I'm hijacking Rob's blog because he probably won't post today himself, and I wanted to be sure that everyone here knows that he's turning 31 today! So if you could drop birthday wishes in the comments, I'm sure he'd appreciate it, since they all get emailed to him.
McAfee.sisBut don't tell him I said anything. :)
-Joy
He links to all the other parts at the beginning. If you haven't been reading, go get caught up now before the final part comes out.
I'm getting married in about 3 1/2 months. At times I'm nervous, but I'm really excited about it. Our decision to get married certainly hasn't simplified my life of late. We've had wedding plans, wedding costs, wedding guests, dealing with Noah's concern about his and his mom's names, and combining households just to name a few of the things that have complicated our lives. Not to mention selling my house and moving, which I hate anyway, knowing it will mean I'll be driving about 3 1/2 hours a day to get to and from work. No, deciding to get married and trying to arrange for a life together has been no simple task. It's been stressful and emotional in lots of ways. One other thing. It's the best decision I ever made, and marrying Joy will be the greatest thing that's ever happened to me.
Life for me since I was a kid has been hard a lot of the time. Not bad really, but hard. I haven't had a bad life. I've never been abused. I've never had to go hungry. I've always known I had family that loved me. I have had struggles though; things that I knew I had to overcome if I wanted to someday have the life I hoped for.
Along the way I've had some very good friends who were both loyal and supportive. Doors have been opened for me, and opportunities have presented themselves so that I could succeed. Almost everything I've done and everything I have, though, I've had to work very hard for and sacrifice for. I usually had to do it alone either because my friends had different goals or just didn't have the desire to really work for what they wanted.
It's tiring to have to really work for everything with almost no help from anyone. Not just the big things or the big successes, but to have to work to change things about yourself. Work to help others succeed so that you could in turn succeed as well. Work to better yourself in abstract ways in hopes that someday those improvements would benefit you. I've worked very hard for a long time, and to be honest I don't know how much longer I could have continued to drive myself at the pace I was.
When Joy and Noah came into my life, that added something new. As well as the existing things I was working for, now I had to work to try to help Joy achieve the things she wanted to. I had to work to earn Noah's trust, and get him to realize that I would still be here tomorrow. Working to try to help raise a child is maybe the biggest challenge I've faced. Knowing that I had to be nearly perfect in that area was very stressful. The idea of what consequences could result from a single failure as a parent is terrifying. Still Joy and Noah have been a source of happiness in my life unlike anything that came before them. They didn't make my life easier, but they made it better in ways I'll never be able to adequately express.