My New Normal

Normal, such an interesting word and so relative. Who gets to decide that? In our society, that word is getting to be increasingly difficult to define. It’s taboo to even suggest that you might be living outside of normal.

A few years ago, I was at a point in my life that someone said to me once I established a new normal, I would feel better. Turns out, that was correct. Life settled down and I was comfortable.

Fast forward several years and my normal was turned upside down.

Our days begin at 5AM when an aide arrives to begin getting Steve out of bed and ready for his day. Our dogs know each of them so well that barking is minimal, even at such an early hour. Consider for a moment how long it takes you to shower, dress, eat breakfast, and brush your teeth. Add an hour and a half to that and then Steve would be ready to join you. Normal is making sure that we budget adequate time (2 hours minimum) for us to be able to leave the house. But, my new normal involves plenty of time for me to get my morning started with exercise and Bible Study that I probably never would have done otherwise, and has truly been a blessing.

And that’s just morning….Steve feels like a modern day, male version of Cinderella in the evenings. Why you may ask…because at 9:00PM, one of our two aides arrives to get him ready for bed. In an effort to take some things off of my plate, he chooses to end his evening early, so that I don’t have that to do also. As a result, anything that he does (or we do in the evening), comes with a “hard stop”. If we run late, that means notifying whoever is scheduled to arrive. It also means that if Steve is getting work done, it often comes with an abrupt halt. Watching television together…well, we better make sure that it ends on time, or we will be having company to watch the end of the show with us. That may seem so intrusive, but we have welcomed some amazing people into our lives who we wouldn’t have known otherwise.

Now I bet some of you are wondering how you could ever get used to this normal. Well, sometimes I wonder the same thing. But, consider the things in your life that have been difficult for you to make normal. How have you coped? How do you cope? Who can you share that burden with? And perhaps most importantly, what good can come from your experience?