Tuesday, December 30, 2008

What the heck happened?

I know we have all gone through them, those times when you figure that your lucky star must have gone Nova and blinked out. When everything seems to be going south faster than you could ever catch up. It's bad enough when it happens to you but it can be just as bad when it's happening to a good friend or family member.

We never know what, why or when life will jack slap us. Erica had a hard lesson in this about 7 years ago. She is an RN and at the time she was taking a break from being a staff nurse in a hospital, she was the head nurse at a nursing home. I got a call from her at work and she asked if I could come and get her as she had hurt herself. When I arrived I found that she had injured her back giving a patient in one of those low beds a shot. She couldn't even stand let alone walk.

This started a 2 year period of no income from her and we had to live on my much lower pay, with bills enough for two incomes. We survived that and came away stronger knowing we can cut back everything and go into survival mode. But it was tough real tough. The stress of trying to make ends meet was a constant monster living with us. Once she was healed and could go back to work it took years to pay off the debts and to get us close to where we were before the accident.

We never know when something like that will happen and we can never completely plan for the disasters that can come up. But what we can do is keep our friends and family if we have them close. There is a saying that you can measure a person's worth, not by the size of their bank account but by the number of people who call you friend. Real friends are there for you in the rough times as well as the good.

Have you been putting off calling a friend to say hi, how about a family member you have been thinking about getting closer to again? Remember to have a friend you have to be one. Keep those friends in your life you need them as much as they need you.

Thanks for reading.

Friendly Panda

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