For the past 20+ years we have been managing financial life on not much more than
a shoe-string for the most part, and at several points during that earlier time,
with only the help of family and friends to get us through one crisis after another.
After the devasting loss of his health and financial career, the Husband spent many years
trying to recover and heal physically, and together we both worked hard day to day trying to make up for the loss, and of looking forward to a financial retirement.
We are still doing that.
That is certainly not an uncommon thing in today’s world and not everyone has a
financial retirement. We are both blessed and fortunate that our country has such a thing as Social Security. That along with the the fact that the Husband is still able (at his age of nearing 70) to work an average of 20 hours a week away from home keeps us from going into the poor-house, as they used to call it back in the day. It helps that we found ourselves over the years, getting into the mindset and finally setting a goal that we could and would create a life at home that we don’t need regular vacations from.
That is the lovely part.
And indeed over the years, despite the hard work and often times stress,
IRISH ACRES has become not only our respite, but our happy place,
our peaceful place and where we are most content.
Retirement isn’t a Biblical word anyway, is it?
We still long from time to time to travel and see other places and to have that
mental freedom of being constantly “on guard” and “tending to” the home,
the farm and our daily work. And, we may well never have another vacation like the one we took three years ago after a 15 year absence of a real true vacation (see Here)
but we do have the memories and are deeply grateful for it.
While so many people around us seem to come and go on trips here and there and
around the world, we dig ourselves in deeper to the life that we have known
and the place that we have come to call our 'little peace of heaven'.
It’s of some great comfort to know that our real vacation is waiting for us anyway,
in that place called Heaven - our final destination.
I realize this can seem insane to some, but not so for us.
Besides, Mom always said “you can REST when you get to heaven”.
I thought it was mean at the time, but maybe not so.
For now – we have the lovely, our home and the farm,
and we also cling to what some would call the radically insane,
the best vacation that is yet to be!
So, we’re good...
~ Gwen of IRISH ACRES
Comments