This Moment

After talking to my financial advisor and setting up yearly distributions from my IRA starting in January, there was no escaping it. I only have 7 years to find affordable senior housing before depending solely on Social Security. I knew my IRA would run out sooner than later but hadn’t nailed down that it would really be in so few years. Admittedly, my little rug is going to slip out from beneath my feet faster than I'd been hoping.

After some mild stomach lurching, I calmed myself with remembering. Over the years I have experienced what I smilingly call housing karma when needing to find a place to live. For example, my daughter saw my current home on Craig’s List the first day it was posted. She wasn’t searching on that site but it popped up on her computer. It was located ½ mile from her house and the rest is history –a happy history now 9 years in the making.

Revisited by lurking anxiety, I have had to employ the discipline of staying positive despite my mind wanting to take side trips into dark alleys of misfortune. Even so, I find myself lifting my heart to heaven, as it were, wanting confirmation that everything is going to be all right. But, battered with daily, dismal broadcasts detailing failures to curtail climate change and people losing their homes in the resulting weather catastrophes, who am I to seek exemption? I must concede the indifference of hurricanes, tornadoes, floods, blizzards, ice storms, or in my case, lightning strikes and wildfires.

Still, my heart quietly sought reassurance. Like a child wanting to be held by loving arms, my spirit leaned into the hope of comfort. Then, the week of Thanksgiving, as gentle as a whisper in the night, these words arrived on my cellphone in lovey affirmation:

Be grateful for the home YOU HAVE, knowing that at this moment, all you have is all you need.

Sarah Ban Breathnach - Janicerwayne - Yours Mine and Ours Memory Box