In This Life, I Got, Without Exception, Everything I Ever Wanted

And I want that written on my tombstone.

I am the luckiest woman on the planet.

I don’t say that to brag. Nor to be funny. Nor to attract attention.

I say it as fact, because I believe it to be true.

I live in exactly the house I would choose if I could choose any house I wanted. It is located in exactly the neighbourhood I would choose if I could choose any neighbourhood I wanted.

If anything happened to my vehicle, I would do my level best to replace it with the exact same make, model, and year.

I wanted five kids. A wonderful marriage. An unbelievably flexible schedule. A useful and malleable career.

Check, check, check, and check.

(I won’t get into the plethora of things that bring me to my knees in tears regularly because I’ve learned the Power of Overwhelming Gratitude. Things like clean water. A safe place to live. The fact that I, a woman, have the legal right to own my own home. That’s a whole nother knot of thoughts to sift through.)

I’m talking about things I want to have and do that just always work out for me.

Always.

You can call it whatever you want. The Secret. Wishing. Zen. Positive Thinking. Prayer. Visualization. Focus. Great Expectations.

It’s all the same thing. Whatever words you use, the power is there.

Here’s the story I use to explain it.

When we moved into our current house after flipping the two previous, my family made me promise NO renovations for one year.

So, I spent an entire year analysing our house and how we used it. What worked and what didn’t. What I liked, and what I didn’t.

I made a plan. I redesigned — on paper of course — the entire building, fine tuning every square inch of it.

Eight months into my year of creative incarceration, the shower head broke. I happily trucked off to the plumbing warehouse to get a replacement.