If you’re following my House saga, I finally picked one to see. I was determined to fall in love with it because I don’t want to be spending my life looking at houses. It had a blue door. And it’s now pending sale, not to me.
So tomorrow I start the adulting part of buying a house and actually look at several. And I’m almost determined not to fall in love with any of them.
I was talking to a friend and I think I hit upon the root problem. If you know me, or spend time with me in real life, you know I talk things through. My brain is moving 99% of the time when I’m trying to figure something out, and it seems less socially awkward to let the thoughts be verbalized than to just think. So to that end, speaking these thoughts is one way I sort them out. My people know I’m not necessarily looking for advice or confirmation, and they go with it. (It’s much the same in this blog. I just kind of reason things out here.)
Everyone else is pretty quick with advice, and I politely nod, and sometimes discard the advice, even if I agree with it. Most of the times lately the advice has been telling me things I know but am having trouble convincing my wounded heart of, so it’s been good advice. (Oh this season. I hope to escape it with my mental faculties in tact.)
Anyway…we were talking about houses and adulting, and I said something along the lines of, “I guess I need to just accept that this really is my life and then I’ll be able to buy a house and do the things.” And that’s probably largely true. Because even if I don’t think that this was how my life was supposed to turn out, so far this is how it has turned out. These were not the plans I had for me. It’s not a bad life. It’s just the difference between my hopes and dreams and my reality.
Then I thought, I need to take it further. I not only need to accept that this is my life, 41 and single and parenting a very errant 9 year old Yorkshire terrier, I need to EMBRACE that life. I need to appreciate the beauty that it is. I need to embrace the gifts that God has given to me in this season. I need to change my perception of my reality.
I have been given many great things in this season, great friends, a great church, a good job, support of my family, all the things. (I have lost many things in this season as well, but they have served as a catalyst for change so I can already see the good). I may not have checked all the boxes on my perfect life check list, but I’ve still checked some pretty good ones. I’ve been given much.
This life is a good life. This life can be a great life if I live it as such. Will this always be my life? I don’t know. But whatever life I’m called to lead in whatever season, I should embrace. I should be grateful.
Disappointments and unmet expectations can ruin relationships, and my relationship with God is still a relationship. He and I are working through those disappointments. He’s not finished with me yet. He’s calling me to live, really live in this moment he’s placed me in.
I’m still learning to breathe in the good and breathe out what I cannot control, and it’s still a challenge sometimes. But, every challenge is just an opportunity to improve, so I will keep breathing. I will learn to let go of all the things.
I will strive to embrace this great, crazy, wild life and make it one that will please God in all the ways. I will mess up because I’m human but then I’ll dust off and try again because I’m resilient and a little (ok a lot) stubborn.
And tomorrow we start looking at houses. I’m going to embrace the journey. I don’t know how to buy a house and I don’t like making big decisions, but I’m going to get it done. Maybe not tomorrow, heck maybe not even this year, but it will happen. And it will be amazing. (I hope.).
I am praying that when it’s right I will know and that God will put the right people in my path so that I can successfully navigate this part of adulting. I will learn to be brave and do the next hard thing and the next one after that. I will likely not stop over analyzing the situations but I will strive to embrace them, even as I think them through. My heart is ready for this next season, no matter what may come.
This Season.... 