I love this picture of our pastor, his wife, and Joshua! What I love about this picture is the sheer happiness that I see in it!! It looks like they are having so much fun!
MS has robbed my family of many things. But the happiness and fun loving spirit is what I miss the most! As Zine says, everything is hard now so it’s just easier to stay home. Often when I decide to make fun happen by the time we get home, I am exhausted! And I think…now why did I think that was a good idea??!!
As I sit here and realize how many nights we are at home now…it’s kinda sad. I can remember my father in law calling and leaving messages and being frustrated that we were never home! You could hear it in his voice….I’ve tried to call you several times but you are never at home. Another message might say…Do you all ever stay home? Another message might sound like Ain’t y’all ever at home? Oh if only I had recorded those phone messages earlier in our married life! But there was much truth to that! We were never at home. Even after we had two kids, we never were at home. We were always gone! Conner lived the life of a party for several years. He was always on the go with us. Chloe came and despite her muscular dystrophy, it didn’t slow us down. We kept going and doing! Dinner out, professional mall walkers we were, and picnics/trips to the park were a norm for us. Hikes around Monte Sano were some of our exceptionally fun outings! Even if we did get lost!! 🙂 Zine says we weren’t lost. We are on a marked trail. I still beg to differ with him. Guess that hike could have been worse…I could have done that when I was six months pregnant! Oh wait, that’s what I did when we walked to all the monuments in Washington DC!! 🙂
Zine and I have always enjoyed going and doing. Zine loves people. I don’t like people as much as he does but I do like to have a good time. Zine loves to tell the story of the night I got escorted out of the mall with my best friend and yearbook advisor! We really weren’t bad!! We were just simply having fun! And fun is what I love!
MS has robbed that fun! Despite the fact that I try to make a conscious choice to choose fun…it’s hard to choose fun! It’s hard to create fun right now. It doesn’t matter how many positive thoughts I have, how many plans I make to create fun, it often just doesn’t happen!
Some of the simple things like dining out is even difficult. Last Sunday we decided to try out an eating place (we won’t call it a restaurant more fast food oriented) after church on our way home. Between parking, sidewalk entrance problems, too skinny sidewalks for wheelchairs, lots of people, booths no tables, Zine Smith was pitching a fit. A loud one! We had to stop and take a breath and remind ourselves that we just heard a sermon about putting on the new self and not the old self! We did finally manage to eat our lunch. But the impromptu fun was gone! Even that turned out to be a difficult experience.
I actually had this post written before my counseling session this week. It seems that this was a topic of discussion at counseling!! The question was posed….what would you like to do for fun? It was not a feeble attempt it was true…I don’t know!!
So…I’m praying that even in the middle of MS, that God would revive our fun loving spirits! That God himself would show us what fun is now! That God would in his miraculous way drop fun in our lives!
