Hola All,
Happy Easter. Hope you had a good one. Mine was very good. Probly best I’ve had in a while.
I picked up my sister this morning to take her to Georgia with me, back to farm outside the one stoplight town where I grew up and her life started. Sister is in recovery now, several months clean for the first time in her life, and living back down near me (part of her strategy for getting clean) with a family she met in the 12 step meetings here in town. This after living with me for a little while (again) and us not getting along living together (again) 
What are you gonna do? We are brother and sister after all. (actually half brother and sister, but we don’t ever think of it that way).
I took sister to memaw’s house (what we call our grandma, our mother’s mother). This is the third such trip out to the farm to visit memaw since sister has moved back down this way. And man, memaw always hooks it up real big for us. Fried cubed steak with gravy, fried squash, fried okra, baked/sliced sweet potatoes, green peas, rice, gravy, and rolls. For desert she made a pear crunchn and a cream cheese pie with blueberry topping. It was unbelievable.
More unbelievable was that this was the first Easter we were all together since I can ever recall, probably since I was 14 or 15 sister was 4 or 5; back before our mother passed and Calesta went to live with her Dad near Chattanooga and I moved over to with my Dad’s cousin in Tallahassee. That was 18 years ago..
Memaw lit up seeing us come in the door. Though her back was bothering her, she shined like a new dime seeing us together and having us there with her, sparing her another lonely Easter.
Over lunch we talked about the roof on her house, which I’m having replaced starting tomorrow. The big orange construction debris canister is already sitting aside the house waiting for tomorrow’s tear down of the old brittle shingles. This is 8th or 9th such major project I’ve had done since buying the house from her and taking over as executor of the family estate. She now has a car (for the first time in 8 years), a shower in her garden tub (so she doesn’t have to get up and down every time she bathes), she’s got satellite now instead of the 2 fuzzy channels she had since they cut the cable off 8 years ago, and a brand new sun room just finished last month, so she doesn’t have to carry her plants in and out every time it comes a hard rain or gets cold. She eats her meals in that sun room every day now. lol. These are just a few of the highlights.
Standing in that sun room looking out over the pond you could see the single wide trailer where I lived with mom and sister, and where I endured so much pain. Walking out on the bridge I closed my eyes for a bit and felt the breeze and the listed to the sounds of the farm, and as the warm sun hit my face I felt the irony of the moment. I’d closed my eyes many times as a child, at many such quit spots on that farm, thinking of a day when I’d escape. When I’d be happy. When I’d not have to come back.
A little later and lunch is ready. Sitting there with my sister, memaw, and my uncle in the wheelchair (who still lives with memaw at nearly 60) I knew that the existence of everyone at the table had been bettered by my willingness in the past few years to make painful decisions, to make sacrifices, to sometimes reluctantly, take things on and make things happen, though not everyone always understood or agreed with what I was doing. I knew today that I’d made a difference in these people’s lives. A significant difference. My sister in her way and my grandmother (and so by default my uncle) in another way. Part of which included taking over and magaging and getting out of imminent danger, the same farm where I endured so much, and saving some of the same people who did nothing to stop it or change it.
I know that was part of my purpose for my life. At the age of 33, I still hav a lot of life to live and a lot more purposes to fulfill I am sure. My life experience has taught me already that there have been many purposes so far, and that’s just kind of the way of it. Letting go of my resentment, and getting a better perspective on things (a 5-6 year process), later getting into real estate, which happened to arm me with the real estate skills and business acumen specifically needed later when I’d decide to take on the farm executorship (or rather take it from my uncle in legal coo), the time I’ve spent in 12 step recovery programs helping myself armed me with how to help my sister when she got ready to be helped, all the books I’d read on personal development that helped me to let go of any animosity toward my uncle for trying to get in my way of taking over and saving the farm (and memaw and him) from financial disaster, all of it allowed for the moments, everyone together at the table sitting atop the new floors in the kitchen looking out over the cleaned up pond, past the manicured lawn in which a couple of geese sat. All of it was possible because I have been willing to push past the pain, push past the fear, and continue to do what I felt was my purpose to do at the time, over the years, one “next right thing” after another.
And now, with memaw squared away, with sister well on her way to getting her life together, I also realized all the more that my work here is probably done for a while. Its probably time for me to move on to the next chapter of my life, focusing more on this new career direction that I am feeling more and more. It could be the first and last Easter we all spend together for a while, as there is growing pull inside to head back out west for a while as I flesh out this new direction I feel God (or insert your higher power title here) is guiding me.
So, there was kind of a full circle feel to the day, which was an interesting feeling, and a good experience. I’m grateful to be living this life, and I am looking forward to continuing to make the most of it, living each day to the fullest, following my heart as I continue to ask for guidance in the next right thing that the Universe might want from me at this moment. And I continue to trust, that though I don’t always feel a clear direction, as I keep open to that guidance it is happenning. I am fulfilling my purpose, which seemingly consist of various small purposes along the way, and which I am only able to see in retrospect, in moments like today, when looking back makes things more clear and helps me to keep pushing forth in the present knowing that its all happening as it should.
Glad to be alive. Hope you all had a good day and a happy Easter.
Be Well,
Chris
