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This Is How Good Life Can Be

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Tonight was perfect.

My wife and I have this tradition of having dinner together with another family, our long time friends.  They came over, and we were all hanging out in our courtyard of our condo.  The kids were running outside, playing.  My wife cooked a delicious meal of Tex-Mex — tacos made of whole foods.  Free-range chicken, raw milk cheese, organic veggies and beans and rice.  We upped the ante on Chipotle’s. No money can buy better food, if you ask me.

St. Paul, Minnesota had a perfect summer day.  The sky was deep blue and not a cloud in sight.  It was hot but dry and breezy. Sounds from the Little League echoed in the neighborhood — the clang of the metal bat, people cheering.

Watching my kids play, my friends and my wife talking and laughing, enjoying an abundant meal — I was so overcome with joy.  I felt so grateful. This moment felt like something out of a dream.

10 years ago my wife was in the fit of depression.  She had to stop working because she couldn’t function.  She sobbed and wept daily and said she wanted to die.  We were seeing psychiatrists but we didn’t see any signs of improvements.  My parents had to send us money because we couldn’t make ends meet with just my income.  Many days I had to decide if it was safe to leave her home alone and go to work. I felt overwhelmed, and hopeless.  I told her that she would get better but I was lying.  I didn’t believe it.

Those were dark days.  It took a long, long time for things to get better.  The change was so gradual and so subtle that we didn’t recognize them a lot of times.

As recently as 2 years ago we were still not in a good place.  My wife was pregnant with our son, the 2nd child.  We were living in a house we were trying to build ourselves.  We had no running hot water.  We had tens of thousands of dollars in debt.  My father was ill and fading fast, so I flew to Japan 3 times.  We were stressed and again, overwhelmed.  Later that fall we decided to abandon the house we spent 5 years building.  My wife developed a high blood pressure and spent 5 weeks in bed before giving birth.  My son came, whole and healthy — it was quite a relief.

I know I’m only giving you glimpses of where I’ve been.  Those are stories I plan to tell.  I just wanted to show the contrast, snapshots of where we’ve been to illustrate why an ordinary evening feels so extraordinary to me.  We’ve traveled far.  I had no idea how we were going to get here from there.  I was just hoping, dreaming, praying for life to get better.

I know many of you struggle.  With loneliness, poverty, emptiness, hopelessness.  I just want you to know — I believe what happened to my life can happen to you, too.  I know it’s hard to believe.  You may say it’s never happened to me — I don’t want to get my hopes up, I don’t want to be disappointed.  Yes, I hear you.  I felt that way back then, too.

To be honest, I don’t have a magic wand.  I can’t wave it and make everything better in an instant.  I have to admit, I believe it’s by Grace of God that we were able to survive and come this far.  But to my credit, I did learn.  I learned a lot.  But no knowledge makes a difference, unless it’s passed on.

So here I am.  Tonight was just one of the many, many dreams that have come true.  I’ll tell you the part I played in my journey.

I hope that it gives you a smidgen of hope.

That it can happen to you, too.

Welcome, new visitor! Thanks for visiting my site. My name is Ari Koinuma, and this is my blog about becoming who you are meant to be.

Be sure to check out the home page, which will give you an overview of this site and points out some of the major themes. If you enjoy what you see, please drop me a comment, or subscribe, so we can keep in touch. I look forward to getting to know you!

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Posted: Friday, August 1st, 2008 | Categories: Ari's Personal Stories, Happiness, Realizing Your Potential | Subscribe to comments: RSS 2.0 | You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

3 Responses to “This Is How Good Life Can Be”

  1. It’s wonderful that you have come through to the other side and still found yourself and your family whole. Just found your blog. Looking forward to hearing more about your journey.

    MiMi’s last blog post..Mamma Mia! The Movie

    [Reply]

    Ari Koinuma reply on August 5th, 2008 8:30 am:

    Hi MiMi,

    Thanks, and welcome to OBV! Yes, it’s a wonder to me as well. I did some things right, I suppose, but I also feel that there were some things that were simply beyond me, in that some of the blessings were simply gifts, nothing I did to earn or deserve them.

    In any case, I do plan to share stories about depression and healing, hitting the bottom and coming back. Thanks in advance for being with me as I revisit my history.

    ari

    [Reply]

  2. [...] Koinuma presents This Is How Good Life Can Be posted at Ari Koinuma, saying, “Here’s a little post capturing a great evening I [...]

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