Nightmare

I had the strangest but coolest nightmare last night.  You know how when you dream about a place, it never looks close to what the reality is, well, I dreamt about my house and the dimensions and number of rooms were the same but it was just a little bit bigger.  So, I look down the hall and my husband has painted the walls a deep red and an obnoxious purple.  In addition, the work was sloppy and the door frames were black!

I was just disturbed beyond measure.  Like all you feel about yourself aesthetically has just been violated by your closest friend.  And you want to run far, far away.  But instead of yelling at my husband, who was wearing the opposite of the horrible colors he painted my house, white cotton pants and a sea foam green cashmere sweater, I walked over to him calmly and said, "Sweetie, how do you feel about repainting the house?"  And the nightmare came to a merciful end by he saying, "No, no I can't do that.  We can't change it."

The reason why I was I had this dream is clear.  One, I've been thinking a lot lately about how much I love the earth tone paint colors in my house.  And I love my house and living in it.  And how I'm ticked that J.Crew sold out of sea foam green skinny corduroy pants in 28S.

As 2011 comes to a close and I'm hoping for a better 2012, I'm not framing "better" as "getting pregnant."  I never thought I would get to the place where I felt we might not ever get pregnant.  And that, that would be OK and sometimes even better than OK.  That life could be more fun and no less meaningful and we could still respond fully to God's calling.

We've started to frame our future life without children.  It's nothing tangible really but we have expectations about retirement and money and it feels good finally to celebrate this natural physical limitation.  I'm OK right now and I am happy and excited about life getting better on my terms.