I lay in bed earlier, thinking about the day ahead of me, and I thought "I really do have a charmed life."
I think a lot of us do actually, but why is it so ridiculously easy to forget?
How much better can a day get than this?
I have a cake in the oven. A cake. It's chocolate. It has THREE layers. Three layer, chocolate cake. But wait, there's more. There will be hiking along the river with family and dogs. And then later, a viewing of "The Young Victoria."
Just one of the three (cake, hiking, Victoria) would be enough to make any day wonderful, but I get all three.
That's pretty fantastic.
The year before I moved to Austin, I had the best job I will ever have in my life (I'm pretty convinced of this fact). I came home from working EFY at the end of the summer my dad passed away, and I was jobless. You see, I had two jobs at the beginning of the summer, but I quit both of them because I was going to move to Dallas and become an Irish dancer extraordinaire after I was done with EFY. But then Dad passed away and life took a completely different direction (thank goodness it did, if I had moved to Dallas I never would've dated Mike, and people, he was on the verge of moving to Utah when we started dating. I know what you're thinking, and yes, I really did help him dodge a bullet there. My heart still has trouble reconciling with the painful, PAINFUL, lack of Irish dance in my life however, but that's a story for another time) and there I was needing money.
So I find out that there is a doctor in my ward at church, and he and his wife (she's his office manager) were looking for someone to help out with filing and charts and blah blah blah around their office.
I jumped on it! I had nothing else to do!
So I started working for them, and eventually their receptionist had to go on maternity leave so I took her spot and eventually I somehow became his medical assistant. All within a matter of 4 months. It was fantastic. There was not one day that I woke up thinking "Oh great. Time to go to work. Bleh." No, I was excited to go to work everyday. A big part of that was his wife. She is amazing, and I honestly, truly believe that Heavenly Father put me under her wing to help me get through the confusing, and often painful, first year of life without my dad.
There is a point to this, I promise, and it has to do with my beginning thoughts.
We had a patient who was my age (21) and while she was sweet, I often became frustrated (slash envious) with her (not to her face of course...). She almost literally had life handed to her on a silver platter. She was finishing up college, which she didn't have to pay a dime for. Her parents paid all of her expenses, bought her a nice car, she had the best clothes, she was beautiful, and so on and so forth. Right? You can see how that could be frustrating to someone as loud and awkward as myself whose life had just recently been painfully changed.
I was venting to my boss on one occasion and I blurted out something like "She just has such a charmed life!" (Ugh, I was annoying at the age of 21, huh? How did I have friends???) My boss looked at me, and she said, "Sandi, if anyone has a charmed life it's YOU." I probably looked at her, initially, like she was crazy.
BUT.
It was one of those moments where life was put into major perspective. My boss was (well, she still is :-)) a Navajo Indian. She was raised on the reservation. Oh man, the stories she used to tell me. And I'm pretty sure she sugar coated most of them so as not to alarm me about just how crappy her life was growing up in poverty.
Because of that conversation, she helped me understand just how good I had it growing up (though I was mostly blind to it throughout my childhood) and that I would have great opportunities to grow because I DIDN'T have everything handed to me so easily (still don't, I'm a lot more okay with it now than I was then, but still needing improvement).
Here I am 6 years later, and instead of being jealous of that girl who was my age, I'm jealous of my mom because she works for that doctor and his wife now. That lucky duck!
Actually, her working for them is another huge blessing which is a story for another time.
So, wherever you are today, whatever you're doing, whether your weather is being as beautiful as the weather here or not, I hope you give the day a big hug, count your blessings, and if you can, try and find a three layer, chocolate cake to partake of.
(here's hoping my end result looks something akin to this...)