Mid-November it felt as if someone had thrown a bucket of cold water over me. My husband had lost his job and was suddenly part of the unemployment statistics. My initial reaction was to stress … something I’m very good at doing. And so I started to worry about my children and the Christmas holidays that lay ahead.

After the initial shock subsided, I decided to support my husband by remaining positive. Now for me to remain positive goes against the very essence of what I am. I swing from one extreme to another: I’m either totally stressed (which is the better side to me) or totally depressed. So, you can just imagine how difficult it was for me… but I decided to stress and ignore the darker corners of my mind. It was not the time to be blue. I had my children to consider.

My love for literature helped a lot. I found myself thinking of many motivating phrases and one that particularly made me calm was the one in Venus and Adonis (Shakespeare) that reads: “Love comforteth like sunshine after rain.”

I decided to play open cards with the children. I turned to both of them and told them that we may not have money to enjoy the holidays, but we had love in our home; something that many families didn’t have, and many couldn’t buy. That in itself had so much value.

We spent so much time with the children and as the days passed we found ourselves doing more as a family. We wanted to go away for a few days, but that changed with the loss of income. The children bought a pack of cards - Uno - and we spent our evenings challenging each other. While we played, we had time to talk and laugh. It really made a difference. We watched DVD’s and made meals together. We sat doing Sudoko and crossword puzzles and played hangman and Trivial Pursuit on the computer.

I look back at the past three weeks and I can only be thankful that my husband is such a wonderful man. He is a loving father to our children and has been actively involved in their lives since the day they were born. They have benefited in so many positive ways. Having love in our home has helped them with self-respect and self-control. They seem to know exactly what we expect of them and adhere to it without the need for us to force it upon them. The past few weeks have strengthened those bonds.

Money can’t buy love. It can’t buy happiness either. And having less money has only brought us closer together. In our hectic lives we often find ourselves so busy and preoccupied that we “drift” away from each other. We don’t always realize that it’s happening until it’s too late and there’s a hazardous breach. Love being the biggest gift of all is so often taken for granted or treated as less important. But we have learnt that communication and quality time are as important as the love we thrive on. It’s not so much what we have materially: I feel mentally, physically and spiritually blessed.

And through it all, my husband found a new job, so the financial setback was short-lived.

Here’s looking to 2008.

http://www.blinc123.za.net

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