It's a Wonderful, Meaningful Life!

For Christmas, Jessica received the new Veggie Tales dvd, It's a Meaningful Life, from one of her great-grandmothers. It is based off one my favorite movies, It's a Wonderful Life. After watching It's a Meaningful Life with Jessica, I do believe that I might actually like it better than It's a Wonderful Life! "Sacrilege!" ...I know, but I think I learned a very valuable lesson this year from that video. Innately I am a scientist. I love to explore life in a very hands-on way. My favorite television shows are Star Trek. Things of an abstract nature can be rather challenging for me. There are things about religion that I find rather challenging as well because some things are not concrete and cannot be proven. However, over the past year I have been slowly coming to the realization that if I cut all of those "touchy-feely" religious beliefs out of my life, then what I am left with is anxiety and stomach ulcers!

The last couple months have been a bit of a strain for me. As Jessica grows closer and closer to school-aged, it becomes more and more apparent that she is delayed in multiple areas of development. That fact in and of itself is not what has been bothering me. I value all children for who they are just the way God made them, and I do not have any expectations for Jessica to live up to, save one: to be sweet. What has been stressing me is worrying that I am not being the parent she needs me to be. Am I making the right choices? Do I have her in the right therapy with the right therapist? Are we doing enough homework to help her progress as well as possible in therapy? etc, etc, etc. David has also been strained because of the financial side of it. How long will she need therapy? Can we afford to send her to the best therapists we can find as long as she needs it? We are actually in the process of making some major changes to our household in the next few months to address some of these concerns.

But the thing that has made the biggest difference in how we feel about all of this is what I learned from It's a Meaningful Life: God has a purpose for my life. Yes, I grew up believing that, but it was one of those things that I could never really get my hands on concretely, so I let go of that belief. I have since learned that I am a happier person when I choose to believe that my life has meaning, that I have a purpose, so I am choosing to believe it! God gave me the life experiences that I have had growing up with severe ADHD, so that I would be ready to be just the right Mommy for Jessica. He gave me parents who really believed God made me special and pushed me to exceed the expectations most people would have for someone like me. God guided my choices in college so that I would have just the right tools to help me. I walked into my first graduate class in School Psychology without having a clue what a School Psychologist did and ended up being fortunate enough to find myself in a program that is very behavioral, which was just what I needed. He also arranged that I would take a very different path from what I expected and meet David, my husband, who is best described as my partner. We make an awesome team and work so well together. God continues to bless us with both positive and negative experiences that allow us to learn more about Him. So....Welcome 2011. I'm ready to grab you by the horns....so bring it!