Where's Your Focus

Once a few years ago, I wrote about receiving a letter from my dad who never writes and talked about how much it meant to me. It ended up offending my mom and some other people that I talked about my dad on my blog, when all I was doing was expressing MY feelings on MY blog. Since then I have tried to avoid anything that wasn't sunshiney- positive about the family.

Until yesterday. I took a risk expressing feelings that I have had pretty often throughout my life, which boil down to this: I wish I meant as much to other people as they mean to me. I accepted a long time ago that that wouldn't happen very often in my life, but once in a while I let it get to me and say something and people take it the wrong way. I got two comments from people yesterday who took my post personally when it wasn't personal at all. It was a general observation of an ongoing situation which was just exacerbated by the events of the day. Everyone can justify their actions and decisions--or else they wouldn't make them--but I just think so often we don't think of the ripple effect of repercussions or the impressions our immediate choices make over time.

I was thinking about a couple of people who had asked me to marry them before I met Rich. I was thinking about how, when I decided the answer was no, it was mostly because the person did not have a vision of love and service that extended beyond us or our future children. They didn't want to live life with an outward focus, to live life as a mission. They wanted it to be all about us and our little problems instead of looking around to see how we could serve our children, our extended family, our neighbors, our church family, and in turn, find all our little problems resolved. When I finally met Rich and heard the love and concern with which he spoke about his extended family and his good friends, I knew I had met the man for me. He has taken my vision and taught me to expand it because he is the most selfless person I know. While I do sometimes get bogged down in worrying about our own family, he reminds me that when we think about and do for others, the problems get solved. What goes around comes around. While it hurts that a lot of the people I love most just don't ever see the world that way (that's why I was sad yesterday), I have to remind myself what an amazing blessing it is to be married to someone who does.