Living Happily Ever After
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Blog Articles

If a Tree Dies

Date: June 18, 2012  Author: admin

Sometimes, I confess, I’m struck by how different my new life (aka. the unexpected one) is from my old one. The losses have been substantial in every category. But, three years into it, so are the gains. I’ve seen over and over again that in any loss, despite your losses, you’re still left with SOMETHING; and you can use whatever you’re left with to rebuild.

Yes, old dreams die. Yet I’ve learned for myself it is possible to resurrect new dreams from the ashes of the old. So if the rug of your proverbial life has been ripped out from under you, unroll a new one in its place. Carry on. Look for the good. And eventually, you’ll find it. It’s never too late to begin again, to rise, to live.

“If a tree dies, plant another in its place.” (Carolas Linnaeus) And with enough faith, hope, hard work and endurance it will take root.

The Key To Everything

Date: May 21, 2012  Author: Andrea Merriman

“The key to everything is patience. You get the chicken by hatching the egg, not by smashing it.” (Arnold H. Glasgow)

Recently, my youngest found a bird nest with an egg in it. I love birds, nests and imagining the possibilities in an unhatched egg and looked forward to checking the egg’s progress (from a distance) in the coming days—watching for a baby bird to hatch—with my son. I explained the plan and reminded him to leave the nest and egg alone so that nature could continue its course. He provided nest-and-egg updates for the next several hours until an “accident” occurred: the nest, and the shattered remains of what had once been an egg, lay on our front porch. My son attempted to blame the tragedy on a “strange bird that appeared out of the sky and then mysteriously disappeared” (coincidentally, never to be seen or heard from again after moving the nest and cracking the egg open) but the real culprit was my impatient six year old!

Impatience. Patience. The potential threat as well as the key to the success of an unexpected life. I remember thinking, when thrust into my unexpected life of extreme losses in every category, how is this all going to work out? How will any of this ever be made right? How will it be possible to ever be happy again? And the question of timing—when, how soon, how long will it take—was an even bigger unknown. Yet none of those questions are answered, or ever can be, without the important quality of patience because, “…all things are difficult before they become easy.” (Saadi)

It takes patience to master the difficult before it becomes easy. But with enough patience, every challenge can become a triumph, every time. Patience is the key: the key to endurance, the key to success, the key to triumph, the key to happiness. The key to everything? Patience. In fact, patience is genius.

Yes, “Genius is eternal patience.” (Michelangelo)

He ought to know.

The Honest Answer I Didn’t Expect

Date: March 20, 2012  Author: Andrea Merriman

“I don’t believe in dressing up reality. I don’t believe in using makeup to make things look smoother.” (Lou Reed)

My husband called me back less than 20 minutes later and the issue was resolved.

My husband and his daughter arrived in Utah the following evening and we moved her in to our home. When the settling in was complete, we sat down with her and went over the house and family rules, what we expected from her and what she could expect from us. (I printed them out and gave her a copy so there could be no misunderstanding.)

One week later, one night when she came to say goodnight before going to bed, I took the opportunity to ask her in more detail how things were going and how she was feeling about her new life.

“Ok, you’ve been here a week,” I said. “Tell me, how are you doing? How are things going? How are you feeling?”

I don’t know what I expected to hear, or what I expected her to say, but I wasn’t expecting to be so entertained by her reply: “I’m not going to lie, it hasn’t been nearly as bad as I thought it would be!” she answered.

I kept a straight face and waited until she left the room…to laugh! I’ll never forget that (honest) answer.

And really, isn’t that pretty much life?   It rarely ends up as bad as we think it’ll be. And if it’s really that bad or worse, it doesn’t stay that way forever—I learned that myself from personal experience. Eventually, with enough faith, work and endurance, you’re on to a different happily ever after—if that’s what you choose.

“There are two primary choices in life: to accept conditions as they exist, or accept the responsibility for changing them.” (Denis Waitley)

You Can Call Me

Date: March 4, 2011  Author: Andrea Merriman

“It’s strange but true. Fat chance and slim chance mean the same thing.”

When my unexpected life began, and in the real world, there were probably many (myself included, on occasion) that believed the reality of a wonderful life ever working out for me again was a slim chance or a fat one. However, the beauty of an unexpected life is that it does work out. With enough faith, hope, hard work, optimism, endurance and some miracles, in fact, it always does. Every time.

Another highlight of my engagement, for me, took place shortly after the driveway conversation with my youngest and the neighbor boy. One day I received the following email from #5:  ”Hey, Just wanted to let you know that last night in the car Jake asked if he could call me Dad. I told him he could call me anything he wanted–Dad, Fatty, Mike…Later he called me Mike, but at least he knows that it will be ok.”

Things were changing in our unexpected life; they were definitely looking up. Mr. Awesome was proving himself truly awesome time and again, but there were still a few unusual conversations ahead. Especially those that involved a four-year-old.

“The difficulty with this conversation is that it’s very different from most of the ones I’ve had of late. Which, as I explained, have mostly been with trees.” (Douglas Adams)