Life has been throwing out some lessons at me and I thought I'd share some of them; some are deep and maybe even a little sad, some are funny and others are just...just lessons - broken up with a couple funny pictures that somewhat go along with. So there you have it. Read em and weep...or laugh...your choice.
10 Things I am Learning
1. Going at it alone – not easy; and if there is a lesson to be learned, it will probably be learned the hard way.
- Seriously people, being on your own is not easy. I grew weary of coming home with no one but the dog to talk to two years ago and yet the trend continues and so I trudge on. Another delightful thing about being on your own is that as a homeowner and as a human being in general there are many lessons to be learned and trial and error (emphasis on error) is usually the name of the game. Example: my recent (and still ongoing) plumbing debacle which has involved much wailing and gnashing of teeth – and is still not over yet. As someone on another blog pointed out, I am learning so many life lessons by being on my own and supposedly that is a wonderful thing…and yet, they always seems to come with drawbacks: Moving the fridge to discover possible leak? Back hurts for several days after because; well, I’m not physically equipped to drag around a fridge. Weed-eating one’s own yard? Yeah, I got Lyme disease people. Seriously. So yes – life skills have been developed – but can I just say, I’m tired of learning all these “valuable” life skills. Or at least, I’m tired of learning them on my own. Where can I sign up for the mutiny?
2. I depend too much on other people’s approval, admiration and praise.
- I think we all probably have this issue to a certain degree but I know full well that the degree to which I have it is less acute and more obtuse – and that isn’t really a good thing. Late last year an incident occurred wherein numerous people were recognized for their hard work but my contribution was left out; actually it was assigned to someone else entirely, which left me not only feeling hurt but also feeling like I was terribly inadequate, unimportant and not doing anything worthy of being praised. I am in desperate need of figuring out a way to shake things like this off and come to the realization that other people’s opinions are just that, opinions and they don’t really matter that much in the grand scheme of things. I’m getting better at this but it’s still a struggle; a struggle that is made more intense because I am one of those people that doesn’t want to rock the boat, so just ignoring people, being who I want to be and not worrying about who I might “offend” in the process, well that stresses me out. It’s a vicious cycle and I’ve got one leg off the hamster wheel…I guess I need to just make the jump, right?
3. I am not nearly as efficient as I’d like to think I am.
- On a lighter note, because 1 and 2 were kind of heavy, I know…I know. I get a serious high from making myself a nice little to-do list and then crossing everything off as I complete it. This has somehow led me to believe that I am highly efficient and just always about some business when in reality; more often than not, I am just a lazy bum! I realize there are people in this world that come to the realization of what needs to be done and they just tackle it but I am of the variety where I need to first be seized by a mood if I am going to accomplish certain tasks. The rug needs to be vacuumed? I mean…if I am not in the mood, it’s probably not happening – even if it is on the to-do list. This results in spastic cleaning bursts at 9:30 on a Wednesday night. So you see, having a to-do list does not make one efficient. That being said…
4. I am quickly becoming my Mother.
- Which is 100% not a bad thing; I love my Momma and think she is quite amazing, but it completely tickles me. I say things and the minute the words leave my lips, I realize I have just repeated something that I have heard my Mother say for these twenty-nine years, four months and some odd days of my life. My favorite thing is when I tell my Momma (of all people) that I just feel like I can’t sit down and chill out until I’ve finished all the little things I need to do around the house (see above; this obviously only happens in the midst of a cleaning frenzy) – something I used to laugh at her for saying. I see so much of my Momma in things I do, say and the way I act and while it cracks me up, it also makes me really happy because if I can turn out to be just a tenth of the person she is, I think I’ll be just fine and dandy.
5. Life tends to go smoother when you are organized.
- Ha-ha, this points back to the above. My Momma has preached organization and being prepared since I was small and while it took me a little while to catch on, I now stand by the ideals of organization hard and fast. Everything has a place and at the end of the day, all of those everythings need to be in their places…because if they aren’t, then there is sure to be struggle in the future. I took my dog’s collar off of him last night and just tossed it onto the chaise lounge which is NOT where it goes!! What was I thinking? I’m not sure but I can tell you I spent about five minutes hunting all over my living room for it this morning before I found it, my dog watching me all the while like I’d come unhinged; which honestly, I kind of had. So what if some of the people I work with tell me that I am anal – I don’t lose things on my desk like they do and that gives me much joy. And yes, while it may seem silly to you to spend time picking out my clothes for the week ahead or readying my lunches for the week ahead, I tell you that it seems delightful when I can sleep an extra ten minutes in the morning because I don’t have to run around like a chicken with my head cut off, searching for this black tank top or that bag of Craisins. Organization – it is of the good.
6. Genuinely loving people is REALLY hard.
- Oh me, this one is a big one. You see, people are all just one big ol mess; you can pretend that you aren’t and that’s just fine but let’s be honest with each other for a minute, we are all flawed and have crazy issues (hello, please see above for just one or two of the plenty of things I’m carrying around) and that makes it really hard to just truly love on people. It is much easier to pick reasons why people have disappointed you, made you angry or just been downright mean and it’s even easier to forget the times that they have been supportive, loving and encouraging. I am preaching to myself here for sure – you see, I have a low tolerance for people that…for lack of a better word, seem naïve to the ways of the world. It bothers me to no end when people act surprised or dumbfounded by simple things – you guys, I do not suffer fools lightly. It’s the truth and maybe it’s awful but it’s a cross I have to bear. That being said, I need to let it go a little bit. I need to just love people, because we all have something we are struggling with and we are all just fine the way the good Lord made us. So, I will try to love people more and you do the same and the world will be much nicer; right?
7. I really don’t understand grace; at all.
- Which ties in to the above about learning to love people; I think learning to love people and understanding grace go hand in hand. As a child you accept that you are loved and you don’t question it; the innocence of youth makes us all so trusting, we accept grace for what it is – love we don’t deserve. The older I get, the more I realize that in all honestly, I am a very unlovable person sometimes and I try to do things to work toward being loved when we aren’t meant to do that. No amount of good deeds, prayer and supplication, none of it is enough to earn the kind of love that we all desire (even if you don’t realize what kind of love that is) because that love is given through grace. I often think it would be nice to retain a bit more of that childlike innocence; the childlike faith, because grace makes much more sense as a child. 2 Corinthians 12:9 “And he said unto me, My grace is sufficient for thee: for my strength is made perfect in weakness.”
8. I’m MUCH less mature at 29 than I thought I’d be.
- I don’t really have too much to say about this one…because really, what can I say? So…yep, it is what it is.
9. My life, my relationships, my circumstances are nothing like I thought they’d be – and I’m not sure how I feel about that.
- Oooh, this one could go deep again. I mean, I know we’ve all heard the phrase “people plan and God laughs” but I honestly get the feeling that he just laughs hard at me. I don’t mean that to sound sacrilegious or even downright terrible but I can go ahead and assure you that if you’d asked me at nineteen what my life would look like at twenty-nine..folks, this just ain’t it(and yes; I know, ain’t isn’t a word, thaaank you! It just seemed to provide the right flow for that phrase). This isn’t even in the ballpark. My reality compared to what I thought my life would be – well, it’s so far off that I might as well be standing outside the ballpark…and the ballpark is in Tokyo. I have read where other people experience this same phenomenon but they are actually thrilled and delighted by the way things have gone but at this point, I just cannot say the same. I am neither thrilled nor delighted…if we are being honest, I’m more on the level of troubled and confused. That being said, I guess I just push on while praying for clarity and try to assure myself that one day I’ll look back at this stage in my life and it will all make sense. I sure hope so.
10. Every single person is just making their best guess as they go.
- Once upon a time I thought people hit a certain age and everything just clicked. I would understand how the world worked, I would know how to take care of all the necessary parts of life without too much stress or strain and I would achieve that place where I appeared to be a fully functioning adult that had it all together. I don’t know if that place exists anymore. I think everyone is just trying to make the best of the hand they’ve been dealt and if that means that you don’t always have everything together, that’s perfectly fine. It’s a comfort to know from talking with friends that nobody is really strutting around, saying proudly to themselves “I have GOT THIS and everything is going make perfect sense from here on out!” Those people don’t exist. And knowing that makes me feel just a little bit better when I realize that I still don’t really know what I’m doing.
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