one size does NOT fit all...

I told Ian yesterday, in tears, shaking and trembling with anger, but also with a new insight- that I have figured out how to describe our life right now. We are wearing new shoes and they are the wrong size and we are stuck with them. We can't take them back.

You know what it's like when you wear new shoes for the first time, they hurt and rub blisters. You can either take them back and get a different size or just get used to wearing them and hope they stretch out. I guess our only option is to get used to wearing them. They hurt everyday to wear. Some days we go numb because the pain is too intense and we distract ourselves so we don't have to think about the uncomfortable shoes we have to walk in. Mind over matter, right?

If only we could take them back or exchange them, but that is where the hardest part about it all comes to a head....we can't.

These are the shoes we have been given and we have no other choice. We look around and envy the shoes we see others wearing, our friends, sometimes strangers...but at the end of the day, all we have is our painful wrong-sized shoes to walk in. All we have to look forward to is more ongoing pain if they don't stretch out, getting used to the pain or pray they stretch and become like our own feet in the future. Sometimes I want to just take the shoes off, but if I do...it is always more painful to put them back on...the blisters are still there and make it more difficult because each painful spot reminds me that they don't fit....and then I wish I hadn't tried to get relief because it seems harder now to put them back on...

I will be painfully honest, it is pretty damn hard to listen to others right now complain about their own shoes or show their new shoes off...Many are walking around in pain, in the wrong size and have to live with it for the rest of their time on earth...One size cannot fit all, it does NOT work...Why do some people think that applies to everyone's life? Can't you show any respect to those people walking so uncomfortably? Can't you be grateful yet humble in yourselves and still sensitive to others? This whole analogy brings new light to the saying, "walk a mile in my shoes and then see how you feel..." No one else can walk in my shoes...they are mine to have, to walk in with this pain for the rest of my life...it just makes it hard sometimes to watch others walking so effortlessly in theirs...mine are still new..I have to work them out and get used to them..I am so used to having an exchange policy in life, you don't get that when death is involved..you don't get to solve the solution or make it better. It is no more and that is it...but while others get new shoes, fancy shoes, expensive shoes, fun shoes...I am still left with the ones I am burdened to wear...I don't get to exchange or get a new pair...I don't get that option.