Tragic and Beautiful, Both

It All Depends On How We Look At Things

We can usually cast the same exact experience in either a positive or negative light. We have the ability to choose what we think about as well as how we think about something.

As I watched an old home video from one of, if not the best, year of my life, I started to get a little sad. It was the first year of my oldest son’s life. I was 34 years old, slim, fit, young looking and healthy. My husband was in some segments of the video. He also looked young, fit and happy. We had waited eleven long years for that baby to arrive. I lost three pregnancies during that time.

We were over the moon happy to have that baby. There was footage of me dancing while I carried him. I spent a lot of time on the floor playing with him. I splashed in kiddie pools on the deck with him. Our golden retriever was in every scene, wagging his tail. We were in our first real home for most of the scenes. There wasn’t much that was unusual about footage of a baby’s first year. We had first steps, first haircut, and first vacation at the beach. The part that looked a bit sad was it was the last year that I had full use of both arms and legs.

I became pregnant with baby number two toward the end of the video when my first child was 15 months old. Eight months later, I suffered a massive…