Last night I had to get out of bed and go outside to put Brynn's wheelchair in the van in case it rained. I had forgotten to do before laying down. I stumbled outside in my unfastened jeans, limped through the gravel and put the chair away. It was dark, but we have a street light outside the door that puts out a pale pink light over the yard. I glanced up, toward the road, and saw something strange. At first, I thought the pale light and trees were playing tricks on me, but as I stared I realized there were 3 deer standing a few yards away. They were extremely interested in me, but not scared. I was surprised, because the van makes a lot of racket, and blinks the parking lights when the door opens, but they appeared to be more curious than anything. I stood perfectly still and watched them for a moment, then I closed the van up, and started limping back towards the house. As I was walking, I kept my eyes on them. At one point, they started to get a little nervous, and one actually flagged its tail and started to trot away. I froze again, until it went back to calmly watching me, then I went into the house. I didn't want to scare them off. Our house sits on two acres, and is completely fenced in. They had to come up the driveway, through the gate, to get into the yard, and I didn't want to make them feel threatened in case they wanted to come back. I love the idea that they feel welcome in my yard, now that I have one.
It was only 3 years ago that we were living in a dumpy apartment in the not-so-great part of Homewood. The apartment had a Homewood zip code, but was zoned for Birmingham city schools. I can remember standing on the back patio listening to gunshots go off regularly. It was emasculating. It was the best I could do for my family, and it was horrible. Our first house had been foreclosed on, and both of our shiny new cars had been repossessed. My father in-law had recently died, and his business that I helped run along with him. I had tried to take it over, but his customers had done business with him, not his company. I'd lost a large majority of my income, and we were already stretched too thin with debt before that.
Ironically, our income is half what it was then, and yet our rent is a little more than what our mortgage had been. It's tight every month, but we make it.
I've written before about how we seemed to have suffered a lot of defeat. I still think that is true, using a human's definition of defeat, but I've learned that what I see as defeat can be something completely different. All of the things that have gone wrong in my life have taught me something. I know it sounds cliche', but it's been important for me to learn that, along with the lessons that I learned going through it.
There will come a time when I will be responsible for managing a great deal of money for someone else. If I hadn't taken something from those hard learned financial lessons, I would not be able to do it. I still don't think I'm ready, but perhaps that is why we still suffer financially. I've still got a lot to learn before I'm capable of handling that responsibility.
Those defeats weren't defeats at all, they were victories. The challenge now becomes knowing what lesson I need to learn when I suffer more defeat. The sooner I figure out what the lesson is, and learn it, the sooner I can move on to a different set of problems. Won't that be refreshing.
