I can’t believe it’s January already! But I believe I write that every time I write. Seriously December went way too fast. The end of the year is always stressful in general, but we had some additional stressors. In early December we found out that I am being dropped by a fairly large medical company. OK, to be fair, they are dropping ALL auto injury patients. Michigan used to be the place to be if you HAD to be in a car accident. I digress…

As of the end of January I will be needing to replace 4 of my 6 therapists. I am fully aware that this is going to happen a number of times, yet to come in this crazy recovery journey. Matt and I were already trying to work through some adjustments to our schedules, when we found out about this change. Nothing like having so much change needing to be done, over change that needs to be done, with no income and it’s Christmas time. Which I love to give gifts to everyone and when you don’t know how you can work it out when I can’t do any thing to help fix any of the problems, it makes one of my favorite times of the year depressing.

Friends, I have never felt more helpless and sad than I did between Thanksgiving and Christmas. We did, have someones bless us, or really threw us a much needed life boat, to allow much needed breaths of air during this dark time. It still stumps me how I can forget that I am more paralyzed than not paralyzed after 6 years. I had a moment of chuckling over a commercial for adult daycare, which is geared toward your grandparents, but might really be a last resort for us, so Matt can get back to work. It quickly went from finding it humorous that I would need someone to baby sit me 24 hours a day to an unbearable sadness and darkness. I was left crying and trying to explain, while in tears (which never works well), that I wasn’t crying about anything my family members did or didn’t do, but what I would most likely never do again. I want to work or find some way to help my family on a daily bases. I really hate that I am so limited…

Again, just stuff over stuff just came crashing over the month of December. Just to add to the sadness my mom’s birthday and death day happened to be in December. It has only been a year, which it pretty weird for me on so many levels.

OK, enough with the sad stuff. We did have a limited budget, but because of the blessing we received, we made a family trip to Hobby Lobby on Dec. 23. The items our kids requested were so specific, we didn’t trust our lack of knowledge with what they were asking for, we just took them. It just happened to be that what they were looking for was within the Hobby Lobby sale rotation. We told them they couldn’t just keep their items until they were unwrapped at Christmas. So they came right home and wrapped their gifts.

It was so…relaxing, normal, to be wondering around with the family. I found that I just spoke to whoever was browsing with me. I had been so self conscious about my speech.

The only moment I felt anything but that normal comfortable feeling was when we were walking in. Apparently, I cut off a wife from her husband. My family was behind me gigging. I had no idea that the man who seemed to me like he was rushing had a partner that I had cut in front of. I have limited movement of my neck, because of brackets from the accident. So I wasn’t able to see her over my right side.

I didn’t get a chance to apologize, but I did chastise my family a bit. I don’t want to come across as rude. We have all had experiences with rude people who just take advantage of their disability. I don’t want to be THAT person.

If we are Facebook friends you may have seen this picture…

The kids and I painted these beauties after our Hobby Lobby trip. We took a poll and I won!! I painted the blue one. I think it helped that we live in Michigan and the Lions were playing AND winning that day. In all fairness, I didn’t plan it to be Lions colors it was just the pretty blue…Matt was the one who pointed out the color pattern. Totally not chosen to be a Lions fan…or was it? Kiersten’s is with the pink nose was second, Cole’s is to the left of mine, and Arianne came in last. Cole and Arianne’s had back stories that helped explain their paint choices. I think it was so fun to sit among their creativeness with painting and conversation.

Outside of that moment, in Hobby Lobby, our Christmas season was really great. Probably one of the most overall relaxed holidays we’ve had. Some of that is just the kids being older. Is it really bad that I miss the craziness of the excitement of littles? But Kiersten did make homemade waffles with strawberry ice cream an whipped cream. Special breakfast for Christmas morning.

So now that it’s January, I thought I might share about my focus for the year. I don’t do resolutions because, well…like many of you, I never followed through. I try and spend time in prayer to see if God will give me a word to hold on to for the year.

Maybe you do this too, maybe not. Either way I’m going to share part of what I believe is my focus this year.

Intentional : done on purpose or deliberately.

Seems pretty simple right? If I don’t stay intentional with breathing exercises daily it affects the length of my sentences before I need to take another breath. If I am not intentional with my speech strategies, I can’t be understood well. This lesson learned with healing from the injuries runs right into family time.

It seems to me like my kids grew up overnight. I’m sure it’s a mom things but in my mind eye they shouldn’t have gotten any older than they were in 2017. So this Christmas I tried to really just be in the moment. Intentional in being there. I think too it’s a little bit of a struggle with my injuries just to be quite and watch what is going on around me, but being in the moment to me means making the joke. Saying the thing. Which incudes the intentional speech awareness. Breathing awareness. And once again it’s all connected.

So I guess if you see me in person this year know that I am trying to be intentional. That includes meeting here. I’m going to try and be more intentional with writing too. To which I need to walk in grace. I’ve been trying to write this post all week. So I already am trying to walk out intentional grace. I can’t do everything I want everyday. It just takes me more time to do everything. What’s very interesting to me is that I hadn’t really even thought of putting those two words together…but that’s pretty good too!

Here is our fist picture of 2024. I made it to midnight!

Happy 2024!!! I hope you had a wonderful holiday season! Hopefully I will write again soon, with intention.

♡TeamGavrilides ♡TBI Survivor ♡Faith to walk in the middle ♡Seed of Hope