Don't you wish some times that you could read someone's mind? I bet if I could read Champ's mind, he would be thinking that life is pretty good for him these days. He's pretty hefty so you know he eats well and doesn't worry about where his next meal is coming from. He likes to "torpedo" the porch in his, what I like to call, submarine look. In fact, he pretty much lays wherever he wants. And he seems to be very confident in his surroundings and doesn't mind taking a cat nap which wasn't always the case. Yep, he has a pretty good life these days.
I read an article today written by someone wanting to go back in time to change the past and correct mistakes. I thought to myself......Hmmm.....NOPE! Living my life was hard enough the first time. Thank you very much! Besides what would happen to the time continuum if I went back to change one little thing? All hell would break loose, that's what! It would start a spiral of unprecedented chaos. It could erase all the good things that have happened to me along the way.
For example, so I don't marry my cheating first ex-husband, okay. But then, I don't learn all the things that I learned from that relationship, pain, strength, and recovery. Let's face it. We are our experiences. Our experiences and lessons learned shape us into the person we become. Besides, if I hadn't had that experience, then I wouldn't have been in the right place to meet my second ex-husband. He gave me one of my greatest blessings, my oldest son, and I wouldn't have missed that for the world.
Ask Champs, he'd tell you if he could. All the bad things that happened in his earlier life help him to appreciate just how wonderful it can be. Yes, life is good now, and we wouldn't have it any other way.
Sooooo what happened to the Charlie Brown tree you ask? All scraggly and anorexic looking? Well, it has grown up very nicely. We built a ring around the tree shaped like a bean. I put potted plants within the ring, and then we ran a drip system to the tree to water it and the plants. All it needed was a little love and care.
Don't we all just need a little love and care in order to thrive and grow? I could have given up on the tree. Actually, I was given the choice. "We can ripe out the tree and plant a new one," he said. I couldn't do it. It had a right to survive. It had a right to try. I'm so glad I said no. Almost immediately it started to do better as if to prove me right.
Giving up is just not in my nature. It's not the way I was raised. Sure there have been challenges. Sure there were times when I just wanted to give up. My first marriage should have ended sooner than it did, but I was brought up with the ethic that you don't just give up when the going gets rough. You work at it and give it your all. You stick with your committment. Today I think people are too easily giving up when things don't work out the way they think they should. Sure in the end, the marriage didn't work out, but at least I can say that I tried and gave it my all. There is no shame in that.
I guess I'm just stubborn that way. Giving up is actually too easy. It's being a coward in my eyes. I was a single parent for most of my life. So it wasn't always just
about me either. If I had given up, how would that have affected them? What would I have taught them? Advice of the day: sometimes things get hard in life, but don't give up. You never know when life will turn out just right!
This is Champers. He was forgotten and abandoned. Thought the worst was at hand with no home of his own. He's like me. Starting a new life with no direction at the moment. Sometimes, though, you just have to have faith that all will turn out just right.
It's hard to have faith. You can't touch it. You can't buy it. But those who have it, wouldn't trade it for the world. It's a belief that things that happen are meant to be. That everything that happens to you was meant to be. You may not know right then why something happens and why it happened to you, but if you have faith, then you believe that things will turn out okay in the end.
It's how I've lived my life. It's how I continue to live my life. Yes, I make choices, and sometimes it's not the right choice, but it's the right choice for me at the time. In the end, all we can do is our best and hope for the best. Life doesn't come with a manual (don't I wish) cause that would make it too easy, and no one ever said life was easy. Faith makes it easier if you believe that all things happen for a reason, that they were meant to be and that you will wind up where you should.
Champers is happy now. He has a home - mine, and I have a cat whose trust I gained by just being me. This is him, laying on the driveway, wondering why I stopped petting him. He can't understand that I just needed to capture the moment. Don't forget to stop sometimes and just enjoy the moment, and have faith that there will be many wonderful moments you'll want to capture and hold on to.
