Today is a new day, a new month, a new year. Today is January 1, 2018. Today is a day of new beginnings. Many people make New Year’s resolutions for how they are going to be better at something this coming year. I have made many resolutions myself over the years, but I almost always end up forgetting about them or just plain not caring about them after a while. I won’t say that blogging is a New Year’s resolution, but blogging is something that I have wanted to do for a long time now. The New Year part comes in because I have decided that I have been putting things off long enough. I have been waiting for everything to be “just right” so that I have the best chance at succeeding. I think I have finally realized that nothing will ever be “just right” or even close to it. I have realized that nothing will ever happen if I keep waiting around. I need to get off my butt and go after my goals. The worst that can happen is a lack of success, right? That’s not a big deal. I don’t have a fear of a lack of success anymore. I have a fear of failing. I have a fear of not ever getting the chance to work toward my goals. And, as of today, neither of those two fears are an option anymore. I AM working toward my goals now. And failure is not a thing if I continue to work toward something. There is a big difference between failure and a lack of success. I will only fail if I stop trying.
I have had many goals throughout my life. Some are big. Some are small. I still have some of those goals, but some also have changed. A person does not stay the same throughout life. We grow and change. Why shouldn’t our goals and dreams change and grow too?
I will give a little background information on my family and me. My husband and I celebrated our 10th wedding anniversary this past summer. We have five beautiful babies between the ages of 13 months and 8 years old. Our life is a crazy busy mess. One year ago today, my husband took a position as the head pastor at a church about 45 minutes away from where we lived. We had been in that house for a little over four years. When we moved in, we never planned to stay there permanently. At least I never planned to stay there permanently. My husband wouldn’t have minded it, but he knew it wouldn’t fit our family for very long and expected to have to move eventually. When we moved into that house, our third daughter was about six months old. In the next four years, we added two more little humans to the mix. Our family of seven lived in that 1,152 square foot house until we sold it this past summer. Our family is currently “homeless.” We ended up staying with my husband’s parents for a few months. We are now staying in a cabin for the winter while the owners are down south to avoid the cold and snow here in Minnesota. We will be headed back to my husband’s parents’ home when the owners head north again. Why don’t you buy your own house you may ask? That gets complicated, and we’ll chock it up to “It’s going to be a while due to some underlying circumstances.”
So, why do I explain all of that? The reason is that right now is anything but the “ideal” time to start something new. But guess what? I don’t care. My life is anything but perfect. My life is real. This is the stuff that actually happens in life, and I hope that by putting these words out there, I can help someone else get through some hard times in their life. Life is not perfect. Life is not easy. Life is not even manageable most of the time, but there is one thing that life is. Life is beautiful. I don’t always think it’s beautiful, but it is. I am trying to learn how to see the beauty even in the bad. It’s going to be, and has been, an ongoing journey and a ton of work, but I think it can be done. And I can’t fail unless I quit trying.
Imperfection At Its Finest 