Food

If your home is anything like mine, the focus over the last few days has been on food. The Thanksgiving holiday requires you to heap large amounts of food in front of yourself and then polish it off. Once you are done overeating, you wait for a short amount of time and then insert some pie or dessert. I believe that the dessert portion is kind of like the rinse cycle, pie or dessert is a nice way to cleanse your pallet and let your tummy know that turkey is not your only fuel source.

Food is a fuel, and it helps keep us going. Yesterday as I sat hating myself for overeating for the last three days, I realized that while we had all eaten well and fueled our bodies, our minds and spirits were lacking. Each of us is dealing with our own emptiness and frustration and it has started taking a toll. Mark has 18 more days of work, Ashleigh's divorce will be final soon, Aly is pushing herself so hard to do well in school and finish her senior year of high school at the top of her game that she is becoming an emotional cyclone. I am in the middle of this giant financial mess that my Dad created when he died and Avery, well Avery is actually doing pretty well, although she is fighting a very bad cold.

I wish there was a way to fill each of us up with an emotional dessert. Something that would cleanse our emotional pallets and give us a break, but it seems for now there is no emotional dessert buffet open to us. Families being what they are, when one man is down, the domino principal takes over and we all go down. Thus we are all feeling the pressure and pain as one. I cannot help but feel like we just need a little emotional fuel, just a little bit of sweetness to help get us over this hump.

Do not get me wrong, we are OK and we will stay OK. This is nothing we cannot get through together it is just that we had gotten so use to riding the wave of everything being so much better that it felt a little like a sucker punch when the dominos started to fall. I wish I could take away the stress that Mark feels. I wish I could say something comforting and wise. I also wish that a simple emotional dessert would sooth my daughter Ashleigh and help her through this difficult time. It is very hard to see the people you love fighting to keep from being swallowed up by their stress and sadness.

The only fuel source I can offer them right now is my love. I have this desire to help them, but I know that we are all part of a plan and that we must live through this in order to understand and appreciate what comes next for us. Knowing this does not make the stress easier, but it does make heading into it and coming out of it a sweet reward. In the end making it through is like cleansing your pallet with a delicious piece of pie with and extra dollop of whipped cream on top.