and friends who stand in the gap to care for our son when we have opportunities to speak at conferences or for ministry. It\u2019s about recognizing we\u2019ve met wonderful people that we wouldn\u2019t have, had Joey not been given to us. It\u2019s a romantic dinner for three, which still means I don\u2019t have to cook!<\/p>\n<p>Yes, I\u2019ve come to realize that while we all want to \u201cget a life,\u201d we wind up finding that the phrase just needs to be reworked: \u201cThis IS our life!\u201dAnd it\u2019s really pretty special.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Previously posted\/newly updated and posted on THIS our new website\/blog Reading Time @ 3 minutes\u00a0 Get a LIFE! I\u2019m often tempted to say that: When things aren\u2019t going my way and I think, \u201cWow, if I could just get a life!\u201d When frustrated, I sometimes say, \u201cThis is life?\u201d As a young mom changing diapers [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"default","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","ast-disable-related-posts":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"default","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[60,63,118],"class_list":["post-648","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-get-a-life","tag-grass-is-greener","tag-special-needs"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cindiferrini.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/648","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cindiferrini.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cindiferrini.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cindiferrini.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cindiferrini.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=648"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/cindiferrini.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/648\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cindiferrini.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=648"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cindiferrini.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=648"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cindiferrini.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=648"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}