It’s been busy getting the older three kids ready for sleep away camp, and then my internet went down all last week, so I’m sorry I haven’t been posting.
On Sunday, my husband took 6 of the kids to NJ where the camp to my son’s camp in NY left from. (There were no buses from my area.) One daughter decided to stay home because she doesn’t like long drives and had a four hour drive to camp a couple of days later, so she slept over at a friend’s house. I stayed home with the baby – it was the first time since he was born that I was in a quiet house with just him. It was so peaceful!
My husband connected with his best friend from his teenage years, who he’s kept in sporadic contact with, since he lives in that same city, and they had lunch at his friend’s home. His friend is the president of a large law firm in Manhattan, and his wife is a school principal. They have a huge, gorgeous home, spotless in every corner, a full time housekeeper, plenty of money, lots of career satisfaction, are heavily involved in communal positions of responsibility, and have a large family. I’m usually filled with peace and gratitude for the quality of my life, but for some reason, just thinking about their external success left me feeling inadequate and disgruntled with myself.
I was pondering why I was letting someone else’s choices have any effect on my feelings about myself, and I realized two things: 1) I was really tired and needed to take a nap. 🙂 Seriously, I get negative when I’m overtired, and it’s amazing how much more balanced I am when I am rested.
2) I wanted some outside validation that our path is a different kind of success, which I wasn’t getting right then. I’ve chosen to live in a way that most people don’t, and that means that I often have to be my own cheerleader. When I’m feeling a need to have someone else build me up, it’s a sign that I need to do some spiritual work, so recognizing what I was feeling helped me refocus on the deeper issue. When I deal with these things from a position of working on my spirituality and connection to G-d, everything seems to get much clearer and simpler. It’s so easy to get caught up in comparing our insides to other people’s outsides, and thinking that what we see is all that there is, and forgetting to recognize all that we are.
I’m really grateful to my husband, who told me that visiting them didn’t bother him at all. In fact, he said, after visiting them he felt even more appreciative for the life we have, and he thanked me for staying home with our kids and raising them. He reminded me how fortunate we are to be healthy, have a strong marriage and great kids. Keeping my mind on what I have keeps me feeling happy, and today, my husband was the one to help me put my mind back where it should be.
Avivah
