Saturday, September 1, 2012

Road trippin with the big D

The older I get, the more I am starting to realize that life is much happier and easier if you just go with the flow. You can't please everyone all of the time. You can't make everyone like you. It's impossible to always do or say the right things to the right people. This might come out sounding selfish, but I am learning that the only thing that matters is how you feel about yourself. If you can lay your head down upon your pillow at night and take comfort in knowing that you did your best that day.....that's all that matters. If you were the best YOU that you could be that day...if you are happy in your own heart and honest in your feelings and beliefs....than that's all you could ever hope for. Do your best. It's that simple.
Emma and I just got back from our annual road trip to visit my family back home in Wisconsin. Yes, it is stressful to drive 10 hours across the border, across a few states, across many many miles in a rental car. It is even more stressful to do this with diabetes packed along in the back seat. You can prepare, pre-plan, pack for double the amount of supplies you will need while you are gone...you can anticipate the worst case scenarios...you can play them out in your head ahead of time and try to think of a coherent plan of action to take if one of those awful situations should arise. Images of an emergency site change on the side of the road in Michigan fly through your head. Chuckling to yourself as you drive along and find your eyes immediately drawn to the big "H" road signs in every city you pass indicating a hospital is near. Mentally filing that information and that exit number away in your mind as you cruise along singing at the top of your lungs with your daughter to Mumford and Sons as the late summer sun shines down upon you. Diabetes does not come in a neat and tidy little package for you to store away in the trunk. It is more along the lines of hanging out in a plastic grocery bag full of holes and a torn handle....spewing garbage and crumpled papers all across the back seat. It is what it is. You can decide to take each high blood sugar as it comes and rage bolus to fix it....you can decide to fix each random low that occurs and be greatful as you stare at the aftermath of juice boxes strewn about the car. You can take the fast lane and make it work. You can hop behind the wheel and take charge. It's in you....it really is. No one has ever claimed that this life is easy...and we all know it....we want it to be easy...we want the smooth paved road in our travels...but that is just not reality.
So, we do our best....we be the best US that we can be. We put the petal to the metal and take it all in stride, because that is what we were put on this Earth to do. We each have our own path...our own road trip lies ahead of us all....and as long as we are honest and know in our hearts that we have done our best....everything along the way will be worth it...it will be another memory made...a memory to last a life time.

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