I’ve spent the last 7 months bloggin about Maddy and our life with her.  Well, 6 months….I haven’t been able to update much lately.  Mostly because we don’t see her that often and there isn’t enough to say about her to update regularly.  I have a lot of emotions that I’ve been working through though – but it hardly seems the appropriate place to air it all.  Maybe it is….but for some reason I just can’t bring myself to do it. 

I think I must be going through some kind of mid-life crisis. Lately, I’ve been thinking about my life and the past 10 years especially. Jake has brought incredible joy to my life. He is an amazing kid and I feel honored and blessed that God saw fit for me to be his mother. But, in all of that, I feel like a part of me has gotten lost. His health issues made it necessary to make drastic changes to my life. I’ve been working from home — which is an incredible blessing. I have a job I’m good at, working for a company that trusts me enough to work remotely and I get paid well. Plus, I pretty much make my own schedule. Believe me….it’s not lost on me how incredibly fortunate I am. But, I look around at people who are doing amazing things and making a real difference in the world and it makes my life seem so ordinary.  I want to do something that matters to people – and let’s face it:  buying media isn’t going to leave a legacy.   Nobody is going to stand up at my funeral and recount the amazing deals I was able to negotiate on behalf of my clients. 

Last night, I was digging through some boxes looking for pictures for our high school reunion slideshow.  I found a box full of pictures from before Jake was born and his first year.  I just wept as I went through them.  Partly because I miss my sweet baby boy (who is just full of pre-adolescent narcissism at the moment), partly because I realized (maybe for the first time) just how tiny and sick he was, and partly (mostly?) because I miss the Stephanie that is in those photos.  She was healthy and vibrant and fun.  She didn’t shy away from the camera and she smiled…a lot.  She looked forward to going to her 10-year high school reunion (even though I missed it because Jake had just been born).  She loved her job and her husband and her life. 

Now, I think the only thing that remains is that she loves her husband. 

The last 10 years have not been easy and it shows.  I don’t even recognize pictures of myself anymore (what few there are of me because I don’t want to remember what I look like right now).  Every day, I think to myself that I hate my job.  I’m not going to my high school reunion.  I blame it on the fact that it falls on Lloyd’s 40th birthday, but the real truth is that I don’t want anyone to see me looking like I do.  I’m more overweight than I’ve ever been in my life.   It’s even causing me to put off making a trip to Colorado this summer to see my grandma.  She’s 90 and while she is healthy and doing well, I know that I need to seize every opportunity I have to see her.  But, I don’t want to because I’m fat. 

Last Saturday, I participated in a 1/2 marathon.  I did it because I wanted to have a goal that would help me get back on track.  I hoped it would be healing for me.  Instead, I think it opened up a huge can of worms – realizing how I have neglected myself in order to take care of everything else.  And, then the pictures came and I was absolutely horrified at how I look.  Maybe horrified enough to finally do something about it?  But, I am so scared of failing….again.

I went to bed thinking that the Stephanie in those earlier pictures would have been disgusted with the Stephanie in those 1/2 marathon pictures.  If she were sitting with me today, she would tell me to get off my ass and change things.  In fact, I think she is with me today….telling me to get off my ass and change things.  It just seems like such a long road.