Waiting for The Next Best Thing (Part 2)

We arrived home after that glorious week, and were promptly dumped straight back into real life. Instead of a nice s-l-o-w immersion, we were greeted by a messy apartment (which was boxed up for moving the NEXT week), and four kids that weren't into the whole concept of, "Hey, sitting down and being quiet is the most funnest thing to do in the whole wide world!!" ...Yeah, not so much.

That beautiful bottle of wine got packed in with all the kitchen stuff.  I remember wrapping the bright pink, transparent goodness in brown paper before setting it in the laundry basket that would be its carriage to a new and bigger home.  Hoorah!  We were finally moving out of family housing at U of M and into a house, with a yard, and a fence, and a garage, and a neighborhood.  I almost felt like a grown-up.

Once we were settled into the house (which really means the beds were up, and we could find the toothpaste), I thought to myself, "This here is cause for celebration!  How about that bottle of wine?"  But it was too close in time.  We needed to save it for something special...down the road.  So, I unpacked the wine and set it up on top of the microwave so that we would remember we had it. (Like I could really forget we had a bottle of wine we're supposed to drink.  Seriously.)

August arrived and I got a part-time job co-leading the kids program at our church.  I hadn't worked outside of the house since our first child was born.  I remember feeling so excited that adults wanted to be around me...that they recognized an ability set of mine that didn't revolve around poop and laundry. (Shocking, I know.)  Add to that the slight increase in spending money per month, and we had something to celebrate! Yes? ...No.  We were too busy.  Having a job was really hard, especially while still teaching 2 of my 4 kids at home.  No celebration, just survival.

Then came October.  The month of doom.  I had marked the date on the calendar, "Adam hears back about the grant".  We counted down the days, praying that it would fund. That we could stay in Ann Arbor...that we could actually start saving for a home of our own...that we could stop relying on federal and family assistance to make ends meet.  Something to show us that the past seven years of our lives wouldn't be counted as lost.

*sigh*

I think if we had opened that bottle of wine in October, we wouldn't have tasted the summer in it at all. It still would have had its sparkly pink appeal, but it would have been a bitter reminder that the beauty of that week away was just that, a lone week in an ocean of months and months of striving and failing. Our hearts were so heavy with grief.  Even now, looking back from over a year of healing, I write all of this, and that hopelessness is trying to seep back in and steal today's joy.  Yikes. Moving on...

Right after Thanksgiving, we found out I was pregnant with our fifth child.  We had talked about the possibility of having more kids down the road, when things were secure, and we had more space and more income. But this -now- was not our plan. There were tears and worries.  I cried for at least an hour one evening over the absolute impossibility of adding the cost of diapers to our already strapped monthly budget. I was pregnant and hormonal...it was rough.  But eventually we pulled ourselves up by our bootstraps and carried on into winter. Without wine.

During those cold and gloomy months, we made some tough decisions.  After spending over a decade of his life studying and working in science, Adam decided to leave it behind for the sake of our family. Again, more tears and angst, and again...more bootstraps.  There were a whole lot of mouths to feed, cause I was eating ...a lot (me and the growing boys around our table), and so on we went.

In February, Adam interviewed for a data management position in a health analytics company.  I remember that morning we sent him out the door, dressed in the only jacket and tie he owned...the same one he wore to defend his dissertation.  The sun was so bright and warm, and even though winter was still looming over us -ready to bite with more storm and bitter fury- it was the most hopeful I had felt in months. The interview went well.  The second interview went even better, and ended in an offer.

We had reason to celebrate!
But I was still pregnant. *oh bother*

Slowly but surely, the bottle of wine on the microwave became more and more buried; by bills, jars, cards, legos, and all things that needed a home up off the counter.  After a few months of being hidden, I think that both Adam and I had forgotten there was a celebration to be had.

There was a hot summer and a big belly, then there was August.  And Sam.  He was a week late, but cooked to perfection. Grandparents came quickly north to meet this beautiful new addition.

He was not our plan. 

But we could not have planned so well as this. 

Certainly, this was our best reason to celebrate yet.  A beautiful, healthy boy. An easy birth, and four big sibs who were thrilled beyond reason to have this little guy join our family.  But by now, that bottle of wine was stuffed so far under our tiredness and the noise of a screaming baby, it didn't even cross our minds.  

There have been so many reasons to celebrate since his birth last August: two weddings, major holidays, birthdays, successful work days, great days of parenting and loving and living.  

Finally, on Friday night, we noticed the top of the bottle peeking out from behind the kitchen chaos.  Adam suggested that now was as good a time as any. We had gotten the kids to bed...and any parent would know THAT is worth celebrating.  So I dusted off the bottle, and we opened it up.  And this is what we saw--

The beautiful transparent pink had turned into a murky, ugly, dark brown.  We had waited so long for the next best thing to celebrate, that our wine had lost some of what had made it our favorite in the first place. It still had the taste of country-picked strawberries, but it had acquired a backwards bitterness that was not originally there.  All that waiting...all those excuses...that, and the fact that I had something precious and didn't protect it from the one thing that would destroy it even faster than time: sunlight.

As we sat there drinking it in the darkness of our finally quiet house, we couldn't actually see the wine, so I don't think our celebration was dampened one bit.  In fact, I can say for certain that it was a perfect ending to the day.  But it got me thinking...

How often am I unwilling to celebrate a victory, or a blessing, or a day well lived because I'm waiting for the next best thing?  How often do I allow discontentment to seep into my joy and turn it murky and brown, leaving me with a bitter aftertaste instead of sweet rest?

Today was long, full of sick kids, and generally un-enjoyable.  But I spent that time in my warm home, with my beautiful family that grows more beautiful each moment. I have one glass of wine left in that bottle, and I don't intend to leave it there any longer.  

Here's to celebrating the blessings of today.