Pouring out my heart

I have to pour out my heart…since moving here, I don’t really have someone to pour it out to, other than my husband.  And sometimes, you just need someone else to listen…so I’ve succumbed to telling the blogging world.

I LOVE living here.  I love our home, our neighborhood, our pool.  I love my 1 mile commute to work and to the kids’ schools.  I love that there are horses and cows at the end of our subdivision, and a Starbucks and Macy’s less than 10 minutes away.  Anything I need or want, it’s within a 30 minute drive.  It kind of feels like living on vacation.  We have restaurants galore, shopping to die for, incredible movie theaters, a skyline, zoo, aquarium, major league baseball, NFL, soccer.  I cannot believe it took me so long to break free of the humdrumity of our past lives.

That being said, we don’t get to enjoy a lot of the frills of living here.  When Adam lost his job earlier this year, it hit hard.  REALLY hard.  What-are-we-going-to-do-now kind of hard.  We were so blessed that he found another job within 3 weeks.  But it’s at a MUCH smaller salary, and we had worked up for 14 years to making ends meet, after overcoming a medical bankruptcy from our son’s illness.  We lost $13,000 on the sale of our home.  But we thought “It’s worth it” to move here – better quality of life, better income potential.  And then WHAM.  Now we’re back to what-are-we-going-to-do status.  In the next few weeks, we have school enrollment, after-school care, school clothes/shoes, start of dance again….and half as much money to do with all with.  We’ve cancelled most of our channels, our on-star, halved our grocery budget, and trim away every place we can.  And it still hurts.

We’re still better off than we were.  I make more money and we are happier here.  Our kids are thriving, our son’s health is better, we enjoy our extended family more and my job here is so overwhelmingly fulfilling.  But when Adam lost his job, we had this dream of him opening a coffee house – right across from where I work.  The town is growing our direction, and there is a huge need for more places to sit and eat this direction.  In a market study, it’s what residents wanted most.  And there’s a prime space for rent in a strip mall – just staring at us.  It’s even finished inside.  With the college, three schools, lots of businesses, a medical center, and more here, it’s a perfect location.  We had a business plan, drawings, menu, furniture picked out, supply list - everything down to the T, and no one would loan us the money.  We’ve had to shelf it.

Then there’s me.  I work my BUTT off (literally) every day as a fitness coach after I do my 8-5 job.  I prepare and teach classes weekly.  I commit to helping other people get healthy and reclaim their lives from obesity and health problems.  But for the LIFE of me, I cannot get FIVE PEOPLE to commit to a workout program for 90 days.  They don’t have time, money, motivation.  I find myself beating my head against a wall, because I believe so passionately in this after losing over 100 pounds and getting MY life back, but people just won’t commit.  They think it was cool that I was on Dr. Oz, but that’s the extent of it.  I had hoped that such (unplanned) exposure would propel others to dive in!  That weighs on my heart.  I thought maybe a bigger area, with more people, that this would thrive and give us a cushion.  Instead it’s just making my heart break.

It feels like we’re lost.  We know this is where we are supposed to be, yet we don’t know how we’re supposed to do it.  Should Adam apply for other jobs?  Should we give up our coffee house dream? Will I ever get clients who want my help with their health and fitness?  Will we end up back in financial failure? 

The Kansas City motto for 2012 is “It’s OUR time.”  It doesn’t really feel like it’s OUR time.  I wonder when OUR time will actually be.   Will we EVER get ahead and enjoy this life we dream for ourselves?  One where we can pay the bills AND do something fun on the weekend??  I hope so.