Are you lonely or have you just found yourself alone? You can feel lonely right next to someone. And you can be alone and feel totally content.
Holidays are hard. So before you run out and jump into a relationship because you see all the pictures on social media, go to the parties without a plus one, or start feeling sorry for yourself…. Learn to be happy in your own company.
If you don’t feel content in your own home with your own company…being with someone will not fix that. We are not designed to be alone, but we’re not designed to use people so we don’t feel lonely either.
Love when your heart’s ready, not when it’s hungry.
There’s something cathartic about driving away. Especially when you look the rear view mirror and literally see your problems get smaller.
But do they? Do problems go away just because you leave them where you felt them? They really don’t.
Sometimes we just need a break. A way to clear our heads and think and new scenery to get new perspective. Sometimes your mind needs a rest. And sometimes we need an open space to pray, free of distractions.
So if you’ve got something weighing on you, or too many little something’s crowding your mind…Take yourself a little drive to sort yourself out. Just make sure you saddle back up and round trip it back home.
If you live long enough you may look back at a point in your life and want a do over. Think about that. So 2 years ago you didn’t handle something the way you think today you would have handled it and that makes you wish you could go back and change it.
But two years ago you didn’t know what you know now so it’s just not the same. You can’t live life wanting to go back with today’s information and make yesterday’s decisions.
There’s a reason they say “hindsight is 20/20”, because it’s so clear what you would have done now that everything has unfolded. It’s easy to coach Saturday’s team when you’re watching Sunday film, and it’s easy to fall into an emotion of regret when you forget it’s the lesson you were learning for tomorrow.
Learn from yesterday and be thankful for the wisdom. If you don’t like how it feels or how it turned out, grow by not doing it again. But don’t regret the lesson because of the education it took to learn it.
It’s not right or wrong, it’s “do you understand?”…
The best relationships are born and thrive in this question. It’s not always about defending your decision. It’s not always about proving to the other person why you were justified and where they were wrong.
If maintaining the relationship is important to you, it’s about understanding where the other person is coming from, which doesn’t equal agreeing with them. It’s “do you understand them”.
“They are not trying to win arguments of right or wrong. They are trying to understand each other.”
Sometimes we find ourselves in less that desirable situations because we’ve gotten ourselves into less than desirable situations.
Sometimes when the stars don’t align, the train takes too long to pass, or someone doesn’t react like we thought they would, it shifts us out of plan and away from how we wanted life to be.
But what about when we see it coming? What about all those clues we ignore because we don’t like change or because ignoring them today and dealing with them tomorrow is what we think is easier to do?
Our plans don’t always go “as planned”. There are just too many variables of life to think we can predict the future. The comfort of a routine is not good if the route of the routine is misguided. We don’t gain 30 pounds in a week, a marriage doesn’t end in a month, friendships don’t dissolve over a weekend, and finances don’t fall apart in one transaction.
Little things always add up to big things. That’s math. So unless we’re subtracting with counter actions, evolving the plan, and making little adjustments to stay on a forward moving path…We will more than likely find ourselves somewhere we don’t want to be.
This may be an unpopular opinion and also maybe hypocritical to my “let it go” and “heal the hurt” messages…so hear me out. How far do you take it when someone hurts your child?
All the way to the gates of hell to deliver them and back is how far I’ll take it. I’m not a parent who has had to deal with learning my child was abused sexually or physically, that may have very well landed me in jail. But I am a parent who has learned just how nasty adults can be towards children, my children and also other children I love.
If there’s anything on this earth that fires me up, it’s when adults use children to hurt other adults. If you’ve been divorced, this may sound familiar, or if you have children in your life you care for it may also ring true.
Children are innocent bystanders to the schmuck of life, so when they’re little hearts are hurt by cold, calculating, manipulative adults, I’m not saying it’s unforgivable, but I am saying you can forgive, remember, and adjust accordingly.
Say something. Do something. Protect a child from unnecessary hurt. This adjustment may mean distance and it may mean no contact. Whatever it looks like in your situation, take it all the way. When those children are adults, they will see you protected them and that’s a quiet confidence they can blossom in.
As adults if they choose to encourage the healing of a relationship that was hurtful to them before, stand by them then, too. Whatever the outcome may be, they’ll always remember who stood in front of them when they couldn’t protect themselves.
“I must accept life unconditionally. Most people ask for happiness on condition. Happiness can only be felt if you don’t set any condition.”
Margaret Lee Runbeck
I’ll be happy when the dog doesn’t pee in the house any more. I’ll be happy when the baby is out of diapers. I’ll be happy when the teacher doesn’t send so much homework home. I’ll be happy when I have a bigger house. I’ll be happy when I can get Chick-fil-A on Sundays. I’ll be happy when it stops raining.
Why not just be happy now? Why not choose joy despite not having your favorite thing or when enduring something that’s just a part of life?
There will always be one thing you don’t like. Always one thing you can cling to to blame for your discontent. But there are always a million other reasons to smile.
Choose your focal point. If you’re always looking at life with a glass half full attitude, your mind will be healthier, your relationships will grow, and your time will be high quality.
Bloom where you’re planted, find that sunny spot, and be happy anyway.
Here’s my toxic trait. I keep things for way too long. If it’s not broken, I keep it until I can strategically find a loving home for it or because I “might need it one day”. And it’s such a poor use of my time, space, and energy.
Lately, I’ve been using the antique breadmaker I kept from 1998 and it’s REALLY made me happy, but was it actually worth hanging into it for all that time? Probably not.
It’s hard to get rid of a thing you’ve attached a memory to. It’s hard to toss out something you were so proud to have. And it’s hard to admit when things change, kids move out, or you don’t fit into that dress you felt amazing in.
To my fellow collectors, reach out to your friends to help you. They’re not attached to your stuff, they’ll listen to why you are, and then they’ll lovingly walk you through the break up process. Keep an empty Amazon box in your bedroom marked donate and slowly fill it up. Hang your clothes in backwards once you wear them so you see what you just absolutely don’t wear.
All tips and tricks I’m writing down to be my own hype person and use this season of home for the holidays as a season of decluttering. Decompressing my space. And distressing my life.
My grandmother told me years ago that women are the ones who keep the big families together. She went on to say “Don’t you think my sisters and I got into it? Sure we did. Do you think our husbands always got along? Lord no.” when explaining how it wasn’t always easy.
She was one of four sisters who made decisions daily to raise their families close. They each had multiple children and all those kids know each other. Moving on those kids had kids, their kids had kids, and there’s another generation of kids in the mix today.
That’s five generations of a family who all know each other because of the decision those four women made to keep their families close. And it’s their legacy now that they’re all passed on.
“I’m so blessed because I’ve got family and not everyone has that” was what she said to me the last time I saw her and I’ll never forget it. It’s been a year since she passed and I reached out to one of my cousins (I don’t even know how many times removed or any of the tree talk to say) to ask what the trick was to keeping the family close after the matriarch dies.
“Forgiveness” was the word she gave me. So if you’ve been blessed with a big family, accept it. Love each other and defend and protect each other. Get into it and make up like big families do. And forgive. Forgive for you and so you may honor the legacy the women before you worked so hard to create.
Women are the organizers, the cooks, and the gatekeepers of the schedules. Women are the nurturers and if we get behind the family, there’s a better chance of its legacy surviving, and a better chance of you creating one for yourself.
I was barely nineteen when Alex was born, almost twenty two when Kaitlyn was born, and my mom was twenty when I was born. That makes for one young mama and a very young nana.
I’ll be turning forty four the month my first grandbaby is born, little Lola Jo, and it still blows my mind my mother will be a great grandmother and I’ll be a granny at such young ages. And I love it.
To all you young mamas and daddies, it’s going to be tough, most likely you won’t be set in your career, and you may not even have a plan….
But you have something you can’t buy: energy and time! I would spend my twenties raising babies all over again knowing how important having more time is.
Don’t think you’re missing out when you see your friends go out or settle in their careers before you, don’t think you’re trapped when you see them enjoy their babysitter free nights. Don’t think for one second you’re not being fulfilled.
Your life is going to be filled with joy in a different way. The pitter patter of footsteps and the repeated “mommy mommy mommy mommy” but the sweetest moments that you’ll have the youth to energize and the time later to enjoy the fruits of it.
I feel lucky every day my kids were able to enjoy my own grandparents, make real memories with them and know them like I did. It’s a blessing to me.
Because in the end that time and the energy to enjoy it is something you can’t buy.
Deeper Than a Puddle 