Love Your Life

Love Your Life

Any Mama who has gone through bedtime (especially with a toddler) knows that it is a mental battle.  Often times, after bedtime is a Mama’s only chance to get things checked off her never ending to-do list.

You know the scene and maybe have been there before yourself, rushing through bedtime, crossing your fingers as you turn out the light in hopes that you can make it out of the room before the toddler requests start.

You know the ones I am referring to, right?  Lay with me, hold my hand, I need a drink, or the absurd I need to eat dinner! Out of your mouth comes “Goodnight, I Love You.” But, on the inside you are saying, “Please stay in bed,” “Please just go to sleep” or maybe a little more desperate without the “Please.”

I have SO been there, and recently tried the “tough love” approach, denying my son’s request to lay with him to go on about my business and my never ending to-do list. This approach ultimately resulted in me spending a large amount of the time returning my baby back to his room after he got out of bed.

I soon found myself feeling ANGRY. Angry at this little boy who just wanted to some loving attention from his Mama. Angry with myself that no matter how hard I tried that to-do list would continue to grow. And, angry that I felt angry.

One particular night during bedtime, my toddler and I switched roles. He became the parent, teaching me a lesson. It took him requesting that I rock him in the chair for me to snap out of the angry cycle. While we sat rocking together, I realized that these moments won’t last forever. Something needed to change. At that moment, it dawned on me. Instead of expecting my 2 1/2 year old to be the one to change his ways, maybe I should be the one to change my ways.

After that night, I shifted my mindset. I have given in to the requests to lay down and hold my little boy’s hand as he drifts off to sleep. As I lay there, instead of thinking about all the things I “should’ be doing, I find myself grateful that I get to be his Mama.

 

Especially in the world that our children are growing up in these days, knowing that by simply holding his hand or providing a comforting kiss solves my child’s most difficult issues – that is amazing.  My only hope is that as he grows older and those difficult issues shift from falling asleep by himself to something more challenging, that my holding his hand will still provide him that same comfort.

Our shift in toddler bedtime routine has also resulted in me having to let go of my expectations of what it means to be a mother with a young child. The housework may go undone longer than expected. And I may go to sleep earlier while laying with him, but I do so knowing that I will be able to get up earlier to tackle my to-do list. Simply changing how we view a situation can make all the difference.

Tonight, when you get that request, I encourage you to lay down with your baby and hold their hand!

 

 

 

 

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Love Your Life

It was tough. It was painful. It was hard to understand. I spent time grieving. At the end of the day, I decided God was telling me that I cannot control everything at a point in my life when I was attempting to do just that. Seeing pregnancy announcements or families with newborns, I immediately reach for my belly. I still think about how, right now, I should be just a month away from having a baby.

While everyone’s loss, heartache, and story is different, the baby we never met turned into our blessing. I have thought a long time on how to approach this post, and if I should even share it at all. But, as we approach the due date of our second child, I decided it was time.

This is my story.  Visit Her View From Home to view the rest of my story.

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Love Your Life

Life creates learning opportunities all the time. We may not realize it in the moment, however if we take time to reflect back those lessons present themselves to us.

I recently got to spend time helping my best friend move.  Their housing is related to their employment, so a recent job promotion meant moving to a different house.  During my 6 hour drive home, I had plenty of time to reflect back on the weekend and what I could take away from it. Three main lessons (that aren’t just about how to make a move go smoothly) presented themselves – lessons that can apply to anything in life.  Here they are:

Priorities Change

Over time priorities change and this became apparent as we were digging through the “items” that had accumulated throughout the house.  Things that were once high priorities were now at the bottom of drawers or the back of closets, and other things had replaced them. The new priorities are the items sitting out more readily available.

There is absolutely nothing wrong with this happening.  Over time we change, we grow, and situations become different than before. It causes us to reevaluate how we spend our time and what our priorities are in the here and now.

“If this was put here when we moved in 2 years ago and I haven’t used it since, is it worth still keeping.” Well, I guess that all depends on who you are asking and whether it’s a priority any more.  I am a firm believer in “if you haven’t used in recently and wouldn’t miss it, then it needs to go”.  Take the time to reevaluate your life. What are your priorities now? What are you trying to hold on to that no longer fits?

Planning is Necessary

Moving all of your belongs (especially if you have a family) is a large task.  Packing everything up, coordinating help to move, cleaning the house, arranging rides between houses, feeding the help and yourself – there is a lot to think about and there are many lessons that could be learned here.

The biggest lesson that I learned was we have to take the time to plan. If we don’t take the time to plan and remove those things that are no longer important to us, we continue to throw the “items” in boxes and move them with us.  This could be mentally or physically. In this case, it was mostly physical items that, because of the time crunch, we threw in and took along to the new house.

This could easily apply mentally as well. How many times do we hold on to unimportant thoughts, or the “how it used to be” ideas in our heads making us cluttered and feeling like we don’t have enough time?

Mindset Matters

Being (mostly) an outsider in this situation, I was able to look at things more objectively.  Change is hard, no doubt about that. In every situation there are multiple ways to look at things.  This move was part of a tough decision for my friend and her family. There were pros and cons.  There was a lot of discussion and prayers that went into making their decision.  While asking various people related to the situation for their thoughts on the move, there were mixed emotions. This all brings me to the next lesson I took away, which happens to be something I struggle with at times, so I totally understand where they were coming from –  your mindset matters!

This is definitely easier said than done, but we have to learn how to speak to ourselves in a positive way!  When something has potential to line up with our current priorities, and especially when it requires change, we have to pump ourselves up about it.  Once a decision is made, the tone that you use in your head absolutely will affect how the new situation plays out for you – positive or negative.  Start out with a positive thought and the chance of ending the day on a positive note is much greater, same with the opposite.

This trip was energizing for me. It was a chance to step out of my own normal routine to help out a friend, have some good laughs, and learn some valuable life lessons.   I came home refreshed with new perspectives. Life can be tough, change can be hard – take the time to learn from everyday situations and never stop growing as a person.  What can you do to make each day be a little better than the last?

 

 

Love Your Life

 

Can we talk about marriage for a minute?  Anyone who tells you marriage is easy ALL the -time is a liar!

Please Note: I am not a marriage counselor or expert, these are just my opinions after 6 years of experience.

Love is crazy but can make life so much more interesting and exciting.  While you are learning about the ins and outs of your partner you are learning about yourself in the process. Similar to most things in life, it can be compared to a roller-coaster.  There are days in marriage that you feel on top of the world. Everything happens exactly as you imagine – you glance over easily seeing the sparkle in their eye and all things that originally attracted you to them.

Then there are other days – days that you wonder if you have anything in common, if you can do anything except push each others buttons, and if it is possible for two individuals to actually live in the same household. These days are the flat stretches after having gone down a thrilling drop and now all you see is a HUGE climb in front of you. With each clank of the track, you feel like you will lose hold and fall backwards.

A major career change happened for me recently and I found myself pulling the arm of my husband to go on that thrilling ride with the short line, the one that everyone else feared.  Not stopping to allow any fear to sink in, the adrenaline from the previous ride carried me.  I got buckled in the seat and was ready for an adventure all while he was scared and didn’t know how to show it. It wasn’t until part way through that I stopped my screaming to look over and see that he was white knuckleIMG_1878[1]d.

My reaction at first was anger and disappointment. Did he not trust that this ride would be a great one? He had gotten in line with me and said he was on board – what changed? Maybe there were a few surprises early that we weren’t expecting, but doesn’t he see those amazing loops coming up that will be awesome?  In all of my excitement, I had forgotten to reach over to grab his hand. I forgot to make sure he was ready and as excited about the ride as I was.

The important part to remember, especially on the tough days, is that it is not about just you. It is about the “us”.  As hard as it may seem at times, put your partner first and show them genuine kindness.  Fear and the unknown are what have caused the tough times in my marriage. But, I am learning to sit by and hold the hand of the passenger next to me in the car as we climb up each scary hill.  Once we make it to the summit safely and are at the point of a thrilling drop, then we can throw our hands up and enjoy the adventure!

An alternative ride to choose in the theme park of life would be the lazy river – flat and relaxing, but lacking excitement, growth and adventure. While it may sound exciting to have the same routine and do the same things day in and day out, after a period of time that routine becomes boring.

Life happens during the ups and downs. Being able to reach over and grab the hand of your partner is much more exciting than riding the lazy river or going it alone on the roller-coaster!  Fasten your seat belts and get ready for a ride!

Originally posted on Her View From Home

 

 

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Love Your Life

VISION WITHOUT ACTION IS MERELY A DREAM.  ACTION WITHOUT VISION JUST PASSES THE TIME.  VISION WITH ACTION CAN CHANGE THE WORLD.   — JOEL A. BARKER

Do you have a vision of what it is you want in life, for your family, for your health, etc? THIS IS YOUR CALL TO ACTION. Don’t put it off any longer – stop to think about it right now.  Check out these three simple steps to pursuing your life vision.

Step 1) Bring your Vision into Focus

What is it that you want? Who does that impact? Is it something that you are willing to fight for? If you couldn’t fail, what is it that you would be doing?  Picture all aspects, how would you spend your time, where would you live, would you travel, etc.

Step 2) Take Action 

Once you have a vision of what you want, the next step is to put it into action. Think about your priorities. Do your current priorities align with your vision?  Does something need to go to free up time?

If your vision includes a health aspect have you previously pushed fitness and nutrition to the bottom of the list? Does that need to change?

If your vision includes a financial aspect, are there expenses that can be eliminated in the short term to free up cash to put towards your long term vision?

Is your vision worth getting up an hour earlier, is it worth turning off the TV or logging off Facebook to work on, is it worth researching to learn more about?

Step 3) Surround yourself with Support

Next step surround yourself with people who will support your vision!  You must be willing to share your vision with others.  Be proud of your vision and find those that have a similar vision to hang out with. Lean on them for support. Find out what it is they do.

And most likely during the process you will become uncomfortable and fear will kick in.  So remember what Theodore Roosevelt said about that “In any moment of decision, the best thing you can do is the right thing.  The next best thing is the wrong thing.  The worst thing you can do is nothing”.

If you are willing to share, I would love to hear your visions for life!

Love Your Life

“A ship is always safe at shore but that is not what it’s built for.”  – Albert Einstein

“Life begins at the end of your comfort zone.”

“Great things never come from comfort zones.”

“A comfort zone is a beautiful place, but nothing grows there.”

“The quickest way to acquire self-confidence is to do exactly what you are afraid to do.” – Anon.

The quotes regarding this topic are endless.  Do you know why that is? In my opinion because it is the TRUTH.  In order to learn, grow, and develop we are required to push ourselves outside of that safe place that we are comfortable in.

Think about it.  I mean really stop and think about it. When is the last time you did something that scared you, gave you butterflies, caused you to doubt yourself, or was something you never imagined doing?  How did you feel in the moment AND how did you feel after you did it? You must have lived to tell about it (otherwise you wouldn’t be here reading this!). Reflecting back, I am reminded of a particular series of outside-my-comfort-zone moments that lead me to where we chose to build a house that is our forever home.

When I went to college I chose to live in the dorms and my roommates were chosen for me.  Talk about scary – here I was a 17, almost 18, year old moving into a room for a whole year, having no clue who the other two girls I would be living with were.  We are not talking about an apartment style dorm room where we each had a bedroom and shared a living room and kitchen.  We are talking a 20×20 room (since it was a corner room and there would be 3 of us), where you sleep, get ready, and study.   We got to know each other and while we had some differences, we all survived the year together.

The next year, I moved into an apartment with my best friend and a friend of hers, who quickly became my friend.  That was a safe and comfortable move, which eventually lead me to the next move.  My best friend had gotten a job at the University of Nebraska Research Feedlot and met Tom. Tom was renting a farm house near the feedlot.

My bestie had been driving 60 miles each day back and forth to work and with her new class schedule would have had to increase her daily mileage to 120 miles if she wanted to keep working at the feedlot. She had also been keeping her horses at a friend’s acreage outside of Lincoln. It was nice, but it wasn’t the most convenient.  So, we started to discuss the possibility of moving into the farm house with Tom. That would mean this City Girl would have about a 30 mile drive to campus for class every day, be moving in with more people she didn’t know, all the while going against her parent’s wishes (who were extremely concerned about her having to drive because it was outside of THEIR comfort zone).  After much debating, we went for it and over the summer between my sophomore and junior year, I was officially living the country life!

It was scary. It was unknown. It caused me to go against my parents. And… it was one of the greatest decisions I’ve ever made.  I fell in love with this slower, quieter, peaceful life. That same year, I met my husband, who shared my passion for country living. We made it our goal to find an acreage to build a house on and that is exactly what we did!

Moral of the story, push yourself to do that thing that scares you, gives you butterflies, causes you to doubt yourself – you never know where it will take you!

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