Of course as always BJ music was with me too, but to be honest for most of the time I was listening only to Aftermath of the Lowdown, almost every single day. For few months that was actually the only album I listened to. Especially 4 songs on constant repeat – Seven Years Gone, I’ll Always Walk Beside You, You Can Only Get So High and Forgiveness Street. Somehow lyrics of those songs has become personal more than ever. Especially SYG which has been my absolute best of the album from the first time I heard it. This year I realized I met my wife 7 years ago. My 7 years are gone too. And since then I was on a constant rise. Everything was perfect, I had success on each level, privately and business wise. So many of my dreams came true, including all BJ related ones and you could read about those in my previous reviews here. So exactly opposite to what happened in Richie’s life filled mostly with troubles and pain. After those 7 years Richie seems to have found peace within, while on the other side I met the greatest question mark of my life – what will future bring to us and will it be now 7 years of pain instead or not. To me SYG has become the only song that can match the greatness of my BJ TOP 3 – Faith, Dry County and These Days, on each level, musically and lyrically, and now I will list them all on one breath. Right now I can’t imagine my life without this song to be honest. „…Can’t find the road to healing when you’re blinded by your pride…” or “…while you’re chasing what’s been stolen change is making other plans” are just examples of how meaningful the lyrics are, and how much I can relate to them now, more than ever before.

I’ve never hidden that Richie’s latest solo album for me is a masterpiece. And I love it more and more with each listen. Unfortunately I can’t say any good about band’s latest album and I think the last time I listened to it was in April or May. What About Now is a huge step back after The Circle, which I love and has become my third fav band album, so it’s not that everything post ‘00 is bad to me. It’s just that WAN didn’t grab it at all. But Richie’s album was my greatest friend in those months. Richie’s absence on tour was a big letdown for me but if he decided to quit for some reason, I take it there was a really good reason for him. But the music itself has always been the most important thing in the world and that has never disappointed me.

As I think of it now, there is no coincidence BJ is my fav band since I was 12. Over those 20 years, with each next album (including their solo records too of course), I received a puzzle that right now formed a whole picture of life’s greatest priorities – Love, Faith, Hope. That’s what BJ is all about. They’ve been preparing me for this moment of my life and have given me the tools to not only survive, but thrive. Each song was a puzzle that has given me the strength to move on. I had them with me all the time, it just took some time to put them all together.

I know that as fans, after this tour, we can have some fear about this band’s future. Will we see them with full squad again? Will Richie be back? I sure want to think so. I sincerely hope that if there were any arguments between them, they will find the solution that will satisfy their individual needs and also will let them continue as a unity. I am sure that we’ve heard only a small part of truth and I hope it will stay like that, and only they will know what really happened. What really matters is whether they are able to stand back again after a huge fall. They had the full right to fall, they are only humans just like any of us. So I see no other way. They are here for a greater cause and they have a huge gift for that. They are here to give us hope with their music. So I still believe we will see them all together somewhere out on the road again in few years from now, hopefully with one more show in Poland too.

So what is Alice like actually? I can tell you that she is the most amazing baby on earth. She is our little angel. She has a very positive nature and loves to smile a lot. She is also extremely calm and quiet baby . She barely cries and lets us sleep all night in silence. At first we thought she was too weak for that because of her heart troubles, but now her heart is fixed and still it’s like there is no baby at home. She is the most fearless fighter I’ve ever seen. All the pain she had to go through at the various visits at the hospital and the main surgery is not ordinary. And she has the most magnetic look and you just can’t stop looking in her eyes. And above all she is a part of us. Just like Natalie is.

Our Alice will stay in her Wonderland forever. There is no going back, there will be no magic rabbit here. We just have to learn how to live in her Wonderland and she has to learn how to live in our “normal” world. Only thing we should do is to help as much as we can to get our worlds as close as possible to each other, but also to accept differences between them. We’ve learned from other parents that people with DS are very lovable, very emotional, honest, so what’s wrong about that. Probably we have a lot more to learn from her than she will from us.

It’s not a fairy tale though, the challenge has only just begun actually. We are at the starting point of a very bumpy road. Right now Alice is very young and it’s much easier to deal with everything, but as she will get older it will be much harder. I am sure there will be tough moments again, there will be tears and pain again at some point. But to tell you the truth I don’t think about it now. I just focus on this day. And I’d rather focus on happy moments and positive attitude and it will all be alright.

So, you may now ask yourself, why on earth have I written all this down to you? There are two reasons. First of all it might be helpful to someone out there looking for comfort in a similar situation. I can tell you that we’ve met a lot of people dealing with the same problems, or read many blogs or websites run by such people, and at the start of the road those were most helpful to us. We couldn’t understand when they said they are happy, but today we feel the same. It is possible to go beyond impossible and see more than meets the eye in the first look. It doesn’t matter how low you fall, it’s important whether you will find the strength to rise again And if there is only one person in this world that will read it and this post will somehow help them to regain their hope for better tomorrow in the middle of the storm, than I’d be the happiest man on earth. This is me giving back to the society what I received from it recently too. Simple as that.

And second of all, this is my final personal encounter with this year’s experiences. I wanted to close it with a hopeful note and I managed to do it on the very last day of this year. This year I learned a lot about myself, about my wife, about my family and friends. We are absolutely blessed to have them and each other. I wish everyone such support in their life. They all prayed for us and with us. Everyone can believe or not in whatever they want, and I respect that, but I strongly believe that without God and faith I would have not been here today. This is my ultimate source of power and as long as He’s with me, anything is possible.

And last but not least, recently one more of my dreams came true. From the first listen of Aftermath, I always wanted to record our own version of I’ll Always Walk Beside You. Maybe you remember our cover version of Every Road for Richie’s contest - - and it had a short snippet of this song at the end. And finally, after Alice’s surgery, when all the storms of this year disappeared, we were ready to do this. Moreover, with the help of our friends from the band, we were able to record it in really good quality. Of course I used my new guitar to record it too. The lyrics of this song are word by word about my family and our relationship and what we would like to say to each other. It’s like Richie has written it especially for us. Of course I know it was for Ava, but maybe that’s why it’s so powerful for us too, because it comes straight from the heart from the very beginning. To me this is the best ballad since Always, by band or on their solo projects. I really do. I was hoping to hear this song and SYG the most in Berlin last year, but I did not. Hopefully one day I will. And I still believe that one day I will meet Richie personally and will have a chance to thank him for his music. But in the meantime I would like to share with you our version of it along with photo presentation of my family. I already told you everything so the only thing that’s left is to show you what we are really like. It is also a kind of testimony and commitment in front of everyone, that I am proud of my girls, that I am not ashamed of Alice’s difference, that we are still a very happy family and that no matter what life will bring us we will always walk beside each other. It’s like a finishing chapter of this year’s experiences before moving on to the next chapters, whatever those will be. I hope you enjoy it (by the way I recommend listening to it with headphones on):

I’ll Always Walk Beside You – our cover version – http://youtu.be/FZV205PIiyI

I will finish this whole story with the quote from SYG though:

“…Like a moth dances with the light
Sometimes the shadow burns too bright
Shattered silence in the night
YOU WAKE UP
MOVE ON…”

And I think I finally did that. Today I finally did.

Thanks for taking your time to read this monster post and Have a Great New Year 2014!

Keep The Faith

Kuba