Gratitude & Secrets

Right now I am overwhelmed with gratitude, so much that it was impossible to find the words to properly express it.  It starts with me accidentally outing myself in facebook (not this blog, but our infertility)  and the responses were overwhelmingly positive.  Everyone said the right things.

After I outed myself on Tuesday one of my very good friends who doesn't live nearby anymore called me.  She wanted to cover our shortfall becasue of the change in price, as a gift.  But, she also wanted to be sure that the gift was welcome and it wouldn't make either of us uncomfortable.  I was floored/ flabbergasted/ completely astonished.  It never occurred to me that someone would do something like that for us, it certainly wasn't why I post on facebook.  I was just being emotional, and frustrated, and venting.  Wow.

I went home and discussed it with Jakobe, but he wasn't comfortable with it.  It wasn't someone that he knew as well, and he just wouldn't feel right about it.  As part of that conversation he told me it would be different if it had been one of my best friends that he knows well and that we spend a lot of time with. 

Which leads into the next thing.  While we were out at the convention this weekend, one of our close friends pulled me aside and handed me an envelope with $1000 in it, because they wanted to help.  Again, floored/flabbergasted/astonished/ in tears.  None of our close friends here at home have enough money to make a gift like that something easy for them to do.  I know how hard a decision like that would have been, and I couldn't push it back and say, no thank you, we don't really need it, because we do, and because they know it.  Their one stipulation was that I not tell Jakobe.  They felt that he would feel obligated, and that he wouldn't be able to accept it.  Since this was almost exactly what Jakobe told me, I knew they were right, but Yikes!  I am not good with secrets (at least keeping them from Jakobe), and I'm guaranteed to do something to sabotage my secret keeping.

It ate me alive all weekend.  I couldn't figure out how to explain the extra money, and I couldn't figure out how to tell him about it.  At one point I came up with a hare-brained scheme to be able to hide it from him, but I was also aware that it would mean that I would have to keep the secret forever.  That sounded really hard, so after I had lunch with my sisters, I spent my whole drive home in the car trying to think of how I could keep my promise not to tell him, and how I could tell him about the money and not have to hide it from him.  In the end I decided I would ask him to not try and figure out who it was from. 

Turns out, I had already sabotaged myself.  I left the envelope of money on the table in the front room, and he was supposed to be picking up around the house while I was at lunch.  He found the money.  Unfortunately, I think that part of him believes that I was never going to tell him.  He's wrong,  it was so hard to keep that secret for a few days, I don't know how I could have done it for any length of time.  The only secrets I successfully keep are what his birthday and Christmas presents are going to be, and those are surprises (and good ones) and not really secrets..

I want to say thank you, and thank you isn't enough, I want to say that the giving of this gift has changed my life, not because I couldn't have found a way without it, but because it makes me look at the world in a different way, because it makes me realize that people are even better than I gave them credit for.  Thank you for making me feel like I am one of the luckiest people in the world, and one of the richest, with a wealth beyond words or explanation.  Thank you.