Living and Loving

It's like a movie! We fast forward to 4 years later and check in with life.

The title should be more like loving my living...but that just doesn't sound the best. Awkward is more like it.

     Living is tough work. This life is not the beautiful fairy tale that society constantly has us chase. I am pretty sure that if I followed my dreams, I would have my prince charming in a beautiful newly renovated 1900's Victorian style home, filled with Pinterest finds and crafts.

    However, I find myself married to an imperfect husband striving to love his imperfect wife just like Christ loves the church. We are living in a two bedroom apartment in the middle of Nebraska and loving the crafty ideas of Pinterest, but has a home that's no where near that coolness!

    That is the stuff made of reality. I can live with that. I can learn how to change, compromise, and figure out how to make it all work. Mostly everyone deals with that. I don't want to focus on that side of life. I want to focus on the messy side of things. The heart wrenching, painful blows that life has to offer that drags many down to their knees. There is so much in learning how to love life.

     I had time to think about death. It was almost like thinking about my last sigh of relief. After leaving the doctors for the last time I didn't have a clue of what was coming my way. The new medications, finding out the extent of what chemo did to my body, learning what will actually heal and what I need to learn how to live with. Four years later I can't stop reflecting on how death, for us Christians, truly is the gateway to our eternal bliss... our Happily Ever After ending.

   Our whole life is one big long movie, almost Lord of the Rings long. For Christians when we get to the end we finally take that one big inhale and slowly exhale as we walk into that blinding blissful ending. So how do you love this messy life until you get that point? How do you change and figure out a way to compromise? Well, I am not too sure but I think it has to do a lot with these three words: Grace, Mercy and Compassion.

    I don't know about you, but I felt so much better and different when I decided that nothing was in my control and had to learn to love the imperfections. My three year-olds in preschool make blobs of paint and tell me that they made a house... I help them point out in the blob where the doors and windows are. When I make a tower and they knock it down... I laugh and do it again and again and again. When I look in the mirror and see an added 25 pounds of weight on my body, I know that I am still a healthy person... just need to dress a little differently. When I struggle to run a 5K even after practicing after 3 months... I keep running every week!!!!

     For me, it's about living in the moment...dreaming big because the impossible just takes hard work... knowing that I am imperfect so I cannot demand perfection from anyone... being real and being honest, and allowing myself to change quickly when needed or because I feel like it. (Moving with the flow.) My plans may not fit into the bigger picture. (Although, I admit, I struggle with this one the most... when I want to do something really bad...it's hard for me to let go. :P )

   I would rather stand up for the ones I love instead of seeing them ridiculed. I would rather say a sincere sorry than lose a potential lifelong friend. I would rather let go and be flexible than follow the "normal/usual routine" because you never know what memories you would be missing out when skipping over a brand new adventure. I would rather let someone be who God meant them to be than try to berate them into my way of thinking.

    Being free, letting go, and being OK with the imperfections. Just living. Now if only I could do this all the time... haha! That would be grand. Unfortunately, this is a messy life. Heartbreaks and getting yanked to our knees happens A LOT. Never give up hope though... Your happily ever after ending will come!