January 10, 2011- Missing Family...

I know I have said it before, but being so far away from family is the worse part of living on an island so remotely located from the rest of the world.  Today, we mostly worked around the house and in the yard and relaxed before the start of another work week in the morning, but I can’t help but wish we could have our family over for dinner or that we could take a drive to see them for the afternoon.  Lately, several of my acquaintances and friends on island have suffered losses of family members or have been diagnosed with cancers which have forced them back to the states for intensive, long term treatment, and even closer to home, family members from both mine and my boyfriend’s families have suffered some sort of illness which required hospitalization and sometimes major surgery.  These are the times when everything else here falls away, and you just want to go back home to be with the ones you love.  These are the times when all the advantages of living here seem like disadvantages because in the end, relationships and family are what means the most...that you invested time and energy into making them the best you could be and enjoyed them while you could. No life lasts forever...That it what will assist me most in overcoming my fear of leaving this island paradise for the “real world” again...knowing I will be going back to the unconditional love of family, knowing I will be investing in the people and things that matter most, even if it means sacrificing being able to save more money for the future or having a comfortable lifestyle with relatively little effort as the island life here affords us. In the end, I know God will take care of me, no matter what the circumstances are I have to face. I only hope I can be there for those who mean so much, for now and from so far away, as much as they have been there for me, and that I will have a chance to make up for time lost while living on the atoll once I return to the states. God, please continue to bless and watch over our loved ones near and far and bring us back to them sooner rather than later and as often as possible.