It is the day before a federal holiday and most of the country is still at work. I am on the beach with my family. The ocean is calm with hardly any waves. Not great for surfers but excellent for floating. We stay on the beach for close to three hours. It is a great start to the day and a glimpse at the future to come.
At home I am reminded of my troubles when I dare a look at the bank account. Nothing has been settled. No foundation found. The insurance agent called asking when I was going to mail him a check and in sifting through my e-mail I found a bill from a lawyer that needed to be paid.
Earlier in the year I made a spreadsheet of all the expected expenses and earnings. The trouble is there are a lot of unexpected expenses cropping up. My father was secretive about his money and his dealings and now I am handling them with no training and no idea where the blows are coming from.
If money and financial stability were my measuring stick I’d be losing poorly, but if we use time than I am winning greatly. I was on the beach with my family. The ocean was perfect. We all played in the waves, dug holes, and I swam out past the breakers and floated in the calm serenity of the sea.
The biggest lesson I have learned this year is we get to decide our own measuring stick. We are the ones that define success for ourselves, and when it comes to counting blessings being on the beach and playing with family is a big one.
That is the problem with most of these self-improvement books. They want to define success for you. Tell you how you aren’t measuring up instead of giving you instructions. Anyone that speaks in mostly negatives and calls it positives should be ignored. In life we set our own goals.
Yes, the financial foundation has to be built. We have to get the family’s money issues solved and there might be some hard decisions coming if I can’t get it done in time, but I think I will. If I can get to the end of September then we should get another infusion. I’d like things to happen sooner, but as we can decide our own measures of success we cannot craft our own timeline.
For a little bit of time we can take a moment to appreciate what we have, and understand the blessings in our lives while we let the curses rest for a day or two.
David Huzzard Writes 