The People in My Dreams

Dreams can seem so real.

With so much on my mind lately, family members and friends have been floating in and out of my subconscious.  They have their own stories and either their troubles end up being fixed with a happy ending or with a very sad one.  A few nights ago, my husband said I was laughing in my sleep.  He said it was the strangest laugh he had ever heard.  I told him that was because it was not a laugh at all.  It was hysteria because I was having a dream in which I was having a severe meltdown.

It is no wonder that I do not wake up rested when I dream with so much energy.  Once I broke my thumb in my sleep because I was going up for a rebound and hit it on the headboard.  That is really beside the point though.  I guess when you have a lot of people in your life whom you love and care for deeply, you are bound to be thinking of them a lot and if you are a dreamer, be prepared to fix all of their problems in your sleep.

When I wake up from these dreams and am faced with reality, I am either relieved or saddened depending on what happened in my sleep.  They all seem so real.  Not a day goes by though that I just wish it would all be better in the morning.

To all of the people in my life, I love you all and I am praying for you all the time.  I will do anything in my power to help your hurt go away or to help you when you are in need.  Please take care of yourselves!
Never be afraid to ask for help.  I love you all (can't say it enough)!

I Will Never

"I will never," those three words strung together make up one dangerous phrase.  It has taken me a long, long time to realize that those words always come back to haunt you.  I have been thinking about this for a while now.  

A little side story here will help my point... At the moment and for the past month or more, I have been  vegan.  It happened when my husband and I decided to go on a juice fast.  We did a modification and for ten days or more only had juice (made with our juicer) in the morning and salad for lunch and dinner (we have also made our household  gluten-free).  After the fast/cleanse was over, we started to reintroduce rice including rice noodles.  We have made some really good food that is not only vegan, but also gluten-free.  The kids and my husband are eating meat, but not nearly as much as they used to.  My husband asks me every now and then when I am going to stop being a vegan.  I just look at him, smile and say, "I don't know."  I refuse to say, "I will never be a carnivore again."  I have no idea what the future holds for me in that aspect.  For now, I like being a vegan and I do not miss any of the foods I used to love.  This is what got me thinking about the past.

When I was a teenager I said those words a lot.  I would never drink alcohol, smoke, have premarital sex, have a job in a fast food restaurant, do things my mother or father did.  You get the idea.  I ate almost all of my "I will never" statements.  When I was even younger I said I would never question my faith and then when I did, I said I would never go back.  I used to think of myself as a strong person with a lot of conviction.  I was someone who could stand by my word.  Only I didn't.  

I am a Jewish female, a mother, daughter, wife, sister, student, friend and so much more.  I won't apologize for being wrong about myself in the past.  I know who I am right now.  I know who and what I want to be in the future.  I have a lot of dreams not only for me, but for my family and friends as well.  I don't make promises lightly anymore.  I can't say I will never do this or not do that because I truly do not know.  I can say I don't think I will ever jump out of a plane or go bungee jumping, but that is a much more accurate statement than saying I will never do those things.  Who knows?

For those of you who know me, please know that if I did anything in the past that hurt you because of my "I will never" statements, I am sorry.  I am not sorry for being wrong because people make mistakes.  What I can say I am sorry about is hurting others if I did.  I have come to realize that people rely on what you say and that is why you cannot make those statements lightly.  It not only could come back to haunt you, but it could hurt someone you really love.  Please be careful of what you say.

I will always keep trying to be a better person and I will never stop moving forward.  (wink)

Thinking Back

I have been doing a lot of thinking lately.  Sometimes I think so much that I can't go to sleep at night, my mind races with all of the thoughts of the day coming to the surface.  My brain is trying to sort out all of the information it has been given throughout the day, week, month, even year.  

For some reason, I have been thinking a lot about certain people from my past.  One person in particular was a best friend in high school.  For privacy reasons, I will call her Mava.  Mava and I shared a lot of fabulous memories, and some of those memories are what I think about.  We went on some great joy rides to the middle of nowhere, spent many nights together at each others' houses, listened to music really loudly and laughed at the people who said we were lesbians just because we spent so much time together.  High schoolers can be cruel can't they?  We just thought it was funny and didn't care.  

Do you ever wish you could turn back the clock and undo the mistakes you made?  I do.  There was a time in my life where I was utterly stupid.  It was as if I had turned into a different person.  I know that if I hadn't made all of my mistakes, I wouldn't have become the person I am now and I like that person.  Still, there are some wrongs I do wish I could make right.  If I could, I wouldn't have given up my friendship with Mava.  She was a great friend and I just let that go.  I am not sure if I ever said I was sorry, but I am.  I probably never told her how much I loved her and how much our time together meant to me.  She made my high school experience unforgettable and bearable and fun.  I have thought about her so much throughout the years and we are still friends even though we do not keep in touch and I do still love her.

The day we leave our childhood homes, we also leave our childhood friends.  Some people never leave or may even leave together.  Some go to college and make new friends.  At least that is how it used to be.  Now we have computers and it is so easy to keep in touch even though we are living our own separate lives.  The friends I had are still my friends (at least it says they are on Facebook).  If we are lucky, a few of those friends come back into our lives and stay there forever, I am a lucky one.  At some point, we start to think back on the people we have shared moments with, the people we played with at preschool, on the elementary school playground, the ones in our marching band, basketball teams, swim teams, youth groups, etc. We should be grateful for all of those moments because those are the moments that help to shape our futures.  People come into our lives and sometimes they go away.  It is a cycle, but that does not mean that they are ever forgotten or that the time we spent with them is any less significant.  

I am so grateful for all of the people I had known or ever will know.  And Mava, if you are reading this I just want to say thank you for making my life better.  Having you as my friend helped make me a better person and I still love you.

Time...

Time goes by so quickly.  As we get older minutes turn into seconds, hours to minutes and days to hours... We find ourselves saying all too often "it seems like only yesterday when..."

One morning about a month ago, my youngest son informed me that he had an "accident" in his bed.  This was not the first time as children do have accidents (I do hope it was the last).  I thanked him for telling me and after shuffling him and his older brother off to school, set out to tackle the task at hand, changing the sheets.  I went to his room and stared at his bed with the race car tent attached to it.  That darn tent made it so hard to change the sheets and was falling apart.  I was starting to despise that tent!  It was at that very moment that I decided it had to go.  I took it down and changed the sheets with ease.  Then I stared at the bed thinking about who would have a tougher time with it being gone, me or my son.  He have had that tent for about 3 years and now it was down lying on the floor folded neatly.  I knew in my heart he was going to be fine.  He was growing up.  But what about me?  I wanted that tent to come down for so long and here I was about to cry over the fact that it was finally down.  

That same son was still sucking on a pacifier until about a month prior to taking down the tent.  He was too old by "normal" standards to be using one, but he had good reason and permission and only used it at night.  That was a HUGE transition for him.  Two transitions so close together.  I was overwhelmed with emotions.  I was sad that I was losing my "little" boy and happy that he was becoming a "big" boy.  It didn't seem like it had been this difficult with my oldest, getting through these transitions.  I do remember being sad about the pacifier leaving his mouth when he was 3, but was it really as hard as this?  Maybe time dulled the sadness.  

Time has a way of chasing away some memories and bringing in new ones.  I wonder if I will remember what he looked like when he slept in that tent.  I wonder if he will remember the feel of the pacifier that he used to rub on his cheek.  In life, we are constantly moving forward.  We are often reminded of our past and we use it to learn.  That is how we become wise.  That is how we learn.  My children are growing and I don't want to take that away from them, but if I could slow it down or freeze the precious moments, I would. 

It seems like only yesterday that they were born...  

Make the Effort

Happy New Year!  This year I vow to... This must be someone else's blog, because I will not vow to do anything!  I decided a long time ago not to make promises that I cannot or will not keep.  Especially promises about changing myself.  I can vow to try to make changes, but who knows how much effort I will really put into it?  There is the key word, "effort."  Anything worth doing requires effort.  Heck anything not worth doing requires effort.  It takes effort to get out of bed in the morning, but we do it to get to the job or to get the kids to school or to get to the gym.  It takes effort to do the laundry, the dishes, make dinner and other household chores, but we do these things because we have to.  So why can't we harness our efforts into other aspects of our lives?  Make the effort to spend 5 or 10 minutes with your children just playing with the Legos or take the dog for a 15 minute walk or step away from the pantry at 9 o'clock at night.  These things seem so much more difficult and require more effort, but the difference is that these things are more rewarding than doing the laundry or getting up to go to work.  The effort you put forth to play and laugh and have fun or exercise is effort you put into making yourself healthier and happier. So try it for a day and see if putting effort into just one extra thing pays off.  Write down how it made you feel to see the smile on your child's face when you had that tickle fight before bed or when you overcame your nighttime demons that told you you had to have those M & M's.  Okay, so maybe I can't vow to change, but I can make the effort every once in a while to do something different and if it feels good, maybe I will continue to do it tomorrow and the next day.  I won't promise anything as we all know that making promises requires the most effort.  
Good luck on all of your journeys this year.  May they all be effortless ;-)