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Reality Check!

July 21, 2014 by Cindi Ferrini

“When you wake up, you’ll feel like a truck hit you, but each day you’ll do better and better and heal well,” was what the doctor told my mother-in- law and I about how she’d feel after her heart surgery. After surgery, I asked mom how she felt and she replied, “The doctor said I’d wake up and feel like I was hit by a truck. That’s true, I do, but we failed to ask what size truck it would be!”  That is a reality check!

Reality is sometimes a shock.

When caring for others, not all things will change the course of that person’s life to make her or him what we’d call “normal.” The re­ality in this case is summarized in this question: Will we be able to run the race set before us or crumble under the weight of this responsibility for a lifetime?

It doesn’t matter who we are—rich or poor, healthy or unhealthy, good looking or not, well-dressed or shabby, happy or sad, motivated or unmotivated, talented or untalented. When God wants to do something in and through our life, look out! That’s when reality hits!

As a mom, the reality for me is the day-to-day grind of life and the realization that we have no con­trol over it, and that nothing will ever be the same.  If we are open to learning, it’s in that reality where God will give us new vision – a bigger picture as we walk through the tests and the storms that challenge us. Until we are willing to become active learning partic­ipants, we flounder, trying to figure out what’s going on.

What I’ve learned with each new reality, is that listening to God, my heart, and taking time to learn what will be needed, will eventually help me sort things out. I’ll learn, I’ll grow, and somewhere down the road of this journey, I’ll have a new level of understanding of life because I’ve embraced my new reality. Is it easy? Never. Is it worth it? Always! That’s reality!

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Cindi Ferrini

Joe and Cindi have been married since 1979, have 3 grown children, grandchildren, and enjoy speaking together on topics of marriage, parenting (including special needs), leadership, and time and life management. They have written articles and blogs for Focus on the Family, FamilyLife, Family Matters, and others. Together they authored: Unexpected Journey - When Special Needs Change our Course. Cindi has written time management and organizational materials as well. They LOVE what they GET to do....
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Latest posts by Cindi Ferrini (see all)

  • “I LOVE Your Joey Stories!” - February 19, 2018
  • Do you WONDER? - January 15, 2018
  • Just Us - December 18, 2017

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Filed Under: Joe & Cindi, Living In The Moment, Living Life Daily Tagged With: care-giving, caretaker, cindi ferrini, reality, reality check, unexpected journey

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