I have always been a dreamer. A gal who hopes and prays and dreams for the ‘next thing.’ If I’m being perfectly honest, I am realizing that I may have wished my entire life away! Being only (“only?”) 35, I realize I have a whole lot more life ahead of me (we hope??) so that may sound dramatic. But what I mean by it, is something I’m sure a lot of you can relate to.
I have had a boyfriend since I was 5. Laugh out loud right? No but seriously, I was always the girl with a ‘boyfriend.’ In 5th grade through some of middle school I thought for sure I would marry Warren Taylor. Then high school came and some of freshman year of college, and I thought that I would marry Jeff. THEN I stumbled (walked perfectly fine really) into a coffee shop with a stack full of books, stressed about my full day of classes and tests ahead, and I met my husband. I was always thinking one step ahead. What would be next? Where would life take me?
When I lived in Michigan I prayed and wished for Kentucky. I wanted to be done with school half way through high school. Then I married young and half way through college, and I wished to be done with college. I prayed for a horse my ENTIRE life, and I got the horse. After I got the horse, I got ANOTHER horse. I have always wished and hoped and prayed for a horse farm. Basically through my mumbled, jumbled thoughts, what I am saying is that I have ALWAYS been a gal who has struggled with…
CONTENTMENT.
Here I am, almost 36, in the year 2023 which is soon coming to an end, and I have realized a brand new feeling for me. I FEEL CONTENT. I drive a very janky SUV, with dents, BB gun bullet holes, and missing side view mirrors. I love it! It’s my barn car, the trunk packed to the brim with a saddle, saddle pads, muddy boots, and whatever else horse related I toss in there for my trips to and from the barn. My barn boots? Falling apart. Literal chunks of leather coming off of the sides and instead of asking and pursuing new boots for Christmas? I said, ‘nah, these are fine, still usable, I’ll wear them until I literally just can’t.’ I look for “horse farms” (aka 5 acres of land or more) often, but am no longer obsessed. No longer angry or hurt or bitter at the fact that it still just hasn’t happened (yet.)
Our house used to really stress me out. Any bit of clutter or something out of place used to unsettle me and set my mood spiraling downward. Now I realize, people live here! My kids leave a sock here, clothes over there, basketball balls there, footballs LITERALLY under my bed, drawing pens and sketchpads strewn across the coffee table—and in my head I hear, “They won’t be in this house forever.” My reminders to them have gotten more gentle. My inner thoughts to myself, more gracious.
Shauna Niequist is one of my favorite authors. I want to share a blurb of what she said in wrote in her book Cold Tangerines, that I think you may love too:
… “For me, life is what was happening while I was busy waiting for my big moment. I was ready for it and believed that the rest of my life would fade into the background, and that my big moment would carry me through life like a lifeboat.
The Big Moment, unfortunately, is an urban myth. Some people have them, in a sense, when they win the Heisman or become the next American Idol. But even that football player or that singer is living a life made up of more than that one moment. Life is a collection of a million, billion moments, tiny little moments and choices, like a handful of luminous, glowing pearl. It takes so much time, and so much work, and those beads and moments are so small, and so much less fabulous and dramatic than the movies.
But this is what I’m finding, in glimpses and flashes: this is it. This is it, in the best possible way. That thing I’m waiting for, that adventure, that move-score-worthy experience unfolding gracefully. This is it. Normal, daily life ticking by on our streets and sidewalks, in our houses and apartments, in our beds and at our dinner tables, in our dreams and prayers and fights and secrets – this pedestrian life is the most precious thing any of use will ever experience.”
I LOVE where she writes, “daily life ticking by on our streets and sidewalks, in our houses and apartments, in our beds and at our dinner tables…” A PRECIOUS ‘pedestrian life’ indeed!!
It doesn’t mean I’ve stopped dreaming. God knows I dream of land (not the suburbs) outside my doors and windows. That I long to have Paddy IN that backyard. But I no longer hurt for it. While marriage for parts of this season has been tough and raw and difficult, it is still beautiful. I am loved. Our kids, growing and hormonal and pushing us to new limits, but still wonderful. My teaching job, challenging, sometimes draining, yet reminds me daily how much I love kids and how I am doing GOOD work. I’m pursuing a degree in school counseling and I realize it doesn’t mean I’m wishing for the ‘next’ thing. I just realize it’s time I pursue work outside the actual walls of a classroom.
I am the spirit and power and image of my Creator and I have been given TODAY. YOU have too. (And if you like to read and be inspired by your reading, I highly recommend getting Shauna’s book I mention above!!)
Here’s to enjoying and loving and experiencing the life I have been waiting for—all around me.
