Musings at Altitude

Sometimes you just have to smile when you get certain text messages:

Her: “Y cant me and mom get to ur blog?”

Me: “I don’t know”

Her: “And u know u are going to have to start ur articles with life with a 14 year old”

In those two simple text messages, my 13 year old gave me a slew of messages.  First, the fact that she goes to my blog to read these messages about her at least tells me she gets some smiles and some fun from the blog.  I certainly hope so.  And she’s also telling me that my wife is reading my blog which is also pretty cool.  At least I certainly hope so.  And she’s telling me that she’s tracking the blog and not just quickly reviewing it since she’s reading the title and the content, and she’s now guiding me in her own way about what to call the upcoming blogs when she turns 14 on Sunday.  And finally, she’s reminding me that Sunday is her birthday, which she knows she needs to do because for some strange reason I always believe her birthday is May 12th instead of May 11th which it is.

As you might imagine or just expect, I’m on the road right now and because of great challenge on our job site, I may not make it home for this Sunday’s birthday of my 13 year old or Mother’s Day which is that very same day.  As I think back on the life of all of my kids, I have a hard time counting all the birthdays and special events I’ve missed.  My life has been filled with “mission critical” activities (or so I always think) that have taken so many precious moments away and etched them in the mind of my wife while leaving me to listen to the stories as a disconnected participant.  The older I get, the more the missing key events hurts, even with the incredible support and understanding of my wife and kids…they’ve always been that way, or at least they always expect it to be so. 

I talk about balance in my life every now and then (I don’t want to dwell on it though because I know that I don’t have the will just yet to bring complete balance to my life), but I’ve never really taken any steps to come close to balance.  I think though that I’m at a time and place in my life where balance is important enough that it’s time to seriously look at who I am and where I’m at.  I’ll be a grandfather shortly; my youngest child will be 14 on Sunday; I’ve been married 25 years now of which I’ve been home maybe half of those 25 years; my oldest daughter is graduating from college in a couple of weeks (my wife asked me to make sure I didn’t miss that special event – that one I wouldn’t blame her for drawing the line on); my son will soon be starting his second year in college; and my wife had her dream home built in 2001 and we just now have lived in it more than others have due to job location requirements. 

I’m thankful that I still have the love of my family even though I’ve missed so many of those special events.  I’m so thankful that I get understanding when I probably deserve a bit of anger for the constant change in plans and the constant separation.  I’m ever so grateful to friends who let me vent about my frustrations but keep that venting in confidence and then help me view life from a perspective that may be very different than mine.  When you boil this down, I’m blessed beyond belief – in fact, I’m incredibly blessed with a million smiles a day because I believe the goodness far outweighs the badness, the number of optimists far exceed the number of pessimists, and the applauders are a much larger group than the critics.

As I sit here tonight just thinking, I’m like most people who are so incredibly blessed yet so frequently separated.  We think about all that we miss during any multi-day separation, and then we get sucked right back into the mission to respond to the operational needs of the day.  Our minds for an oh so brief moment get relief from the longings caused by separations…and then during any moment of respite from the pressures of that mission, the thoughts of home invade our minds, bringing us right back to the point of “just thinking”.

It looks like I’ll be “just thinking” for awhile.  For all of you who I’m thinking about and yearning for, I love you.