Happy Anniversary

I just realized tomorrow is our wedding anniversary.  I found something I had written in my journal a few years before Richard passed away.  It was a time of tremendous financial stress as Richard was trying to save some of his clients in a heavy foreclosure climate.  I had written, the negative:

"Foreclosures have been taking so much of Richard's time and he works for nothing.  This is why we had such problems in the early eighties.  We had to borrow on the house and live on what I could bring in and I was just learning the business.  We all tell him he should charge like a lawyer but he has such a hard time doing that.  He feels he has to orchestrate the whole transaction and it could  never happen positively for his clients, if he didn't. 

I can understand where Richard is coming from but he has so many bases to cover and works so hard and doesn't get paid for it--it is the strangest life, no one could believe it.  I feel sorry for him one minute and am so angry at what it does to us the next that it is very confusing.  All our financial problems have arisen from the financial problems of someone else that he has had to unwind."

And then I had written the positive:

"Richard and I are really enjoying our morning at the Temple on Wednesdays.  It is so amazing to me that in the midst of all this chaos we can pick up and take a morning out of life each week and yet it is the glue that keeps it all together, I believe.

 I would never have believed that I would actually love spending so much time at the Temple.  It is the sisterhood that I have missed these last 14 year as I have worked instead of being in the auxiliaries.  There is such a peace, that I have so been praying for, and it stays with me for longer and longer each week.  There is so much love within those walls and the Temple work has become so much more meaningful.  It is the only time in the week I can really put the world and all our problems aside and focus on others. 

When Brother Jones called us, he said he did not know where the call came from--interesting--but without that call right now, I really don't know how Richard and I would have kept going through these last couple of months, honestly.  I love walking through the gardens each Wednesday, too.  I have learned alot just watching what the gardeners do in the early morning and wish I could do the same to my garden.  The grounds really are spectacular."

The 80s and 90s were such a very stressful time for Richard and I, culminating in his death.  I am glad we had some good times as well.  Some of the stressful times are so similar to what I am going through now, only I am alone.  I had written the same things then as I do now in my journal.  That is not good, I should have learned...

Happy Anniversary, Richard, I hope you are enjoying your missionary work up there.  I am sure it is much more enjoyable than what is happening down here though Elder Nelson tells us it is an exciting time to be alive, I need to get with that point of view and enjoy...