It is just a decision now

My Favorite Holiday is here again; Thanksgiving.  I called my parents today  and they were unpacking groceries with my sister, then they mentioned that they were getting ready to put the turkey in the oven….This is when I looked at the date and saw that I am missing Thanksgiving. 

Why is it my favorite?  Well, I love to eat and we drink wine while we are cooking and waiting for the dinner, the house smells wonderful, we are always with Great Friends and Family and we do nothing else except take a nap.  Of all of the holidays, Thanksgiving tops my list.  There isn’t any stress, because the stressful part is the part I love.  There isn’t any above and beyond costs; there isn’t any forgetting anyone or anything, there is just the love and laughter of being together.

We will have a Thanksgiving Feast on Saturday night with my friends from school and I will be making the Gravy and Green Bean Casserole.  This should compensate for being so far away from home, but actually now this is my home.  With new homes & new opportunities, there is new tradition and new friends to spend the time with.  I feel very lucky to have the friends that I do here in Brasil.  This is what I am thankful for this year.

About 3 months ago, I left my school for another school which was in another town and for more money as we were in a tight space.  I made the decision to change schools in 2 days and I decided solely for the money.  Once I was gone, all I could think was “What did you do?” & “did you even think about what kind of change you were making?”  It was then followed by the thought that I just gave up the only security that I had in Brasil for just a bit more money. 

It wasn’t too long before I realized that it wasn’t worth it.  The students were wonderful at the new school and so were the teachers, it had nothing to do with them…it had to do with my security.  The owner was constantly changing the agreement so I always felt like I was going to lose everything and it would all have been for nothing, the drive was 30 minutes each way in a car that sometimes wouldn’t start and I was gone for most of the day.  Suddenly it didn’t feel like a fun way to make money anymore, it was just a job. A truly Brazilian Job; I got a chance to experience what Rodrigo had to deal with for the last 9 months.  It made me realize how truly lucky I was to have landed where I did when we first moved to this town. 

One thing for sure was I didn’t need the stress.  In the United States, my stress was digestion and tension headaches which were very debilitating at times, but here the stress was more chronic and it would show up in my famous rashes, a stiff neck that would cause pain in my arms or during this period my skin started to hurt. I thought I was going to fall apart.  Actually a couple of weeks before I put in my notice, I came home and told Rodrigo “in 14 days I am going to lose it”, I knew I could not do it any longer.  So, I just made the decision to stop, stop trying the impossible.  Stop carrying the weight of the world on my shoulders and to realize that I was doing all that I can and I can’t do what I was doing anymore.

I was working 4 different jobs and raising the kids, when was enough going to be enough?  So I jumped and put all of my faith into my husband and he has not let me down since.  When I gave up, it was actually a soft pillow underneath for me to land.  When I made the decision to go back to the other school, miraculously overnight my stress & symptoms also started to dissipate. 

Now today I think back and feel so much relief and still can’t believe that I did what I did.  I think how much different my life is today and how much more peace that I have.  A while ago, in “Foolishness” I said that I was ready to settle down and this is true, but not ready to stop asking and truly believing in what I want for my life. Brasil or America maybe I can have it all, it is just a decision now.