Finding Happiness

Today was a very unhappy day as we found out my husband’s brain cancer has come back. We are devastated! This is the second time we have had to deal with this but it feels a lot more ominous this time. Saying that we have to keep moving forward in this life and continue to fight this beast for as long as we can. 

This is the book I have been reading over the last few days - bought several months ago for a few dollars at a thrift store it has been sitting on my bedside table for a while now. Someone else had underlined some passages - IN PEN! - which I didn't notice until I got home and it irked me for quite some time so I put off reading it for quite a while. I don't like to deface my books and it annoyed my that I had spent money on one that someone had done this to. I decided in the end that I could make peace with it and accept it as it was not an expensive buy. I ended dragging out a pen and underlying things myself which has ended up being more useful than I realised!

It seems kind of ironic that this topic is what I am reading at a time when we have had such bad news and I have found myself questioning if I will ever be happy again as I know that things are going to change markedly for us, me and my family in the next few months. I admit I am scared. 

I got to spend an hour reading today while waiting for my son at his soccer trials and the chapter I was up to was on money then the following one was on spirituality. I realised that both of these are going to be relevant to me in the next few months as I have been on a leave of absence from work and do not wish to return when I know that the time with my husband is potentially going to be limited. I do not want to spend any of that time working. I am taking a big pay cut despite having income protection insurance so will need to continue to make some big adjustments to the spending that we do and continue to look into generating income from other sources - things that I love doing like my side hustle and our holiday rental. I am not worried about having a reduced income as we have managed in the past - we were poor students for years and continued to be happy and manage well so I know we can easily do this again if needed. This blog will go someway to helping us do this.

The spirituality will be more of a challenge as I have found myself increasingly questioning any traces of faith I might have entertained in the past and would have called myself agnostic until my husband was diagnosed with an incurable brain cancer. Since then I would probably call myself an atheist as I can not reconcile the pain caused by this illness in someone who is kind and loving with a God who is supposed to be kind and loving. It just doesn't make sense to me. I have found myself thinking about the universe as a whole and have found nature calling to me more and more with the trees and the mountains giving me a sense of spirituality that I find much more tangible and healing in these difficult times.

This book is giving me lots to ponder. Although I have always managed to be a positive person who can find contentment in many ways I think it will give me some aspects to consider that I hadn't thought of and may give me some guidance. I have even found some other reading suggestions in the back that will potentially support me through this difficult time - so the few dollars I spent buying this book have been well worth it! Finding things to be happy and grateful for will be top of my priorities to help me negotiate the challenges we face!