Mama Schaefer: Words of Wisdom

"Happiness cannot be traveled to, owned, earned, worn, or consumed. Happiness is the spiritual experience of living every minute with love, grace, and gratitude." --Denis Waitley

When my husband got orders to Luke Air Force Base, Arizona in 1999, Mom and Dad Schaefer told us they would help us move from Shaw Air Force Base, South Carolina to our new home. They were living in Florida and agreed to meet us on the road in New Mexico. My husband had the brilliant idea that we would move ourselves, even though our girls were small, I was in school full-time, and he was never home due to long workdays on base. Three days before we were due to leave, almost nothing was packed. We scrambled to fill boxes and the day before we were due to move, he rented a truck. I stood in the doorway shaking my head as he pulled up. No way was everything going to fit into that truck and I told him so as he came in to begin loading up. "It will fit," he assured me. Ten hours later, the truck was full and one third of the house was still in boxes in the living room. My mouth didn't say the words, "I told you so," but I know my face did as we drove to another rental place and got a second truck. We spent most of the night in the pouring rain loading that one, too. He drove one truck and towed our van, I drove the other, towing our Mustang, and for about fifteen-hundred miles I cussed his name. His truck broke down before we even got out of South Carolina and bellowed plumes of black smoke most of the way. Through hundreds of miles of road construction, taking the long way through Texas, and quietly plotting my husband's demise, we made the nightmarish trek across the country. When we finally arrived at the hotel where Mom and Dad were waiting for us, they could not believe I had driven that big-ass truck all that, way by myself without incident! Frankly, I was equally amazed! The next morning, Dad took over the driving duty for my truck and I packed myself and the girls into Mom's car for the final miles to Phoenix.

The girls fell asleep almost immediately and I began to talk Mom's ear off in an attempt to cool down from being so frustrated and angry in regards to the move from hell. I asked, "Mom, how do you know when you're making the right decisions? How does anyone just 'be happy'?" She chuckled and reached over, patting my hand consolingly. "Sweetheart," she said, "all anyone can do is make the best decisions possible based on the information they have and then adjust their course, as needed. As for being happy, I don't know the answer to that one. For many years, I didn't think I deserved to be happy," she confessed. I responded, "I feel like I'm holding my breath just waiting for the other shoe to drop." She smiled sadly and said, "For me, I felt like if I was happy, when bad things eventually happened, it would be worse because I'd feel such a sense of loss." "And now?" I asked her. "Now that I'm living on borrowed time (she was a recovering lung cancer survivor), I'm just grateful for every new day that I wake up and so, I make myself find at least one 'happy' thing in each of those days," she told me. Mama Schaefer's days on this Earth are done now, but I'm fortunate enough to keep waking up each morning to a new day full of opportunities. While I'm getting ready in the mornings, I remind myself, today is a gift, and I look for the 'happy" in each and every one. Some days, when life is stressful or difficult, it is not easy to find, but I always do. Thanks, Mom...and you're welcome for me not strangling your son.

*Image from mommylife.net

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